They fear what they don’t understand. Thin-skinned, insecure authoritarians fear a great deal, chiefly that their people will no longer tolerate their lies, hatreds, violence, and corruption.
This is true whether the dictators and their wannabe admirers – the likes of Xi, Putin, Orban, Le Pen, the Ayatollahs, and right-wing authoritarians in India, Israel, the United States, and elsewhere – are always vulnerable to ridicule, sarcasm, and symbolism. They are all the living embodiment of satire and irony, recoiling at abstract forms of expression they don’t understand but nonetheless cut surgically into their profound insecurities.
This is why China’s “paramount leader for life” Xi Jinping and his cronies fear blank sheets of paper. Yes, that’s right; blank sheets of white paper. Many Chinese citizens have had enough of Xi. Specifically, they are outraged by his failed “zero tolerance” COVID policies. In relatively small but growing numbers, they have been taking to the streets periodically to protest in Shanghai, Beijing, and elsewhere. One activist told The New York Times that her wordless pieces of white paper mean, “We are the voiceless, but we are powerful."
Police arresting protesters for saying nothing while, of course, saying a great deal must truly be a sight to behold. Such despicable, brittle men in power are actually afraid of blank sheets of paper. This brilliant tactic was borrowed from anti-government protesters in Hong Kong in 2020 and some believe it goes back to the days of Soviet dissidents. One new protest account on Twitter is entitled, “A4Revolution.” “A4” is the size of the infuriating white paper protesters are displaying and posting.
When is nothing something? Right now, in China. As with Iran, let’s hope there’s enough glue in the protest movements so that the white paper actually sticks.
