Andy Liuby Andy Liu and Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Andy Liu
AT THE START of May, during Labor Day weekend, the right-wing Taiwan Solidarity Party (TSP, formerly known as the Taiwan Solidarity Union) held two rallies in Taipei to protest against migrant workers from South and Southeast Asia. The first rally, held in the morning before the Labor Day march, featured a man tabling with an SS insignia on his arm, and a student was arrested for throwing a water balloon at TSP chairwoman Chou, Ni-An (周倪安). The second rally, held the next day, which the TSP, working with the International Association of Family and Employers with Disabilities (IAFED, also known as Taiwan Employers Association), dubbed “employer’s day,” followed up with the physical assault of a counter protester by a man donning a TSP vest.
Photo credit: Andy Liu
Drawing dozens, TSP framed the first rally as a response to the Labor Day march’s inclusion of migrant workers this year. Self-identified as a right-wing pan-Green party, the TSP used the opportunity to boost support for their “Employer’s Day” rally the next day to defeat what they have dubbed the “Ministry of Foreign Labor”, using ”外勞“, an outdated and often discriminatory term for migrant workers. With a large banner at the front proclaiming “Household employers are also laborers”, the TSP attempted to address the optics of employers complaining about workers on Labor Day with the suggestion that bosses are workers too. It’s hard not to be skeptical of their claim of supporting “workers”, as the protest was promoted by and plastered in AI-generated posters that were trained on data stolen from artists and cleaned up by low-wage workers. Islamophobia and sexism were front and center in the generated images, with the image of a mother in a hijab being a recurring theme among the posters intended to invoke anger and fear.
Signs seen at the rally. Photo credit: Andy Liu
Overt racism against migrant workers is on the rise in Taiwanese society, with online backlash against the prospect of opening Taiwan to Indian migrant workers. This backlash has often involved claims that Indian migrant workers would sexually assault Taiwanese women, even when current plans are to allow only 1,000 blue-collar Indian migrant workers to enter Taiwan in the first wave. Taiwan has thousands of Indian residents, and there is evidently no mass wave of sexual assault against women committed by Indian men that has occurred to date.
On the contrary, migrant workers are especially vulnerable to sexual assault, with 1 in 6 migrant workers experiencing gender-based violence. The TSP’s protest, then, is reflective of this increased wave of racism. One participant who was tabling at the rally was dressed in a Rock Machine Nomads bomber jacket, a white supremacist bike gang from North America. The jacket featured Nazi iconography, including neo-Nazi and SS symbols. This individual handed out fliers with the intention of forming a new political party called Taiwan Right Generation. The same flyer claimed that migrant workers ate dogs, sold dog meat, and sexually assaulted Taiwanese women.
Man wearing neo-Nazi imagery at the protest. Photo credit: Andy Liu
Counter-protests occurred on both days of the TSP’s demonstration. TSU chair Chou Ni-an was hit by a water balloon during the May Day rally, with the TSU later singling out “left-wing violence.” The balloon was thrown by a seventeen-year-old student surnamed Lai, who is facing charges of coercion, defamation, and the Social Order Maintenance Act. On the second day, several counter-protesters were present at their rally, one was struck by a TSU demonstrator, a hospital report later showed scratches on the counter-protester’s arm. The man who committed the assault wore a TSU vest that read “Conservativism” and “Local right-wing.”
The counter protester, an English teacher, expressed solidarity with migrant workers as she herself was one from the US. Describing the incident, she said, “He tore my scarf off and threw it on the ground. He then began shoving me. He shoved me multiple times, each time harder than the next. I was screaming because I was scared, and he was hurting me. He kept yelling and shoving me. It took everything to stabilize myself to not fall over.”*
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Video of the assault
The attack on peaceful demonstrators continues a pattern increasingly visible, as the political right in Taiwan has grown increasingly assertive. At a TSU memorial for killed conservative commentator Charlie Kirk that was protested by students from Soochow University, National Taiwan Normal University, and National Cheng Chi University, a student demonstrator was held in a headlock and attacked by a participant in the memorial ceremony, while another was thrown to the ground.
The memorial was protested by students over the TSU’s support of Israel, disregarding the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as its anti-trans political platform. Though at the rally, TSU members restrained the attacker and TSU chair Chou was observed urged calm, the party nonetheless framed the incident as afterward as Chairperson Chou being surrounded by a group of “tall and strong leftist male students”, and just as “terrorist attacks” had led to the death of conservative political figures as Kirk, this could also occur with Chou or other TSU figures.
Photo credit: Andy Liu
Nevertheless, violence by right-wing actors against peaceful protesters is not exclusive to the TSU. One of the more high-profile examples was an attack on a Kazakh student participating in a peaceful counter-demonstration against a pro-Israel rally in 2024 by the Israeli representative office’s head of security. The student suffered some nerve injuries and was hospitalized for his injuries.
Historically, the TSP was considered a pro-independence political party spiritually led by former President Lee Teng-hui. With the emergence of progressive, pro-independence “Third Force” parties in the wake of the 2014 Sunflower Movement, the TSP has largely been left behind in electoral politics. Not only does the TSP no longer hold any seats in the legislature, but the TSP only received 0.31% of party votes in the 2024 elections, which is the lowest voter support rate for the TSP in the history of the party. The second lowest voter support rate was in the 2020 elections, when the party won only 0.36% of party votes.
Photo credit: Andy Liu
With its growing irrelevance, the TSP has increasingly emphasized its identity as a pro-independence, socially conservative party. Conservatism, then, includes a strong emphasis on opposing trans rights—railing against the threat to women posed by trans individuals—and rights for migrant workers. To this extent, the TSP has cultivated ties with global right-wing actors, including Turning Point USA, Japan’s Sanseitō Party, and the Israeli government’s representatives in Taiwan. Past TSP events have featured speeches, pre-recorded or live, by individuals such as Israel’s representative to Taiwan, Maya Sharon, and Breitbart News chair and former Trump administration official Steve Bannon. The TSP’s rhetoric, likewise, has come to increasingly draw on Christian nationalism such as that embraced by the American far right, except as transposed to a Taiwanese context.
With increasing pressure from the CCP, the Taiwanese pan-green camp has seen more of a divide between conservative ideologies and progressive ones. There has even been a slight shift of how people from Hong Kong are viewed, with some activists being accused of being CCP plants. As in many right-wing ideologies, the CCP has become a boogeyman for grifters to exploit legitimate concerns and turn them toward the marginalized.
*Read the full statement here.