Ma is not Hitler
A photograph of a recent rally held to protest Taiwan’s beef policy (“Rally held to protest beef policy,” April 2, page 2) showed protesters holding posters that compared President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to Adolf Hitler. While I do not support Ma politically and would never vote for him, I feel that such an attack goes too far.
I am not sure why the Taipei Times printed this photograph because just a few days earlier, Dan Bloom (“PRC claims Dalai Lama has ‘Nazi’ tendencies,” March 30, page 8) complained about the Chinese government calling the Dalai Lama a “Nazi.” As Bloom correctly pointed out, the Nazis were mass murderers, and the Dalai Lama is not. I have also been called a fascist for simply expressing an opinion (just google my name and “fascism”).
If anybody compares a democratically elected leader to Hitler, the peace-loving Dalai Lama to the Nazis, or an opinionated environmentalist to a fascist, it is nothing short of pathetic. It demonstrates the complete lack of moral compass and a basic lack of commonsense.
Why the Taipei Times would give a platform to people who cannot distinguish between democratic discourse and mindless insults, I do not know (unless the photograph was printed to embarrass the people in it).
The goal of hate speech is to dehumanize the subject of the attack so as to either ostracize or eradicate them (the Nazis used hate speech to prepare the ground for genocide). Vilification of the perceived enemy always comes before steps are taken to remove them. In a civilized, democratic country, such hate speech should never be tolerated.
Flora Faun
Taipei
The diplomatic dispute between China and Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments in the Japanese Diet continues to escalate. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong (傅聰) wrote that, “if Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression.” There was no indication that Fu was aware of the irony implicit in the complaint. Until this point, Beijing had limited its remonstrations to diplomatic summonses and weaponization of economic levers, such as banning Japanese seafood imports, discouraging Chinese from traveling to Japan or issuing
The diplomatic spat between China and Japan over comments Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made on Nov. 7 continues to worsen. Beijing is angry about Takaichi’s remarks that military force used against Taiwan by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” necessitating the involvement of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Rather than trying to reduce tensions, Beijing is looking to leverage the situation to its advantage in action and rhetoric. On Saturday last week, four armed China Coast Guard vessels sailed around the Japanese-controlled Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known to Japan as the Senkakus. On Friday, in what
On Nov. 8, newly elected Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) and Vice Chairman Chi Lin-len (季麟連) attended a memorial for White Terror era victims, during which convicted Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spies such as Wu Shi (吳石) were also honored. Cheng’s participation in the ceremony, which she said was part of her efforts to promote cross-strait reconciliation, has trapped herself and her party into the KMT’s dark past, and risks putting the party back on its old disastrous road. Wu, a lieutenant general who was the Ministry of National Defense’s deputy chief of the general staff, was recruited
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Nov. 5 recalled more than 150,000 eggs found to contain three times the legal limit of the pesticide metabolite fipronil-sulfone. Nearly half of the 1,169 affected egg cartons, which had been distributed across 10 districts, had already been sold. Using the new traceability system, officials quickly urged the public to avoid consuming eggs with the traceability code “I47045,” while the remainder were successfully recalled. Changhua County’s Wenya Farm — the source of the tainted eggs — was fined NT$120,000, and the Ministry of Agriculture instructed the county’s Animal Disease Control Center to require that
RSS