Bringing the Masses Back in: Synergistic Radicalization in the 2019 Hong Kong Protests

The masses had disappeared from studies of radicalization. The two fields that are concerned with this concept, terrorism studies and social movement studies, had both narrowed their scope of interest from how broader historical processes, economic systems and social structures produced radicalism in the wider society; to the characteristics, techniques and transformations of “radicalizable” individuals. As a result, social movement literature largely considers the masses as merely affected by radicalism under the “radical flank effect” or only able to radicalize in “claims” or ideologically. This study asks: What is the role of the nonviolent masses in tactical radicalization, if any? It tackles this central question by investigating the “least likely” case of Hong Kong, where a civil society committed to “peaceful, rational and nonviolent” activism for decades had suddenly turned to “valiant and martial” activism in the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement. How did violence emerge, escalate and acquire legitimacy out of a pacified political environment?

I draw on Eliasian figurational sociology to theorize a “synergistic model” from our case. Using 14 in-depth interviews with exiled protestors in the UK, Canada and Taiwan, I argue that the masses played a pivotal role in enabling militants to perform violence effectively, safely and legitimately by acting as (i) incubators before violence, (ii) collaborators during violence, and (iii) narrators after violence. First, mutually stimulating actions between oppositional legislators and early moderate protestors laid the mass foundations for militants to consider escalation. Second, moderates, organizational activists and new unionists supplied the intelligence, resources and protection necessary for militants to perform violent tactics. Third, organizational activists and citizen lobbyists offered discourses to justify militants’ violence based on the incommensurate violence of the police, targeted violence of militants and the possibility that particularly controversial acts of violence were instigated by undercover police pretending to be militants.