The protesters are fighting for ways to mitigate capitalismвЂ™s cynicism without succumbing to nihilism. The Hong Kong protests are unique to Hong Kong because they are about making demands that will never be fulfilled, or perhaps that will be fulfilled in a future that will never arrive.Д«ut Hong Kong is also a world capital of global capitalism, and an augur of the international futures its banks specialize in trading. Nowhere is this more fitting than Hong Kong, a city founded on thinking the future was impossible the British signed their 99-year lease on the city with China because they couldnвЂ™t imagine that 1997 would ever arrive. вЂњOur timesвЂќ require a revised revolutionary vision that is merely necessary, dismally insufficient, and ultimately impossible: liberation for a future in which thereвЂ™s nothing left to win or lose, for anyone. Liberation and revolution can no longer promise us that we вЂњhave nothing to loseвЂќ or a вЂњworld to win,вЂќ in Marx and EngelsвЂ™s formulation. The protesters offer a clear-eyed assessment of the global present-вЂњour timesвЂќ-and their demands are designed for the compromised world that we have made. Indeed, to claim that the proвЂ“Hong Kong protesters have no overarching political vision or historical perspective is to grossly underestimate their intelligence. This is why вЂњrevolutionвЂќ seems, at first glance, an ill-fitting term: this is not a revolutionary politics in the traditionally optimistic or utopian sense.Д«ut that is not to say that the protesters are conservative, naive, or uninformed. It is, more accurately, a plea to let Hong Kong remain liberal: to let Hong Kong remain the island of unregulated global capitalism that it has been since the 19th century. Although the protest movement borrows the language of Cold War decolonization movements, the demand for Hong KongвЂ™s вЂњliberationвЂќ is not quite a demand for national sovereignty. Very few protesters expect that Hong Kong will be вЂњliberatedвЂќ from its status as a special administrative region of the PeopleвЂ™s Republic of China. The most telling chant of the 2019 Hong Kong protests is вЂњLiberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our timesвЂќ (е…‰еѕ©й¦™жёЇ ж™‚д»Јйќ©е‘Ѕ), not because it offers a vision for вЂњrevolution,вЂќ but because it reveals the protestersвЂ™ accurate assessment of вЂњour times.вЂќ

And your world will burn