Chinese group demands British piano player stop filming his public performance because… communism
A recent exchange on an English street serves as a great reminder that under communism, or more aptly, communist theocracy, there is no freedom—no freedom of expression, no freedom of speech, and most obviously, no freedom of thought—even in places where “government is god” isn’t the official political structure.
On January 19th, famed British pianist Brendan Kavanagh had a little run-in with some Chinese communists, and caught it all on camera. Kavanagh, also known as Dr. K, runs a popular YouTube channel which boasts around 2.1 million subscribers, and in the middle of streaming a performance outside a row of shops on a crowded London thoroughfare, in a public venue, a group of Chinese “civilians” confronted Kavanagh to demand that he stop filming because they were in his shot; see a video clip below:
Today in Britain the CCP demanded a piano player in a public place to stop filming because they were in the background ЁЯШм pic.twitter.com/2ZXbSfpWhI
— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) January 21, 2024
Let me remind you, this is England, not China.
Now, any normal person on the street might just… move, if they don’t want to be included in a camera shot, but there’s something a little off about these people, and apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so. The clip above is just a fraction of the full exchange, which can be viewed here, and interestingly, a number of people in the comments who are claiming to be Taiwanese or from Hong Kong seem to believe that these Chinese are actually “spies” and saboteurs:
Image: Screenshot from YouTube video comment section
(Notice how that comment has 700 “likes” and zero to the contrary.)
So what do we know?
Well, according to the first woman who engages with Kavanagh, the group is filming something for some sort of “Chinese TV” program, so they’re not just ordinary citizens, but people working in communist media (regime propaganda); at one point, one of the men acknowledges “they” have an “agreement” with some unidentified entity that their faces not be shown online. Now, as Kavanagh points out, they’re waving the flag of the communist regime, and they’re all dressed rather “patriotically” with scarves in communist red—now maybe it’s just me, but I drew a connection between the fluttery red accessories and the 1950s “Three Red Banners” slogan. Lastly, we see that one of the men in the group is either certifiably insane, or extremely manipulative, and I suspect the latter. To anyone watching, Kavanagh is as calm as can be, with his hands in his pockets for almost the entire time, but when he gestures towards one of the small flags held by one of the women, the Chinese man shouts at Kavanagh, as though Kavanagh were actually physically assaulting the female; it also seems that this is the same man who accused Kavanagh of being “racist” for saying “we’re in a free country mate, we’re not in communist China now, ya know?” If you were to watch the whole recording, you see that eventually the police get called, and a female constable comes down on… Kavanagh, telling him that he “can’t say things like that.”
Freedom is the antithesis of communism: there is no freedom to exist without permission of the state, which is why Kavanagh’s presence and individual actions in a public space were so offensive to the communists; there is no freedom of speech, which is why Kavanagh was told to stop filming, and reprimanded for saying what is completely and objectively true; and there is no freedom of thought, which is why these Chinese, thousands of miles outside the jurisdiction of the China, felt compelled to promote the ideology and methods of their government.
As someone in the YouTube video comments noted, freedom is “precious” and I wholeheartedly agree.