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You should notice that I didn't put the word "how" in front of the sub title.

Back in 2025 when I was rotting away in Dublin, from a certain separatist acquaintance I've heard that there were really only two kinds of quote-unquote "dissidents" allowed among the youth of China nowadays: it's either you're a Maoist or you're a Han supremacist; everything else is kinda risky. (And of course, being a separatist is extra risky; it could be your very own one-way ticket to jail.) In other words, as long as you don't speak ill of a certain someone or let the Marxist theory get to your head and do things you aren't supposed to do, you can freely complain about the government not being Maoist enough or not being Han enough. You might wonder how any of these two could be a "dissident" position; the fact is, Maoism hasn't explicitly been the mainstream ideology within CCP for decades, and CCP never explicitly supported Han supremacism - both the Kuomintang (the 2nd one founded by Sun Yat-sen, not the 1st one that started the Xinhai Revolution) and the CCP claims to be the representative of Zhonghua Minzu in order to claim land that they have no business having (Tibet, East Turkestan, South Mongolia), they can't have this restrictive of a racist ideology, at least on paper.

So there's a discrepancy here. The school and the education system, of course, promotes whatever idea the CCP wants them to promote. Kids, however, wants rebellion; it's a part of the natural process, and they should rebel - they should define themselves as their own existence separate from the (objective) world, or else there would be grave problems; and since Maoism and Han supremacism are the only two that's (1) not explicitly endored by the CCP by one reason or another, and (2) not really being oppressed by the state power either, so naturally they'll have the most believers. From the kids' perspective, they might be seeing themselves as truly rebellious individuals, because they're not giving fucks about what their teachers (and - by extension, of course - the CCP) are saying; but CCP allowed this to happen exactly because (they believe) the kids are either of absolute zero harms (and if they ever did we of course know what will actually happen) or are firmly in their control (even if in an indirect way); it's the safest kind of rebellion, one that is free from any meaningful possibility of harm.

Not that long ago, a certain someone set up a certain statue in London, and that that certain someone turned out to be Banksy. You have to understand, that painting on some random walls and putting up a statue are two very different things; for a place like London, setting up a statue with a base and everything in the middle of a place without prior notice with the local government is already nigh impossible, let alone setting up one that the local government would like to keep (or else what's the fancy base for?). In order to make this make sense, one can only imagine Banksy had a conversation with the government where the government be like "I'd like a statue here" and Banksy answered "OK" (or the reverse, with Banksy asking to set up a statue and the government replying OK); and if that's true, this "rebellious" act is of course one of the safest there ever was; in no where was there any risk of losing freedom (not even the risk of losing anonymity) like the things my acquaintance (and his acquaintances) were doing.

One would of course ask: is the risk of losing (at least a part of) your life that important for things to be able to be called "being rebellious"? But then I would of course answer, that it's almost of utmost importance for the risk to exist; or else how is this any difference than any normal consequence-less life choices, like choosing to have a Club Orange or a Diet Coke for your Tesco Meal Deal lunch?

It is at this point I thought of people talking about "punching nazis" again. Transphobic? Nazi. Misogynistic? Nazi. Racist? Nazi. Support Israel instead of Palestine? Nazi. And if you're a nazi, I, who may have been wanting to punch you regardless, am allowed to punch you; and if I want to punch you, I'm a "good guy"; and because I don't like the government, I'm a "good guy" that "rebels against the establishment"; and then you proceed to write about punching nazis and post it on bubbles.town where nearly every single reader thinks like you and gained however many updoots alongside with "blog posts" saying how the smallweb is great or how you (or "more people") should be "blogging more". The safest rebellion there's ever been, without even a trace of risk of consequences, like how John Lennon and Yoko Ono decided that staying in bed for 2 weeks was somehow a wonderful idea for a anti-war protest.

Sometimes I truly wonder - of course one'd expect things to change starting from this year, but dial back to a few years ago - during the time when almost the entire world (sometimes some of them are with actual power, no less) (at least pretending to be) rooting for you and your cause, do you still think you're among the "grassroot heroes" that "fought against the establishment"? Who's to say you're not already a part of it? For how long have you not been noticing that you're already siding with whatever "establishment" you thought you're fighting against in your mind, and for how long have you not been noticing that you either already joined them or started a new establishment yourselves?

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Last update: 2026.7.30