On the 77th anniversary of the 228 Massacre, usually remembered as the start of the White Terror, it proves important to remember the long path that remains for transitional justice in Taiwan...
Midterm elections are around the corner and there has been a plethora of ballot box issues to choose from that will prove decisive in key races: from Indigenous issues, incumbents’ COVID response, alleged corruption, and so on. But one issue that is not going to feature at all will be that of transformative justice and the unresolved issue of the biggest symbol of authoritarianism: the bronze statue of Chiang Kai-Shek at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. Which begs the question of the purpose of political iconoclasm, or image breaking, as a form of performative democracy...
It has proven odd that leftist thinkers, such as Marxian economist Richard Wolff and Marxist geographer David Harvey, have proven unusually praising of China in recent comments. Wolff and Harvey have both expressed the view that China’s economy represents something fundamentally different from western capitalism; this view is based on the claim that socialist legacies in China persist from the Maoist period, and this has pushed contemporary China to become something qualitatively different from western capitalism...
Discourse in Taiwan has long been one that contrasted the pro-unification left with the pro-independence camp, implying a lack of (traditional) leftist politics on the part of pro-independence forces. This has been exacerbated by pro-unification left voices having often been given more prominence in the English-speaking world and taken as representing the Taiwanese left. Since many of these issues can be traced back to the 1970 Baodiao Movement, a preliminary look at the history of postwar Taiwanese leftism since then can help shed a light on some of the paradoxes and shortcomings of both the pro-unification left and the pro-independence camp, as well as teach valuable lessons for alternatives for a Taiwanese left moving forward...
One distinctly pervasive, and shockingly permissive, form of genocide is that of cultural genocide—in particular, the extinction of languages, whether actively by force or as a set of passive policies. Linguistic genocide whittles away at bits and pieces of society until there is nothing of a people remaining...
With the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident today, also known as the Formosa Incident or Meilidao Incident, it may be worth reflecting on what has changed in Taiwan in the decades since then—but also to what extent many of the tasks of Taiwan’s democracy movement remain unfinished...
Su Beng—in the last century the only living Taiwanese revolutionary forged in the active fire of national liberation movements—died on September 20, 2019, at the advanced age of 101...
Referendum reform has historically been pushed for by progressive civil society groups in Taiwan, as a means to resolve longstanding issues blocked by the KMT and other conservative forces. Progressive civil society groups were finally victorious in amending the Referendum Act last year, lowering the benchmarks needed to hold a referendum in Taiwan. But what if the results of referendum voting tomorrow indicate that, ironically enough, conservatives have managed to hijack the referendum and to use it against progressive civil society?...
