Silencing a Piano Man In London, a group of Chinese Communists test their power to crush freedom. by Bruce Bawer
https://www.frontpagemag.com/silencing-a-piano-man/
In London these days, if you’re lucky enough not to be hounded on the street by mobs of virulent pro-Hamas protesters, you just might find yourself assaulted by a gaggle of arrogant Chinese Communists. At least, that is, if you make your living by playing boogie-woogie on public pianos.
That’s what happened the other day to British piano man Brendan Kavanagh, whose YouTube channel has 2.4 million subscribers. Until this dustup occurred, I was unfamiliar with him. He comes off as a totally easygoing type, a middle-aged bloke who enjoys his music, loves sharing it online, and doesn’t take himself too seriously. In brief, a free spirit.
Alas, there are people moving among us in the Western world who, far from being free spirits, are agents of the planet’s largest terror regime. The other day Kavanagh was livestreaming while tickling the ivories at St. Pancras Station in London – on a Yamaha upright donated to the station, as it happens, by Elton John – when a half-dozen or so of them approached him. They were all wearing identical red scarves and carrying small Chinese flags.
At first it appeared as if one of them wanted to play the piano. But no: she said something in broken English about a “disclosure form” and about recording for Chinese TV. Then one of her male comrades told Kavanagh to turn off his camera, insisting that it was the group’s “right” not to have their images recorded. Kavanagh replied, firmly but pleasantly, that “we’re in a free country…..We’re not in Communist China.” To which the young man shot back: “Sorry, this is racist now!” And when Kavanagh’s hand grazed against one young woman’s flag, the Chinese guy exploded: “Don’t touch her!”
Suddenly he’d become a totalitarian commissar, giving orders and expecting to be obeyed. Kavanagh, to his credit, refused to back down, and even dared to say: “Are you in the Communist Party?…You’ve got a Communist flag in your hand.” In reply to which the commissar accused him of “discriminating a different country,” told him to “educate yourself,” and again hurled the word “racist.”
Summoned by the Chinese group, two cops turned up. One of them, a middle-aged woman named Kerry, told Kavanagh to turn off his camera. He refused, as was his right. Kerry then parroted the Chinese group’s claim that their right to privacy required him to turn the camera off. She even contended that it was wrong of him to declare, apropos of the freedom issue, that “we’re not in China”: “You can’t just say things like that!” she said, wide-eyed, as if the outrageousness of such a remark were self-evident. But Kavanagh replied with some home truths: “This is a free-speech issue.” The flag of China? Yes, it is indeed “a Communist flag.” (Imagine if they’d all been carrying Nazi flags.)
And yes, the UK is indeed supposed to be, as Kavanagh put it, “a free country” – although the behavior in recent years of British courts and of police officers like Kerry has seriously belied that assertion. Hundreds if not thousands of decent U.K. citizens – notably Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox, and Harry Miller – have been arrested (and worse) simply for expressing opinions, usually about Islam; and since October 7, British cops have given free rein to violent pro-Hamas demonstrators while ordering law-abiding counter-protesters to put away their Union Jacks.
If it’s impressive to see people like Tommy and Laurence Fox standing up for ancient British liberties, it’s even more impressive to see a musician like Kavanagh respond in exactly the right way when caught off guard by a group of would-be tyrants – and when treated like a troublemaker, shortly thereafter, by a policewoman quick to prioritize Communist sensitivity over British freedom.
After Kerry finally gave up and walked away, Kavanagh sat down at the piano and played, quite merrily, “Sheik of Araby.” I was half surprised that she didn’t take him in on charges of Islamophobia. I guess she didn’t recognize the tune.
In the days that followed, Kavanagh’s video went viral; last time I checked, it had garnered over nine million views and 90,000 comments. He was interviewed about the incident by Piers Morgan and TalkTV’s Mike Graham. And he received heaps of support from around the world – especially Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan. Meanwhile the CCP bombarded YouTube with demands that Kavanagh’s videos – and the interviews with him – be taken down.
Who were the members of this Chinese contingent that tried to intimidate Kavanagh? Another YouTuber, Mahyar Tousi, managed to identify three of them. The guy who’d gone ballistic turned out to be Newton Leng, a consultant for the Financial Times and a member of the Confucius Institute – a CCP front – at University College London. The woman whose flag Kavanagh had dared to touch was Adelina Zhang, who “hosts Chinese state-linked events in the UK” and whom Tousi showed in photographs cozying up to top UK politicos Jeremy Hunt and Theresa May. (Still another YouTuber established that Zhang was a former journalist at the CCP’s China Daily.) And the young woman who’d first approached Kavanagh? That was Mengying Liu, an “influencer” on WeChat.
Liu later posted a video online explaining that she and her comrades were at St. Pancras to film a cutaway for Communist China’s big TV gala celebrating Chinese New Year, which this year falls on February 10. The hosts of YouTube’s “China News” noted that this massive annual spectacle is (naturally) a CCP production, and that the Chinese government should have requested permission to film a segment for it on British soil – just as a British camera crew would have had to request permission to film a TV show in China.
After watching Kavanagh’s video, one of the “China Show” hosts commented: “We have now seen Communist Party censorship in action.” Chinese operatives around the world, he pointed out, have, like Newton Leng, been quick to equate anti-Communism with racism – a ploy that, they’ve discovered, works like a charm on Westerners. The charge of racism, the host recalled, was widely leveled during the pandemic at people (recall how Trump was savaged for it) who so much as dared to mention that the virus had originated in China.
On January 27, Kavanagh returned in triumph to the piano at St. Pancras. After declaring his support for Hong Kong and Taiwan, he sat down and performed “Blue Suede Shoes” with special lyrics: “One for the money, two for the show, CCP, you can go, go, go!”
In and of itself, needless to say, this episode was scarcely of earth-shaking significance. But it drew attention to a few things worth pondering. First, it underscored the fact that all too many British police officers these days seem not to understand the concept of individual freedom and are quick to act like the Stasi at any suggestion of “Islamophobia” or “racism.”
Second, it reminds us that covert CCP activity is not inconsiderable in the Western world. No, Leng & Co. seem not to have been up to anything terribly iniquitous – this time, anyway. But innumerable other CCP tools have been guilty of serious skullduggery. Recall Dianne Feinstein’s chauffeur who turned out to be a Chinese spy. And Eric Swalwell’s own spy connection. And all those Chinese exchange students at U.S. universities who’ve been caught stealing research results and Chinese scientists at American high-tech companies who’ve smuggled trade secrets back home.
Third, Kavanagh’s story makes it clear that if you don’t cooperate with CCP apparatchiks, they can transform in a split second from polite and mild-mannered – indeed, positively beaming and giggling – fellowmen into the kind of dictatorial thugs that you can imagine hauling you off to a basement cell somewhere for a thorough beating. The moment when Leng screams suddenly at Kavanagh, barking an order like a Gulag guard, offers an unsettling reminder of the dark reality of the Communist mindset – and of the chilling world, largely unknown to almost all of us in the West, that exists within China’s borders.
Finally, this minor episode inevitably brings to mind the major issue of the last few years: the Big Lie about the Wuhan wet market, which was repeated endlessly by scientists, politicians, and journalists who were desperate to hide the truth about the Wuhan lab. We still have no idea how the CCP got so many people around the world to keep its secret. Exactly how much money has it spread around in Western corridors of government and media power? Who else, other than the NBA, Nike, and – of course – our current cadaver-in-chief, is financially beholden to the CCP?
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