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
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS