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Taiwan Students Form Their Own Nazi Party
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by Jordan Yerman | March 15, 2007 at 03:00 pm
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That the organizaton is "unlikely to be based on anti-semitism" isn't the point-- hating Jews was only part of what made the Nazis (and other fascists) so egregious. They murdered millions and millions of non-Jews, too, as well as eschewing science and reason for state-dictated hero-worship.
A group of students from Taiwan has caused uproar by founding an avowedly Nazi organisation and boasting that it is inspired by Adolf Hitler.The National Socialism Association was set up by Lahn Chao, a master's student from the National Chengchi University in the capital, Taipei, and 19 others.
Its website is a call to arms to rejuvenate the island's politics, end democracy and retake mainland China for the nationalist cause, and bears a symbol in black, red and white loosely based on the swastika flag.
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It makes few concrete political promises, though website forums contain a large number of links to apparently pornographic websites and online games.
The admiration for Nazism and Hitler the group professes is unlikely to be based on antisemitism, as there has been historically very little Jewish presence in Taiwan.
Vilifying a "foreign" group is a key element in fascism; for the Taiwanese, it wouldn't necessarily be Jews or gypsies, but could be, I dunno, the Mongolians, or the Khmer, or whomever. The point is that fascist ideals appeal to some deep-seated feelings that reside in a lot of people, feelings that they don't talk about unless enough of them get together, and that's when the trouble starts. I don't expect students to understand this in anything other than an academic way, but I have met quite a few survivors of Nazism's "good points".
What do you think? Are there any tenets of fascism worth salvaging, besides their inarguable grasp of graphic design?
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at 18:31 on March 15th, 2007
This is not really a big surprise. The Nationalist sentiment never died away in what used to be known as Formosa. They have already begun speaking against the Indigenous population but their main drive is to "re-take" the mainland in the name of Chinese nationalism.