Human Flesh Search Is Terrifying

2,321 characters2008.07.23

Today I saw CCTV’s program “The Roundup of Human Flesh Search” on Everybody Talks Law, and it was truly astonishing. Too terrifying.

Before, I had only witnessed the “power of Chinese netizens” in the Zhou Laohu affair; that power was indeed formidable, and its effects seemed positive as well, but even then my comments were anything but optimistic.

Looking again at these “human flesh search” cases, they also serve to confirm my longstanding judgment: the Cultural Revolution is still continuing. The essence of the Cultural Revolution is not dictatorship or autocracy, but mob violence, the uproar of “justice.” When we see Chinese netizens, so “full of a sense of justice,” growing hot-blooded in their efforts to dig up those “detestable scum”; when we see those “bad eggs,” and even their families, receiving “just punishment”—suffering mental and even physical violence on account of their misdeeds; when we see the privacy files and old scores of these “evil people” being exposed to the world; when we see the righteous crowd taking great satisfaction in cursing and insulting these “scum,” then it is truly a cause for celebration: what is the difference between these netizens and Chinese people from decades ago?

What, after all, was the tragedy Chinese culture went through decades ago? Was it that “good people” were treated unjustly? No: it was that “bad people” were treated unjustly. Those paraded through the streets, those whose heads were shaved and who were humiliated were not “good people”; in the eyes of both the authorities and the masses at the time, they were all “bad people,” all “shameful people,” all “detestable scum.” By comparison, Chinese people then were more forgiving than netizens are now: back then, people would give those bad eggs a chance to mend their ways and start anew, whereas now netizens merely use those bad eggs as punching bags on which to vent their “sense of justice.”

Human flesh search has shown netizens their immense power. This power makes them elated and self-satisfied, but it is by no means the power of democracy; it is the power of tyranny, the power of the Cultural Revolution.

When every citizen is compelled to shoulder freedom, or rather, when everyone is required to become a master, that kind of polity is called democracy. Conversely, when everyone becomes a slave—whether what enslaves them is a king, God, or “justice”—when the order of society is governed by violence rather than reason, that is tyranny.