Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan has long been known to harbor authoritarian and anti-free speech views. Now, the action movie star is calling for other artists to be arrested for art that is deemed insulting to China, particularly in advancing favorable images of the Japanese. Chan and his 37 other members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference called on then government to punish fellow artists who insult “national integrity and dignity.” The call follows Chinese artists who wee criticized for showing the Japanese in World War II in a positive light. This by the way was part of the propaganda issued by the U.S. government against the Japanese. The racist elements are quite evident and shocking. Hollywood was a critical part in our propaganda efforts during the war. Now, over 50 years later, Chan and other artists and authors however are seeking to criminalize speech that is viewed as sympathetic or favorable to the Japanese.
Chan wants the government to round up those who are viewed as creating art deemed as advocating “Japanese militarism, fascism, and Bushido spirit.”
If an international artist calling for the arrest of other artists is shocking, so is an academic. Nanjing University history professor and signatory He Yunao made the nonsensical argument that “A nation has integrity just like a person. Citizens enjoy legal rights to personal integrity, and states and nations also have rights to integrity.” This ignores that the state is the subject of free speech not the beneficiary of free speech. Otherwise, if the state has free speech rights to be balanced against individual rights, there is little real free speech left in the balancing.
Whether it is an academic or an actor, the call for the criminalization of artistic and political expression is a disgrace against their respective professions.
@Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter, March 10, 2018 at 12:46 AM
“Sooo, what is the alternative? Should academics and artists hate their country, like in the United States?”
Squeeks, in this and in your other comment in this thread your authoritarian slip is showing. It leads you into thinking that countries, which are abstractions, are existentially more important than the flesh and blood (and spirit) individuals comprising the citizenry of them.
It also seems to blind you to the fact that academics, artists, and anyone else can very patriotically criticize the actions of the small minority of a country’s citizens who wield political power and conduct foreign policy, whose behavior can be dangerously detrimental to the great majority of its citizens, and therefore to the country (or even to the world), as a whole.
A government does not a country, nor a country an individual citizen, make.
https://www.countercurrents.org/polya050713.htm
Ken Rogers – I do agree with you. And we know who to boycott now. 🙂
I don’t think a country is an “abstraction.” What does that even mean??? The country is our team. The country is us. And while we should be allowed to criticize our leaders, how do we end up conflating our leaders with our country???
Like President Xi of China, or not, there is still China, if you are Chinese. Think Xi shouldn’t be President of China for life, or not, that is a separate thing from “China.” In World War II for example, it was made very clear that we were fighting against the Nazis who ran Germany, and not trying to just kill the country, or the people.
We were fighting the powers that ran Japan, and Tojoism, not the Japanese people or Japan, or we would not have stopped when the leadership surrendered. We would have continued to kill Japs, and destroy the infrastructure of the country.
No, for both countries, we rebuilt them.
What Chan is being criticized for, is the equivalent of the United States banning Nazism, or the celebration of the Germans conquering France. Or banning Tojoism and the celebration in this country of the Jap victory at Pearl Harbor.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I mean West in the sense of Western Nations, Australia, Canada, All of Europe, New Zealand, The UK, & The US
More information: http://m.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2134484/japanese-war-uniform-prank-lands-chinese-duo-behind-bars
“Two Chinese men have been detained for 15 days after photos of them dressed in second world war-era Japanese uniforms at historic military fortifications in eastern China were posted online.
Police in the district of Xuanwu in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, said on Friday that a 25-year-old man from Dazhou in Sichuan and a 22-year-old Nanjing man were arrested on Thursday night for causing a public disturbance.
According to a police statement, the men bought the military uniforms and equipment on the internet and took the pictures at Shaojiashan, an anti-Japanese war monument in Nanjing, on Monday.
In one photo, the pair appear cheerful as they pose with swords and a military camera.
In others, they hold replica rifles or a Japanese national flag, inscribed with a call to pray for military success.
They uploaded the pictures on social media on Tuesday, a gesture that police said “severely blasphemed national sentiment and caused an adverse social impact”.”
No! Not the Legend of the Drunken Master! Not the martial artist most creative in his use of everyday objects as weapons, including wooden clogs!
This the problem with brainwashing since infant hood. It’s hard to shake off.
Down below, Dave 137 said, “The flag is a symbol and symbols are fair-game in a free country.”
Thank you, Dave 137, for recapping what’s wrong with “freedom”!
The value of “Freedom” as a theory, is determined the same way as any other theory. That is, does it work??? Because if “freedom” ends up making your country weaker, and less governable, and less stable, then “freedom” as some sacrosanct organizing principle needs to be called into question.
What if our country had freedom as its organizing principle, but legally outlawed flag burning? And legally prevented our academics from teaching that America was a bad and evil country?
I think you could do those things, and the overall impact on “freedom” would be very small. Sooo, I support the Chinese as passing a sensible law. Ask yourself what a football team should do if one of its players or assistant coaches constantly ran down the team and the management and the owners? Do you think such a person would be making the team stronger? I don’t. What if the team starting falling off from being a well performing team, to say one on a par with The Cleveland Browns?
It’s the same with countries. Look at us. We now have a significant part of our country, about 25% who actually think illegal immigrants have a RIGHT to be here. And that anybody who objects is a White Nationalist. Do you think the Chinese haven’t been watching us??? I would not put it past them to have been supporting that sort of foolishness, to weaken us as a major power.
The Russians were smart enough to have put Useful Idiot Programs into effect here many decades ago.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Thank you! Shared on American INSIGHT’s Free Speech Center + Free Speech Film Festival’s Facebook pages.
How would Jackie Chan support the Asian community in New York City without sounding like a complete hypocrite?
While it is well established that affirmative action programs always disproportionately harm Asian students, the numbers in New York are so stark, that there is no way to move the needle on diversity without the vast majority of those negatively impacted being Asian. This would require the mayor to tell thousands of Asian students and their families that even though they worked hard and got the best score, they are being passed over.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/09/new-york-city-progressives-try-and-fail-to-limit-asians-at-top-schools/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=ed888f5bb4-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-ed888f5bb4-79248369
Olly – that was an interesting article. A few years ago I became friends with a professor from China – her parents had escaped from the mainland and lived in Hong Kong where she picked up English. Long story short she immigrated to the U.S, got her PhD and was trying to land a tenure track position with little success. I was trying to cheer her up and said hey you have at least two things going for you aside from your academic qualifications – you’re a female and Asian. She told me that being Asian could actually work against her. I thought maybe she was being paranoid – but maybe not!
What most people don’t realize is that just as the Nazis lost the war due to the loss of men and arms in the USSR where major armies were captured and/or annihilated, the Japanese Army and Air Force committed two thirds of their forces fighting and slaughtering the Chinese. Just as the Nazis slaughtered civilians by the millions to subjugate and ‘cleanse’ the lands over which they rolled, the Japanese forces slaughtered millions of civilians to make their point. Both the Nazis and the Japanese based their actions on their beliefs that those whom they were slaughtering were inferior and more animal like than human like. The propaganda began with the Nazis and the Japanese.
The Bushido spirit was almost entirely based on a hierarchy of human worth. The Japanese peasants were disposable. Imagine how low the Chinese were deemed to be when millions of wanna be Samurais invaded China. The ideals of freedom of speech and let bygones be bygones are easy to support in countries that did not suffer with peoples that were not subjugated to the beyond barbarism of the Nazis and the Japanese.
I seriously doubt there will be any significant negative repercussions for Jackie Chan from the West. Why? Because today, the Western view of rights is not much different than non-western nations. Because Chan’s views are really only separated by the degree that he supports an authoritarian regime against his perceived enemies. Think of a weaponized bureaucracy like many of our federal agencies.
These totalitarian regimes were almost all collectivist whereby the government dictated the economy and eventually society in order to achieve goals they believed were just and noble. You can call them socialists, or communists, or fascists, but really, they all operated similarly. Today in America it is “social justice” which is just another word for coercive state control over the individual. But, as Friedrich von Hayek said, their desires outstrip their understanding: history has shown that this path will end in tragedy, not utopia.
https://mises.org/power-market/note-campus-totalitarians
How can anyone portray the Japanese army in WWII in a positive light? That would be like portraying the SS, Nazi death camps, or the gulags in a positive light.
Well, that is bad on Chan’s part, but is it all that different from what is happening in the West?
In UK and France, you can be fined or even imprisoned for uploading insensitive youtube videos or ‘offensive’ remarks on Twitter.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/07/britain-first-leaders-convicted-of-anti-muslim-hate-crimes
An interview with Wang Leehom. It’s called “gorilla warfare cultural exchange”.
Wang has about 35 million followers on his social media platforms & net worth is about $275 million dollars. Jackie Chan has about 62 million FB followers & net worth is about $350 million dollars. Jackie just might be afraid of the competition.
Thanks for the link. Never heard of him.
A contrast to Jackie Chan
But can he continue to be in China if they go after Taiwan which may happen any time. His parents are from Taiwan and he was born in the US
Who the frig is: Jackie Chan?
Is he the enema of the people?
So long Jackie C.
He is a member of the Communist Party now and in his early days made at least one film that was anti- Japanese WWII. It was made during his Hong Kong days. Not a great film, but worth seeing, if you can find it,
He made his money is the West and then fled to the East. I say boycott him.
Yes, Paul, Not only did Jackie Chan make his money in the West, but he stole most of his cinematic ideas from the great silent comedians (and actors), including Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks. Here’s a clip establishing that, though the clip poster calls it Chan’s “homage.”
Loved the skit with the clock!
We have a new puppy hence the reaching for the rope part of the skit reminded me of Belle’s air biting. She slipped this morning during play time and nailed my nose but good. I am going to have to be careful what I read this morning as I am not sure my nose can take too many more belly laughs.
The checkers in China would likely blow a gasket trying figure out if the latest posts over at Climate Skepticism are subversive or not.
https://cliscep.com/2018/03/10/and-they-said-the-climate-debate-would-never-contribute-one-iota-to-scientific-progress/
More Commie/Nazi American Hatin Trash! Among which families came to the USA years ago as an Infection against the USA & now their kids seem to be Foreign/now/ Domestic Enemies have been moved to release Biological & Chem Weapons against Americans & their kids in at least one form Of Toxic Mandatory Vaccines!!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ervin_Yen
And let us not forget others & GW Bush/Cheney’s John Yoo’s Tortured Memo!
First of all: states or the federal government have “powers”. People have “rights”. The argument proposed by the enema chink is kind of like people in the American South who scream: STATES RIGHTS!.
Like this one, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The “Bill of Rights” says people have powers. Powers vs Rights, playing semantics.
Sooo, what is the alternative? Should academics and artists hate their country, like in the United States?
I agree that one could go overboard, but I would much prefer it if American artists and academics had a positive view of our country, and not one where the country is sooo rotten to the core that illegal aliens are to be preferred to our own citizens. Where our flag is disrespected.
My GUESS is that much of what in other countries along these lines is based on their viewing how “freedom” has nearly destroyed our country. And the West.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
The flag is a symbol and symbols are fair-game in a free country.
All of us in the West should boycott Jackie Chan.