Is society broken?
It was reported yesterday (“Footage of youths beating up foreign laborer goes viral,” March 18, page 2) that a group of teenagers filmed and released footage of an attack they made on a foreign worker in a pedestrian underpass. A few days previously, the chairman of the General Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chang Pen-tsao (張平沼), made his case against a proposed increase in the minimum wage by implying that only foreign workers would enjoy the benefits. He said that if the increase were to go ahead, it should be given only to domestic workers.
What is the connection between two seemingly unrelated incidents? In the case of the teenage bullies, similar anecdotal evidence to support the description of a broken Taiwanese society devoid of morality and responsibility could perhaps be found, and this could be attributed to the breakdown of social bonds between individuals and their community as a result of modernization.
However, is society really broken as the result of a lack of norms? While this might not be evidence of a broken society, it could certainly support the image of a divided society. The transformational process has indeed eroded the old institutional bases, but it also supplies new ones. It is hard to accept that old norms should somehow be enshrined and remain utterly untainted by the change in social reality. The mischievous response could be to ask individuals to resist any change and to develop a kind of logic that has no regard for others. However, the same response is also susceptible to the manipulation of xenophobic fear.
It is undeniable that the attacks do happen. Children and young adults think that it is fine to mock and ridicule people. They threaten and, particularly in the case of this attack in the underpass, actually cause physical harm.
Why? A broken society might be one of the factors. However, in saying it is all about a lack of norms one is refusing to countenance any further motivation, allowing young students to get away with the less serious tag of lack of discipline rather than understanding the complicated issue of xenophobic violence.
This is where Chang’s views come into play. Chang does not wish to address the economic inequality between domestic and foreign workers. Instead, he chooses to reinforce the economic inequality by attempting to remove a basic right of the workplace — payment by ability, not nationality — by an appeal to xenophobic scaremongering.
The individuals in these different cases might have different motivations, but it seems that one key aspect is a generalized rage against foreign workers — especially unskilled laborers. Why do they think that an invisible community without a political voice is an appropriate object of their frustration, rage and, in some cases, violence?
The tragedy of Kristallnacht might sound far-fetched in the case of Taiwanese society, but the Holocaust did not automatically begin with the systematic murders of the Jews, the weak and homosexuals. It began with economic and political persecution and physical beatings.
Kuo Cheng-lun
New Taipei City
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