Huge Anti Ma Ying Jeou Demo in Taipei

[Teddoman]

Well, imagine you're a Jew still living under Nazi rule Germany but without the Hitler mantra/ideals.

Perhaps the sentence above is somewhat of an extreme comparison but, trust me, ask any older gen folks of what they think about the generalissimo and the comparisons to Hitler would be quite close from their perspectives.

A little more concretely, a lot of old Taiwanese folks personally know people who were killed or jailed by the KMT (a friend, a cousin, a brother, etc.) Ain't much that can change someone's mind about the KMT, with that as their backdrop. And they have passed these stories on to their kids, so their kids now know about grandpa's friend, cousin, or brother, etc who was killed by the KMT. If you go out to 6 degrees of separation, pretty much everyone on the island would have a connection to someone who was killed. I'm guessing the level of familial KMT contempt is probably highly correlated to the closeness of the connection to someone killed.

Though I have to say that the level of hatred in Taiwan is much lower than one would expect to see. Maybe it's the chabuduo culture people keep talking about. Or maybe enough time had passed by the time the KMT gave up power. I don't recall hearing of anything like war crimes commissions after the DPP took power. As a comparison, after WWII, a lot of people deemed Nazi collaborators in Europe were rounded up and shot or punished in myriad other ways. There wasn't a whole heck of a lot of forgiveness.

[Taiwan Luthiers]

I think its more to do with the fact that the KMT was largely responsible for Taiwan becoming more developed, and a lack of trust for the DDP.

That and I think they're more concerned about money in their pocket and their expenses and things like politics are not their concern. Many Taiwanese I speak to actually liked the Martial law time saying that there were less crimes and people were more polite and had better public consideration than they do now (littering and stuff) and that they were ok with corruption as long as the said politician did something good for the country.

The issue people have with the DDP is that Chen Shui Bian didn't really do much during his administration except for stupid antics like renaming the Chang Kai Shek memorial and the Chang Kai Shek International Airport during his last years, lots of saber rattling with China (so much so that even the US was getting nervous), and the amount of money he stole from the country. I don't know what he did in the beginning but I think about the only good thing he did was cleaning up Taipei city while he was a mayor of Taipei. That and Tsai Engwen had shaky ground to begin with. I mean the DDP seems focused on rescuing Chen Shui Bian even though most Taiwanese despises him and would see him rot in jail forever.

[Teddoman]

I think its more to do with the fact that the KMT was largely responsible for Taiwan becoming more developed, and a lack of trust for the DDP.

That and I think they're more concerned about money in their pocket and their expenses and things like politics are not their concern. Many Taiwanese I speak to actually liked the Martial law time saying that there were less crimes and people were more polite and had better public consideration than they do now (littering and stuff) and that they were ok with corruption as long as the said politician did something good for the country.

I've also heard the same said about the Japanese colonial period. Who knows, maybe or maybe not. We don't really know how Taiwan would have developed absent the Japanese or absent the KMT. It's possible all of that development could simply have been a product of the times and was inevitable with or without the KMT.

As for crime, well I guess it's inevitable that there will be less crime when all the national legislators representing your town are rounded up and publicly executed by firing squad at the train station for all to see. Does that make anyone long for martial law still?

As for being ok with corruption, again I guess I'd be ok with corruption too, unless a family member of mine was put in jail for a political crime, and I had to bribe people just to find out where he was being held, etc etc etc. Martial law is great for everybody until the broom is rammed up your own rear end.

The issue people have with the DDP is that Chen Shui Bian didn't really do much during his administration except for stupid antics like renaming the Chang Kai Shek memorial and the Chang Kai Shek International Airport during his last years, lots of saber rattling with China (so much so that even the US was getting nervous), and the amount of money he stole from the country. I don't know what he did in the beginning but I think about the only good thing he did was cleaning up Taipei city while he was a mayor of Taipei. That and Tsai Engwen had shaky ground to begin with. I mean the DDP seems focused on rescuing Chen Shui Bian even though most Taiwanese despises him and would see him rot in jail forever.

Well I'm sure those are all mostly reasonable criticisms, I'm pretty sure even most DPP supporters are disillusioned by a lot of this.

Still, I think I am not going out on a limb when I say the martial law years under the KMT were a terrible violation of human rights, and the KMT old guard is quite frankly lucky they got off with just a few DPP antics to rename CKS. In some ways, Taiwan is better off for having basically swept the whole thing under the rug. Societies that remember too much end up with ethnic bloodbaths and crazy stuff like that, so it's probably better for Taiwan going forward. That does not change the horridness of what they actively did to repress the population.