Remember which party wore the `Blue Shirts'

We can understand the desperation of the KMT in the face of the most severe challenge to its 54 years of power posed by the DPP and its presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). It it not surprising that it is apparently willing to stoop to extreme hyperbole -- if not outright lies -- to discredit the democratic opposition. However, the latest, and most lurid, KMT television advertisement has exceeded the toleration of any one at all familiar with modern European and Chinese history.

The ad combines shots of Chen speaking to a rally with documentary footage of the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. It then links the DPP's call for a peaceful change of power to the outbreak of WW II.

It concludes by saying that alternation of parties is dangerous if you change to the wrong party: if voters elect the DPP, they will be inviting a fascistic dictatorship and war with China.

The latter accusation has become the leitmotiv of the KMT campaign. But claiming themselves as the defenders of democracy and the DPP as "fascists," displays an astonishing lack of historical self-knowledge.

Could it be that the KMT's propagandists have really forgotten about the "Blue Shirts", an explicitly fascist organization within the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) direction? Or the feared secret police of Tai Li (戴笠) and the murders they committed -- a tradition that continued with the Feb. 28, 1980 murders of the mother and two daughters of now-DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄)? Or that Chiang hired Nazi generals and Italian fascist air force officers as advisors?

The attraction of the KMT political culture toward fascism was reflected by the fact that not a few KMT leaders became major figures in the pro-Japan-ese puppet government in Nanking during the war.

Are we to regard the Feb. 28th Incident, the "white terror," 38 years of martial law, innumer-able violations of basic human and political rights, thousands of political prisoners and strict control of the media as characteristics of a democracy?

Quite a few features of the KMT's fascistic system remain intact nearly 13 years after the lifting of the martial law. One example is the control over trade unions -- the government supported and guided Chinese Federation of Labor is a direct descendant of the KMT's "yellow" unions of the Nanking period.

In its desperation, the KMT has grossly distorted history and insulted the participants in Tai-wan's movement for democracy and human rights, not to mention the rest of the voters. As the KMT has yet to officially face up to, much less overcome, its fascist legacy, its leaders should refrain from accusing others of fascism.

As another KMT ad recently advised, the party should shave its own face before it comments on the appearance of others.

Dennis Engbarth is a free lance journalist based in Taipei.