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In this article, we introduce the concept of "anti-activism" and explore the possible impact of anti-activist action in Hong Kong. We define anti-activism as a form of countermovement intended to discredit, distract, and even harass activists in voluntary social movements. Our data and analyses are based on field observations, interviews, and primary documents collected in Hong Kong during 2012–2018. We focus on the case of the protest campaign against the quasi-religious group Falun Gong 法輪功 to develop our argument. We find that anti-activists do not try to win public support for their cause. Instead, they succeed most effectively through the process of disrupting and discrediting voluntary activists to arouse tension, conflict, suspicion, and annoyance in the public. They discredit not just their opponents but even themselves, and, thus by extension, they discredit social movement activism per se, polarize public debate, and in a way undermine the integrity of civil society in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the tactical repertoires of two diaspora-based Chinese protest movements; the Chinese democracy movement and the Falun Gong, a religious community that has been banned in China since 1999. Data, which were collected and coded using quantitative narrative analysis (QNA) software, take the form of inventories of tactics used by each movement. In spite of general contextual similarity in political opportunity and context faced by both movements, the inventory data reveal that each movement had its own overarching "tactical disposition, " which is understood as a relational pattern between challengers, publics, and authorities. Findings also suggest that the tactical dispositions of the movements initially formed in China and then migrated to diaspora, where they influenced further tactical decision making. The durability of tactical dispositions across such disparate political settings (e.g., China/North America) points to the role of within-group culture in shaping how movements respond to protest opportunities in tramnational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]