Beijing's Triumph of the Will

As I was watching video footage of developments during the Hong Kong protest movement, I saw Beijing had symbolically mobilised the People's Liberation Army on the island. The PLA soldiers were seen marching with brooms on their shoulders in place of guns:

It is shockingly ill-thought-out as it is far too reminiscent of the scene from Leni Riefenstahl's classic propaganda film, The Triumph of the Will, filmed at the 1934 Nuremberg rallies. In the film, we see SA (Sturm Abteilung or "Storm Troopers") militia in their typical "brown shirts", parading around with shovels on their shoulders in place of guns. "We are planting trees" they exclaim, "we are building roads". The entire scene is cynically calculated to convey a false impression to the world that the intentions of the regime were entirely peaceful and civil. The well-polished parade boots could only be intended for show and not for trampling human rights underfoot.

Historians today rightly cringe at simplistic comparisons suggesting that Mao's brand of socialism and Hitler's National Socialism were the "same thing". Soon Hannah Arendt's dated theses about totalitarianism from the 1960s get trotted out too. This is hardly what is being reiterated here. It is entirely a coincidence that the PLA soldiers are in a relief uniform whose colours happens to consist of brown t-shirts of a khaki-brown tone not too dissimilar to the uniform colours of the SA brown shirts. Nonetheless, the coincidence seems rather too uncomfortably striking not to point out. When you close your eyes you can even hear the perfect instrumental score for both the PLA and SA to march to (here played by the Vienna Philharmonic):

All jokes aside, the only imminent parallel is that of the cynicism in pretending that a military force (or more exactly a paramilitary force in the case of the SA) on the symbolic march with brooms and shovels can entirely be presumed to have only peace-loving civil intent. At least one certainly hopes that the PLA or Beijing are not directly quoting from the symbolism of The Triumph of the Will.

History does not repeat. Xi Jinping can hardly more be addressed in earnest as Il Duce than he can be hailed as Lord Vader. Nor can any satirical hyperbole to the effect that the Communist Party of Chinese is "the same" as the NSDAP be taken seriously. They are entirely different social structures that emerged under disparate socio-historical and politico-economic circumstances. They are not, and cannot ever be, "the same thing". However, that does not change the fact that the Hong Kong students are likely about to have their movement crushed in a similar manner to Tiananmen Square, even if it ends in a hail of tear gas canisters, instead of tanks and bullets. Beijing is almost certainly going to prevail here in a Triumph of the Will. It is a shame the Chinese cannot allow themselves at least a bit of a Krushev thaw and admit the mistakes of the past, as well as to be open to criticism in the present.

Meanwhile, it seems that Beijing is making symbolic intimidatory gestures against Taiwan and its democratic independence from the mainland (the name "China" actually means the Central Land i.e. the country at the centre of the world):

China confirmed on Monday that its first domestically-built aircraft carrier had sailed through the Taiwan Strait in what it said was "routine" training. 

Taiwan's defence ministry said on Sunday a group of Chinese vessels led by the carrier passed through the sensitive strait tailed by ships from the US and Japan. 

The carrier, which was launched in 2017, crossed the sensitive waters on Sunday before entering the South China Sea for "scientific research tests and routine training", navy spokesman Cheng Dewei said on an official social media account.  

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/china-calls-stop-flexing-muscles-south-china-sea-191118042507381.html 

Marching with brooms and making claims to undertaking "research tests" with an aircraft carrier sound all too similar. Sadly, China has taken its place alongside America at the forefront of modern neo-imperialist expansionism. It is a nation that has forsaken its socialist grassroots and has fully embraced capitalist-imperialist goals in its place, as the nation's belief that it is the centre of the universe has gone fully to its head. Not that America is behaving much better, and is no longer even putting on phoney neocon pretensions about being a "force for good", as it shamelessly flaunts its naked neo-imperialist ambitions, subservient only to narrow-minded nationalistic self-interest. One fears that a full-on Thucydides Trap is in the making, reminiscent to that between the incumbent British Empire and the rapidly upcoming German rival around the late 1800s to 1900s.