Hong Kong protesters are following the wrong script

What do you call a global hub without an airport? Hong Kong. No other city can lay claim to this impossible status, for no global hub can exist without an airport. The closure of Hong Kong’s airport again today indicates how far the crisis in Hong Kong has gone, and how close one of the world’s greatest cities now is to a one-way ticket.

For the fifth successive day, the world’s biggest flash mob has overrun one of the world’s busiest airports. The protesters have been peaceful – much more peaceful than anywhere else in the territory, where they have done their best to provoke the police as well as their fellow citizens. The police have also been more restrained than elsewhere, and haven’t (as yet) used tear gas or batons. There can be no doubt, however, that this kind of targeted protest is a passive-aggressive form of political violence – and that it must, sooner or later, be met with the purely aggressive form.