Just when you thought that former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and his Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) could not be any more tone deaf, they leave everyone dumbstruck with another inexplicable exploit.
Any English speaker could have seen the latest controversy coming a mile away. The story broke on Sunday with a Facebook post by the podcast Bailingguo News (百靈果News) exposing the slogan “Vote White, Vote Right” prominently featured on the English version of the TPP’s Web site. As the commenters pointed out, the phrase would immediately be understood as supportive of far-right white supremacist politics, which is not what the party intended.
To make matters even more embarrassing, TPP Legislator Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶) tagged former US president Donald Trump in the post to get his feedback. As some commenters said, not even Trump would dare mouth such a blatantly white supremacist slogan.
It was clearly an honest mistake, as the TPP has adopted the color white to symbolize its political ideology as an alternative to the blue and green camps. Using color as ideological shorthand is par for the course in Taiwanese politics, and something Ko has fully embraced — even his 2014 book was titled Power of White (白色的力量) (or White Power if the translator is feeling less generous). Pairing that with Ko’s former tagline “Do the right thing, do things right,” immortalized for better or worse in a 2018 rap with Chunyan (春艷), and you get an admittedly catchy rhyming slogan. Too bad it does not mean what they thought.
The debacle also came just one day after Ko hosted his controversial “KP Show,” which was dogged by accusations of illegal solicitation of overseas donations. It also engendered a weeks-long tit-for-tat with the Taipei Music Center, which turned down his application to hold the “concert,” citing rules against holding political events at the venue that were put in place during Ko’s administration.
The TPP took down the Web site banner yesterday morning following the blowup, saying it was also overhauling its English site. In its defense, it said Taiwan does not have the concept of white supremacy, and that the implication was unintended.
Putting aside that the tendrils of white supremacy reach everywhere, manifesting most commonly in Taiwan as white privilege, this incident reflects extremely poorly on the TPP for multiple reasons. Not everyone has to be familiar with the intricacies of English — indeed, assuming everyone should be is a white supremacist idea — but for a party that wants to take the Presidential Office come January, one would hope that it would be more sensitive to diplomatic phrasing.
Taiwan has a precarious international standing and must be careful with its words, in Chinese and in English. Countless hours have been spent by diplomats worldwide carefully crafting language that supports Taiwan without provoking its angry neighbor. Any Taiwanese leader and their team must be intimately aware of these intricacies. This incident shows that the TPP is not aware, or at best did not solicit feedback from people within the party who might be.
The unfortunate slogan is also the exact kind of thing that would draw the international media spotlight, casting not only the TPP, but the whole of Taiwan in a bad light. No one will accuse the party of intentionally supporting white supremacy, but such a mistake is embarrassing and implies a wider cultural gap between Taiwan and its Western allies than really exists. The TPP should feel chastised, and hopefully stick to its vow to improve oversight of its English content.
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