Internet personality Holger Chen (陳之漢), commonly known as Kuan Chang (館長), apparently called for the decapitation of President William Lai (賴清德) during a live stream on Sunday. Could such a violent remark really be forgiven?
Let us first look to the US. Title 18, Section 871 of the US Code stipulates that any form of threat involving death or bodily harm to the president, president-elect or vice president constitutes a federal felony.
An illustrative case study is the 2017 incident involving comedian Kathy Griffin, who posed holding a bloody model of US President Donald Trump’s severed head. Griffin argued it was artistic satire, but she faced an immediate wave of repercussions — sponsors terminated their contracts with her, CNN ended its collaboration with her and canceled her role as a co-host for an upcoming New Year’s Eve special, her entertainment career collapsed overnight and she was subject to investigation by the US Secret Service.
The harshest criticism of Griffin did not come only from Trump’s Republican Party — even Democrats who shared the same political stance and opposed Trump distanced themselves from her, calling her actions “vile and wrong.” Her sponsors accused her of contravening their companies’ core values.
The responses to this incident were not in defense of Trump as an individual, but of the office of the US President — one that represents the very dignity of the nation’s institutions and democratic order. Griffin released a video apologizing for her actions, saying she had gone too far and crossed the line.
In the UK, a man who sent death threats to former British prime minister Theresa May and other politicians in 2020 was rebuked by the judge and sentenced to two years in prison. In France, a young man was charged with “individual terrorist activity” after threatening to kill French President Emmanuel Macron in a video game chatroom in 2017.
Violent threats against democratically elected leaders are, in essence, attacks on the entire democratic system. Every responsible political figure and citizen has a responsibility to stand up and defend the fundamental boundaries of that system, regardless of whether they agree with the current leader’s policies.
Let us return to Taiwan. In response to Chen’s remark about beheading Lai, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has remained silent, while the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has voiced support. TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), a good friend of Chen’s, staged a ridiculous show of sympathy on Tuesday following the incident, saying that Chen just tends to speak his mind without filters. With his comments, Huang is putting his own private interests above public safety — brushing off a call for beheading the president as some sort of joke is, in effect, a way of encouraging extremist rhetoric.
In his live stream comments, Chen was directly targeting his Chinese audience — he even added: “I am waiting, brothers, I think about it day and night.” How is this any different from advocating for forced unification?
Lin Han is a junior-high school teacher.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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