Ng Wai “Blitzchung” Chung is a professional Hearthstone player who supported the protests happening in Hong Kong against China during a post-win interview for the Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament on Sunday. Hearthstone publisher Blizzard Entertainment responded with a harsh punishment, banning Blitzchung from the digital card game’s esports for a year and taking his prize money from Grandmasters.
Blizzard also says it will no longer work with the two casters who covered the event, who literally ducked behind their desk when Blitzchung voiced his support for Honk Kong’s protest. Usually, players are banned from Blizzard esports for cheating. But Blitzchung did not cheat.
Blizzard is partially owned by the Chinese company Tencent, and the Chinese market is hugely important for the game maker – as such, it does not want to offend the Chinese government. Like the NBA, yet another American enterprise subjected to Chinese censorship.
Thom reserves credit for doggedly covering Western companies’ collusion with Chinese censorship over the years.
For some reason it seems especially craven and revolting when it comes to Hong Kong; possibly because it concerns the drip-drip erosion of freedoms comparable to those enjoyed by Blizzard itself.
Indeed he does deserve credit for this. Personally I believe in the equality of all human beings, which I extend quite simply to all human beings, without reservation or qualification. Whereas younger folks (than me) tend to distribute rights to individuals based on race groupings, country of origin, or gender. And typically they do extend rights to oppressed groups, they just have a blind spot of unassigning rights based on race/gender/origin. In other words, they will use race/gender/origin to judge, but only groups they feel don’t need protection…which I submit is mistaken for the same reason all racism is mistaken, you cannot figure out an individual based on these other attributes, not their history, experience, nothing…it’s a guess at best.
So while I have no doubt, I’m going to rush in to oppose a Thom viewpoint in the future, on the whole, I have great respect for Thom, and he certainly understands the issue on China.
I have to respond to M.Onty…
The issue I have with what you said about Thom is that he censors users of this site, just like China. I would argue he is as hypocritical as the Western companies he loves to point out flaws about.
In fact, based on other posts I’ve put out here which were in any way critical of Thom or the direction of OSNews, I fully expect him to suspend my account and delete this post! He’s done it 3 times to me so far, which is why I am not surprised by how few users there are of this site these days.
Thom has a definite angle to what he posts… If it’s critical of Western Culture, or the USA in general, Thom will post it. But if someone dares question Thom, or shares an opinion on him or his content that he doesn’t agree with or want others thinking, he removes the offending account and all of their posts.
Just like the Chinese do when someone posts anything critical against the country. If Thom had re-education camps he could send us to like the Chinese, I can guarantee that there would be dozens of former OSNews contributors there now!
So in brief, while I like hearing others points of views, even when I disagree with them, Thom does not, and he, like these oppressive governments and companies that he complains about, will silence his critics rather than foster discussion and free speech. Thom is far from a hero, and deserves to be called out for his behavior.
This used to be a tech site. It is now a “Agree with Thom or be quiet” personal blog, which is sad. I’ve written articles for OSNews in the past, and while I would disagree with Eugenia from time-to-time, she never resorted to censorship and coverups. Thom can dish it out, but he can’t take it.
Much like Trump, who Thom loves to bitch about, he will silence any dissent rather than allow free discussion to take place.
Your posts lack perspective and understanding of the very basic issues at hand. Its not worth discussing for the billionth time the difference between an os enthusiast site and the government of the worlds largest country.
Interesting response… And it’s equally interesting that my post is still intact!
First of all, I understand your point, but it’s your opinion. It’s not like a common understanding about these things, and you can see that in others posts as well.
Secondly, you don’t know anything about my posts since this is the first one using this newly created account. So there’s nothing tied to anything prior, because again, Thom has suspended my old accounts. Your comment about my posts lacking perspective and understanding is a knee-jerk response as you know nothing of my other posts.
You might not like this post, and me speaking my opinion, but they’re no less relevant than your opinions and perspective. The difference is that I am not putting you and your perspective down.
And finally, I respectfully disagree with your stance. Someone who preaches one thing, but practices another is a hypocrite. We’ve all hypocritical at some point in our lives… It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but is rather an area of our lives that we should all be working on improving.
But for someone to justify this treatment of others (specifically, suppressing others opinions and thoughts because you disagree) while railing against others for the same behavior is in a nutshell, hypocritical. There’s no other way to put it… I’ve not been insulting… I’ve not said your or his posts lack perspective and understanding… I’ve responded in a polite, clear fashion.
I’ll simplify it: This does not only apply to criticism of Trump – He was but one example in a larger post. Thom often posts things like this… About how China censors others, how Apple is kowtowing to China, how Trump has ruined the world and supresses dissent, and how others including Blizzard are censoring users of their products.
Your response implies that there is no comparison… There is. It’s the same behaviors, whether a big government is doing this, or Thom is doing it.
You want to focus on Trump? Fine… There are lawsuits in the USA about Trump banning Twitter followers. About Trump silencing his critics. Tell me how my example is not relevant… The only difference is that I am not filing a lawsuit…. The censorship and silencing of others is still taking place.
How about the China example w/Blizzard? Same thing… Silencing those they disagree with, just like Thom has done to me and others repeatedly, when like you, I’m just here to learn and grow. How is me responding to a post of his and pointing out similarities in behaviors not a valid thing?
Please explain why you feel my opinion and reaction to these posts is any less valid, and please do so without insulting me, or making it completely about your hatred of Trump and his administration, or by telling me this is an enthusiast site – None of these responses addresses my points.
In my opinion your viewpoint is off, my friend. Your way of defending Thom is by insulting those who disagree with how he’s handling things. I’d like a real response
Thank you.
And yet they call the left “snowflakes”.
It’s telling that you choose to focus on generalizing who I am and mocking me versus addressing my points and how you’ve behaved.
I can see by your response that you see me on “the right”, while you see yourself and others with your viewpoint as being on “the left”. Call or think of me as a snowflake all you want, but please have the decency to respond to my points vs. just name calling.
I don’t see in terms of “us vs. them”, so I find it very difficult to understand those who see the world this way. It comes off as very hateful to me (to be clear Thom, I am not saying you’re a hateful person… People who see others in such black and white terms come off this way to me in general).
To me we’re all in this world together. Some things I like, some I don’t, but it’s all part of the mix, and it’s this synergy that helps to propel society forward. To see in terms of us vs them is a recipe for hatred and not working with others.
Believe it or not, I actually have friends who have viewpoints I don’t agree with (gasp!). I know that’s rare in this day and age, but it was, and should be the norm. I don’t feel I am any better than anyone else, and don’t demean others for not being more like me.
Your snowflakes comment says a lot about how you see things.
By the way, thank you for not deleting my account again. It’s progress.
Everyone has their angle and their biases, but lots of people argue with Thom without being banned. Unfortunately we cannot see what you were previously suspended for, and you’ve not told us (maybe you aren’t able to without being banned again?). So the rest of us really can’t make a judgement either way.
Just a thought though: It might well be OSNews policy that it is the person who is banned not the account. So you might have been banned once, then the next two times were simply because they recognised who you were from the tone of your posts, and reapplied the original ban to the new account.
China wants to benefit from the Western free market, but would not want to be subject to its norms.
They would ignore patents, manipulate their currency, use banned CFC in their factories, however as long as Western companies get to manufacture their gizmos there for a 10 cents discount, they can get away with anything.
There is fault here in US as well. For example “Silicon Valley” used to host actual factories manufacturing silicone chips. However after realizing what the processes do to the environment, they moved all the production “elsewhere”. The environmental costs are still the same, but we just happen not to see it.
Same with working conditions, worker’s rights, pensions, and such. We have outsourced them all.
Now it came back to haunt both sides of the Pacific.
Btw, for those who did not see this before, take a look at a report on “super fund” sites in the valley:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/lens/the-superfund-sites-of-silicon-valley.html
sukru,
Why should china be subject to our norms if they don’t want to be? I understand the importance of standing up for human rights, health, and working conditions globally, but beyond that I don’t see a strong legal or moral justifications to force countries including china to embrace our norms…Would it be reasonable for china to subject us to it’s norms too? Is this just a desire to make everyone like us?
We’ve made much ado over intellectual property. Obviously I can see why western countries would want to impose royalty fees on chinese companies, however there’s a lot of debate over the efficacy of patents even here in the west. The legal monopolies on ideas create impediments and disincentives for the widespread adoption of ideas leaving many to waste time & effort designing around patents to create non-infringing yet suboptimal results. Countries with patent systems subject their companies to tremendous overhead and extremely costly lawsuits over rather dumb patents – many billions of dollars that would arguably be better spent doing actual R&D rather than lawyering up. I for one think there’s nothing immoral about a foreign country choosing to ignore our patent system and the associated problems, it actually makes that country more competitive than us. Rather than complaining about them, maybe it’s time that we need to learn a thing or two from them about competing more efficiently without relying on a terribly inefficient patent system as a crutch.
Indeed. We’ve conveniently “solved” the problem here by sending this work away. Now we’ve got other countries essentially doing our dirty work, everyone wants to blame these countries, but the whole world really needs to take responsibility for it too.
I’m pretty sure human rights, health and working conditions are the norms we wanted to export via economic globalization.
At least, those were the Western norms I hoped would be exported, along with certain liberal democratic ideals, largely because of their necessity in preserving human rights, health, and good working conditions.
Drumhellar,
I appreciate what you are saying, but it’s kind of hard to align those values with our foreign policies towards china, I’d say our trade wars & corporate blacklists & visa revocations have little to nothing to do with human rights abuses and everything to do with intellectual property, competitive advantages, and monetary policy. Based on our own actions, it doesn’t seem like we actually care too much about the condition of those in china, we only care about getting a cut of the profits. 🙁