By John Daniel Davidson
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Since the NBA-China affair blew up last weekend, a number
of commentators have lambasted the NBA for its craven response to China, noting
the hypocrisy of a league that publicly prides itself on being the social
vanguard in America but has no problem kowtowing to Chinese autocrats to
maintain access to their lucrative markets.
The argument goes like this: there’s a massive disconnect
between the values the NBA espouses and its willingness, say, to look the other
way in China, where the league runs a training program not far from where
Uighur Muslims are forcibly sent to reeducation camps. The NBA’s pursuit of
filthy lucre, in this view, undermines its carefully crafted public image. As
my colleague David Marcus quipped, “After all, what’s a concentration camp or
two if there is money to be made?”
National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty extends this
critique to global corporations in general, arguing that the entire purpose of
woke capitalism is “to curry favor with the political class and receive a moral
indulgence for their rank profiteering.” The New York Times’ Bari Weiss, citing
Alibaba co-founder and New Jersey Nets owner Joe Tsai’s long Facebook post
calling the pro-democracy Hong Kong protests a “separatist movement,” wondered
“how an American league that prides itself on promoting progressive values
squares those values with allowing an apologist for authoritarianism to own one
of its teams.”
But is there really such a conflict between progressive
values and authoritarianism? Arguably, wokeness is itself fundamentally
authoritarian. How many of the most politically correct people on the left in
America would be happy to use government power to compel speech, silence those
with opposing views, or ruin the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people who
don’t share their political values?
We all know the answer because it’s been playing out
before our eyes. We all know what happened to Jack Phillips, the Christian
baker who declined to make a custom wedding cake for a gay couple and, having
been vindicated before the U.S. Supreme Court, still faces ongoing
persecution and legal battles. We know what happens to wedding florists,
photographers, even the owners
of a small-town pizza shop who refused to toe the left’s line.
So far from being in conflict with progressive values,
coercion is native to the left. China has reeducation camps for Muslims who
don’t embrace communism. It’s not hard to imagine leftists in America
supporting reeducation camps for Christians who don’t embrace gay marriage or
transgenderism. Coercive force, even government force, is perfectly fine to
them if it’s used in service of the left’s agenda.
Coercion Comes Naturally to
the Far-Left
We see signs of this everywhere. Today it’s commonplace
for left-wing college students to shout down or even physically threaten
conservative speakers and students on the pretext that “hate speech” can’t be
tolerated, and even that it justifies violence. Two years ago at Middlebury
College, a student mob physically attacked speaker Charles Murray and a faculty
member after forcibly shutting down a planned speech by Murray. Does anyone
think these students would balk at having the police forcibly shut down
speaking events they opposed on ideological grounds?
This isn’t just a campus phenomenon. Violent extremist
groups like Antifa are often seen clashing with police, but does anyone doubt
that if masked Antifa demonstrators could wield police powers, they would
hesitate to use force to silence dissent?
We don’t have to imagine hypotheticals because examples
of leftist coercion are all around us. Consider the
firing of a Virginia high school teacher last year for refusing, on
religious grounds, to use a transgender student’s preferred pronoun. The
teacher, Peter Vlaming, even tried to compromise, promising to use only the
student’s name and avoid pronouns altogether, but it wasn’t enough. School
administrators told Vlaming either to use the pronoun the transgender student
wanted or face consequences. Eventually the school board fired him.
This dynamic is now playing out on the world stage as
support for the Hong Kong protests draws in a growing number of industries and
companies with business ties to China. What happened to Vlaming, for example,
is no different than what happened this week to a professional Hong Kong-based
gamer named Chung Ng Wai.
Chung, a professional Hearthstone player, expressed
support for Hong Kong during a live broadcast after winning a tournament. The
maker of the game, Activision Blizzard, one of America’s biggest gaming
companies, suspended Chung and forced him to forfeit a reported $10,000 in
prize money. The company also summarily fired the commentators who conducted
the interview.
William F. Buckley once said, “Liberals claim to want to
give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover
that there are other views.” That might have been true once of old-fashioned
liberals, but today’s leftists don’t even pretend to want to give a hearing to
other views. Having other views just makes you a target for intimidation and
coercion, maybe even violence. Say the wrong words and we’ll take away your
livelihood.
No wonder the most politically correct corporations in
America are the first to placate Chinese authoritarians. China just
demonstrates what happens when woke corporations have the power of the state
behind them.
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