by Brian Hioe

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Photo Credit: Huang Jie/Facebook

SUNG CHIEN-LIANG, the leader of the KMT’s efforts to recall DPP legislator Lee Kun-cheng, has sparked controversy after appearing in court wearing a Nazi uniform. Sung was photographed making a Roman salute, also known as a Nazi salute, and holding a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Sung was being questioned over signature fraud on petitions for the recall campaign. He has since been released on 80,000 NT bail. Sung’s arrest took place at the same time as a total of six KMT recall organizers were detained over forged signatures. Since then, there have been searches of 30 KMT branches, offices, and residences in Taipei and New Taipei.

It may not be surprising that the KMT has decried the searches as political persecution from the DPP. Still, Sung’s actions have led to widespread condemnation, leading to criticisms from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the Israeli representative office, and the German representative office.

Facebook post by Huang Jie highlighting the incident

Though called on to criticize Sung, KMT chair Eric Chu was initially lukewarm, stating that Sung’s actions were satire intended to highlight the DPP’s authoritarianism. Chu later stated “Fascist and Nazi dictatorships are universally condemned, as are communist dictatorships, all of which the KMT firmly opposes.” For its part, the KMT’s political ally, the TPP, stated that it opposed symbols of extremism, racism, and violence.

The pan-Green camp, perhaps realizing that an international outcry was likely, has leaned into amplifying Sung’s actions. English-language posts by DPP legislators such as Huang Jie, as well as by the NPP, aimed to broadcast Sung’s actions internationally.

Tweet by the KMT about the incident

On Twitter, the KMT stated that it opposed “Nazism, Fascism & totalitarianism and reaffirms our commitment to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.” At the same time, the tweet still mostly sought to pin blame on the DPP, emphasizing that “we also oppose [the DPP’s] manipulation of public opinion & distortion of history.”

KMT supporters holding a Nazi flag at a “Blue Eagle Movement” counter-protest in June last year

Ironically, this is not the only time in recent memory that the KMT has leaned into Nazi imagery to attack its political opponents. In June of last year, KMT supporters brought a Nazi flag to a “Blue Eagle Movement” counter-protest that sought to demonstrate against the youth-led Bluebird Movement against the KMT’s efforts to expand legislative powers.

In 2016, controversy broke out regarding the use of flags at a KMT presidential election rally that resembled Nazi imagery. The KMT denied that the flags were intended to resemble Nazi symbols.

Facebook post on the 2016 incident involving KMT flags that resembled Nazi imagery

In 2004, the KMT took out a newspaper ad accusing Chen Shui-bian, the first non-KMT president in Taiwanese history, of being a dictator. The ad compared Chen to Hitler and was criticized by Taiwan’s Jewish community, leading to an apology from the party. Pan-blue protests in those years often compared Chen to Hitler, including in posters at protests featuring Chen’s face on a swastika, and large puppets that depicted Chen as Hitler.

One notes there have been a number of incidents in Taiwan in the past decade where Nazi imagery has come up in unfortunate ways, ranging from on display in betel nut stalls, to featuring in a high school skit. Both incidents, particularly the latter due to the participation of teachers and school officials, drew international attention and condemnation.

This is not the only case of political costume play by the pan-Blue camp in a manner that harks back to the Second World War. In 2015, in the midst of demonstrations against efforts by the KMT to erase Taiwan-centric content from high school textbooks, led by high schoolers themselves, Chang An-lo’s China Unification Promotion Party protested outside of the DPP party headquarters dressed in Japanese imperial uniforms.

Still, one notes that the KMT has, in fact, a historical relationship to fascism. The KMT’s “New Life Movement” in the 1930s has been argued by historians such as Frederic Wakeman to be a form of “Confucian fascism.”

Similarly, Chiang Kai-shek is quite explicit in his praise for Mussolini and other fascists in his book, China’s Destiny, which dates to 1943. This evidences an amorphous ideology more than anything else. Ironically, while Chu today condemns “communist dictatorships,” in China’s Destiny, Chiang then claims his ideological aspiration to be socialism.

Indeed, the prevalence of the KMT’s party icon in national symbols such as the ROC flag dates to this era of party-states and mass parties–some would consider the white sun in the ROC flag itself to be a symbol of extremism and violence. Yet in the wake of the Sung incident, it seems unlikely that there will be any reflection on the authoritarian legacies of Nazism, or what lessons this may have for Taiwan, itself a country that has had an authoritarian past. After all, the KMT’s lukewarm apology for the incident is probably because the party aims to continue leaning its hyperbolic claims about the DPP conducting a “Green Terror” worse than the White Terror in claiming persecution by the DPP, never mind that it is not exactly as though the DPP is imprisoning and executing its political enemies at present. In this sense, the incident shows how the KMT has itself refused to reckon with its authoritarian past, and how it makes light of and weaponizes imagery of the authoritarian past of other countries.
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