I've always been amazed about how similar the Republican Party (GOP) in the USA and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of Taiwan are, not only in political strategies, but also their tendency to fall for paranoid, delusional fantasies about their respective opposition parties. Let's look at political strategies: both the GOP and the KMT employed a scorched-Earth legislative policy by automatically opposing ANYTHING and EVERYTHING the opposition proposed, no matter how centrist or sensible. For Taiwan, this meant that much-needed government reform and spending ground to a halt for the eight years of the Chen Shui-bian administration, resulting in higher unemployment and slower economic growth. Then the KMT turned around and blamed Chen for "ruining the economy." For the GOP, their tactics have resulted in ZERO input in the recently passed health-care reform and their increasing isolation from mainstream public opinion. Soon, the GOP will be nothing more than an all-white Southern Rump party.
Here's another another way that both the GOP and the KMT are the same: a belief in crazy conspiracy theories: When some lone pro-blue nut-job tried to shoot Chen Shui-bian in 2004, the KMT claimed that the President had faked the assassination attempt in order to win "sympathy votes," and thus "steal the election." (And let's not forget about another KMT-assassination attempt against Chen's wife: another violent pro-blue nut job tried to run her over with a truck, resulting in her permanent paralysis from the legs down.) To this day, the KMT claim, without evidence, that Chen faked the whole shooting, despite the forensics evidence (see picture of Chen's flesh wound above), polls that showed support for Chen surging ahead of the KMT in the days before the assassination attempt, and the fact that it would require the fore-knowledge of hundreds of people, none of whom have ever "spilled the beans."Now we have these GOP nutjobs concocting conspiracy theories about how ACORN manufactured the economic meltdown of 2008 by passing the Community Reinvestment Act 30 years earlier, thus creating a vast sea of incapable mortgage holders that would bring down the entire world economy. And why would these crazy liberals want to bring down the whole world economy? Why, as an excuse to impose their totalitarian, socialist government programs on a hapless America, of course. At the same time, ACORN signed up millions of ineligible voters who voted for Obama in lock-step, thus stealing the election from McCain. With Obama installed in the White House, he could then begin his secret plans to turn America into a socialist terrorist-loving nightmare, replete with government-mandated health care and everything.
One in four Republicans thinks Obama "may be the Anti-Christ," according to this poll. Nearly 40% think he is "doing many of the things that Hitler did". Two years ago, the KMT was claiming that the opposition leader, Chen Shui-bian, was going to start a war with China or murder his own party's presidential candidate in order to declare marital law to keep himself in power.
Great right-wing nutjob minds think alike!
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Yes, it's all about as crazy as the paranoid delusional stuff I heard from partisan Democrats when Bush was in office. They were hurling snowballs at Dick Cheney's limo on inauguration day and never rose above that occasion.
The descending level of discourse in American democracy is a problem all around.
The KMT is not an apt comparison because that's a party that never had anything to descend from. One-party rule got them in the habit of thinking truth is something they can make up: China isn't China, Taiwan isn't Taiwan, and the real capital of both countries is in Nanjing where no national government if anything exists. When you can say things like that with a straight face, you can say anything. And they still do.
What I find interesting are issues that are huge in the West (e.g., the size of government, women's abortion rights, etc.) that are NON-issues in Taiwan!
Cham, I'm sure there are a few people on the left who have some nutty conspiracy theories (like Bush knew about 911 before it happened, etc.), but these people do NOT have a regular hourly show on a nationally syndicated news network (like Glenn Beck does on Fox or Rush Limbaugh has on radio) in which to spew their paranoid delusions to a national audience. Anyone on the left who tried to assert these ideas would be laughed off the air.
What drove the left batty (and was the source of so much hatred towards Bush and Cheny) was Bush's blatant law breaking, like warrentless wiretapping (in clear violation of FISA laws at the time), unilaterally removing the USA from the Geneva Conventions and authorizing torture, starting a war with Iraq on phony pretenses, indefinite detentions, suspension of habeas corpus rights, asserting of a radical "unitary executive" that was unaccountable to Congress, etc etc. So many of these Bush policies were in clear violation of the law or the Constitution. It had nothing to do with paranoid delusions. The law is clear in black and white, and Bush clearly violated a whole host of them. The fact that he has, so far, gone unpunished for all his criminal activities (and that Obama has, in fact, continued many of these radical polices) does not mean he is innocent and that the Left are just making up fantasies about Bush.
BTW, Cham, I'm in agreement with the rest of your comment. The real differences between the KMT and the GOP are far greater than the similarities, and you are spot on about how so many in the KMT have never owned up to the reality that they LOST the civil war to the Communists, They were able to force their delusions of being "the real China" and their fantasies of "retaking the mainland" on the hapless Taiwanese for 40 years, thanks to martial law, political prisons, and the murder of 20,000 Taiwanese, but the KMT have never really come to grips with their loss, nor have they really been held account for their many crimes.
Hi Boyd, great comment. I think in Taiwan, there just isn't the rigid religious ideology that drives so much of the "culture war" issues like abortion. And there simply isn't the anti-government ideology that drives the right-wing in America. The main driver of politics in Taiwan, besides who controls the flows of cash from the government, is identity: are we Chinese or Taiwanese? Obviously this is huge problem, and one that is in constant in flux.
The problem is your argument falls down because KMT are not a right-wing party. Left/right divides don't apply in Taiwan as they do elsewhere - on some issues KMT are to the right of the DPP and in others DPP are to the right of the KMT.
At least half of the points you make here about the KMT apply equally to the DPP.
Nutjobs is a good description but it should be applied to both parties, leaving out any left/right distinctions.
Hi Leftie. Point well-taken that the Western ideas of left/right don't apply the blue/green divide in Taiwan, which in Taiwan is almost entirely based on ethnic/national identity. If I was painting with an overly-broad, hyperbolic brush, than I'm sorry. Please forgive me.
You could, in fact, make the same argument about how meaningless the left/right divide has become in America. For example, Republicans always claim to believe in limited government powers, yet the vast majority of Republicans were willing to give carte blanche to GW Bush to create an imperial presidency with almost unlimited, unchecked powers to wage his "war on terrorism." Rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances: ideas that you would normally consider "conservative" have become the almost limited concern of the most "far-left radicals," according to conventional Washington Establishment thinking.
So, if I'm free here to define "right wing" in this context as "having a soft-spot for authority figures," then yes, I think the deep-blue, hard-core KMT members definitely quality as "right wing," with their continued reverence for dictators such as Chiang Kai-shek and son.
I would argue that the DPP platform in 2000 and before did contain a number of "lefty" platforms, such as opposition to nuclear power, greater environmental regulations, progressive land management reform proposals, pro-labor policies, and the continued strengthening of democratic institutions that were far more prominent and credible than the lip-service to democracy paid by the KMT.
However, as we saw throughout the Chen years, whether it was a result of the inherent institutional weakness of the Presidency, the scorched-Earth opposition of the dominant KMT party in the Legislature, or the corrupting influence of big business and money in politics, most of these "lefty" DPP policies were never implemented or abandoned. Instead, the DPP often followed the same government-led developmentalist policies of the KMT.
I'm curious as to which DPP policies you would label as "to the right" of the KMT. I can think of one off the top of my head: gay rights. I remember Ma Ying-jeou was quite supportive of gay rights when he was major of Taipei, at least in his speeches. He'd even raise the rainbow flag over City Hall during Gay Pride Week. Meanwhile, I remember former Vice President Annette Lu, a self-described "feminist," giving a speech some seven years ago in which she described AIDS as God's punishment on gays. Sigh. I also remember a radical "anti-terrorist" bill the DPP proposed around 2007 that would have given sweeping police powers to the State. But if you have more details on how DPP policies have been to the "right" of the KMT, please fill me in.
However, the point of my tirade wasn't that the KMT and GOP share the same tactics, and are therefore both right-wing parties. My point was merely to point out how prevalent these crazy, delusional, fact-free theories have been bandied about by both the KMT and the GOP to explain how they lost power. I was thinking today about Cho Yi (邱毅), the Glenn Beck of the KMT, who was on the news nightly during the Chen administration, spouting off the latest crazy conspiracy theories about Chen, most of which turned out to be completely groundless.
Although I'm sure you can find pro-green politicians who peddle in gossip and innuendo, I'm not aware of anyone on the DPP side who can compare with the paranoid, delusional bombast that oozes out regularly from the highest ranks of the KMT. Again, if you can point out examples of crazy DPP conspiracy theories that I've missed, then I'm all ears....
One example of DPP being further right would be on issues of race. Particularly with the hard-core deep-greens, the identity issue, BSR/WSR divide is played a lot more. KMT policies are also a lot more welcoming to western immigrants, and apparently about to become even more so.
I won't get into comparisons with the US, mainly because I'm British and don't know enough about US domestic issues to comment.
In regards to environmental stuff, both are pathetic. It's lip service anyway for the most part from both parties. Taiwan is in a tough position because it pretty much needs to be either coal or nuclear for most power needs. The wind farms are great (not sure which party was responsible) but they can never produce enough power to meet the needs.
I'm not sure if reverence for CSK and CCK is all that relevant. In almost every modern nation, there's a certain reverence for founding fathers despite the fact that they owned slaves, invaded countries, denied rights etc. That doesn't excuse them, but the modern KMT is nothing like the KMT of the cold war years. Although it's a totally different set of crimes, the deep-green idolisation of Chen Shui-bian is not really all that different. (Personally, I don't like or trust any authority figures, no matter what party they represent).
As for innuendo, gossip, rumors etc, pretty much from the time Ma won the last election, DPP-bloggers and the pro-green media started saying there'd probably be no 2012 election. I notice they've recently shifted the date to 2016 in some cases, but the sentiment is the same.
Interesting you mention gay rights - the news yesterday mentioned a cruise ship of 400 or so gay men being welcomed into Keelung, with govt figures giving them tourist maps and guides to gay-friendly nightlife. I can't imagine too many countries doing that.
Thanks for the comments, Leftie. I appreciate the thoughts, but I just can't buy some of your "six of one, half a dozen of the other" comparisons between green and blue nuttiness.
First, I agree with you that Chen was a total ass by crudely essentializing his Hoklo ethnicity (NOT race) as a basis of Taiwanese identity (for instance, giving national speeches in Taiwanese, instead of Mandarin), and very often insulting the WSR/pro-blue crowd with comments like "they can all swim back to China." I can slightly understand where Chen was coming from, having his Taiwanese language and ethnicity suppressed by the KMT or 40 years. But, turning the tables and practicing the same form of ethnic discrimination is really bullshit, and I really hope the green side has learned how divisive language has only hurt them with outreach to the light green or light blue crowds. I think Tsai Ying-wen, their new chairperson, has done a tremendous job at changing the tone of discourse from the DPP and trying to build a Taiwanese nationalism based on identification with Taiwan, not on one's ancestral language or ethnicity. So, score one for the DPP, at least during the last 2 years.
Let's compare that with Ma Ying-jeou's language about national identity that he's used since becoming President two years ago. He's insisted, consistently, that everyone in Taiwan is zhonghua minzu, (中華民族), a politically loaded term since it was invented in 1899 as a blanket term to cover all the various ethnic groups of the Qing Empire. This term was used by the KMT to indoctrinate Taiwanese to ingrain the idea that Taiwan and China are one country with one future. For forty years, Taiwanese who resisted this identity were imprisoned, tortured, or killed by the KMT.
Ma has also used racially-based language to back up his idea of "zhong hua ming zu," that Taiwan and China both belong to same race-based nation, such as "blood is thicker than water," and "everyone in Taiwan and China belongs to the Han Race, descendants from the Yellow Emperor." Such racially-loaded ideas and language, combined with the continued racially-driven belief that many in the KMT have in their cultural supremacy inherited from discredited 19th century European racial theorists, ought to give everyone pause. The idea that the Greens are using race is really turned abound, I'm afraid.
It's Tomb Sweeping Day coming up next week. I have a couple of friends who, to this day, don't know where the bodies are of their relatives who were murdered by CKS and CCK. I think they might still have some issues about how "relevant" their crimes are today during this holiday.
But regardless of the gross injustices committed by these two "fathers," what's the first thing that Ma did after he was elected? Oh yeah, he paid tribute at CKS's statue memorial near Taoyuan: http://graduallygoingtornado.blogspot.com/2008/04/democracy-death-watch-day-14.html
Why? Because CKS is still a totem of KMT power, privilege and cultural hegemony that CKS bestowed his Mainlander clique and their descendants.
To compare these two mass murderers with Chen's white collar crimes is laughable. Chen's trial was an absolute abortion of justice, and the KMT turned what could have been a sea change in the acceptance of corruption in Taiwan into a kangaroo court and made Chen into yet another martyr for the green side. I won't go into details here, but it just proved to the world that there are two sets of laws in Taiwan: one for the blue politicians, and a completely different set of laws for the greens.
Finally, while I agree that there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth after the DPP disaster in 2008, and much conjecture about the future of democracy in Taiwan after the KMT regained their monopoly on power at the national level (including this humble writer himself), there is plenty of evidence of collusion between the KMT and the CCP since 2005 in China's United Front strategy to manipulate both the economy and elections in Taiwan. (The KMT turned off a lot of government construction spending during the Chen years to put the hurt of working class people. The CCP cut off gravel shipments to Taiwan in 2005, driving up the price of concrete and further putting the hurt on Taiwan's local economy. Magically, both were restored when the KMT regained control of the Presidency in 2008).
Now that the financial integration between Taiwan and China has started headlong and the economic integration will be completed once ECFA is rammed through, China will have a huge, new set of tools in which to manipulate the economy of Taiwan, and thus its electorate. What we saw last year in China's tourist boycott of southern Taiwan as punishment for showing the Rebiya Kadeer documentary is just the tiniest taste of what could be in store in terms of the China's manipulation of Taiwan's economy and democracy. The KMT won't have to suspend any elections, become the KMT and CCP will be able to punish Taiwan again if they vote the wrong party back in power.
So, if you really examine the history and power of each side, you can see where some of the pro-green paranoia and suspicion of the blues might have some grounding in reality, while the KMT still lives in its own bubble of nuttiness that's reinforced by the media and all the other centers of power that KMT still controls.
So again, comparing pro-blue nuttiness and pro-green nuttiness really is comparing apples to oranges, IMHO.
A couple of final brain farts on this topic: while I was bashing the DPP earlier for their rather non-existent gay rights record, how could I fail to mention the fantastic DPP politician, Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), who has been a fearless champion of gay rights during her career as a legislator, even being the first to propose legalizing gay marriage in Taiwan. I really hope that she becomes the future of a truly progressive, liberal DPP. And my hat's off to who ever the pols were, blue or green, that welcomed the cruise ship of gay men in Kee lung. I think Taiwan really has made a lot of quiet, but remarkable progress in this field in the last decade.
And yes, Leftie, I agree with you that both sides have a terrible environment record. But again, you can find individual politicians who have made a positive difference. Frank Hsieh comes to mind in the way he cleaned up Kaohsiung while he was mayor there. My friends who lived in Taipei when Chen Shui-bian was mayor tell me that he made a huge difference in the quality of living in Taipei, especially garbage pickup and recycling, though I'm sure there were plenty of pro-blue pols who were responsible for the improvement as well. Though you can find politicians in both parties that have worked hard on environmental issues, I've always lamented the fact that Taiwanese seem rather disinterested in larger environmental issues, like global warming, and it reflects in both parties' rather blase attitude towards the environment.
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