A score university students have met in Taipei and inaugurated an association, which they wish would resemble the National Socialist German Workers’ party Adolf Hitler headed from 1921 to 1945.A member of the party founded in 1919 was known as a Nazi, an abbreviation of the German word Nationalzozialist.
These starry-eyed students, totally disaffected with the political squabbles to which all of us are now inured, wish to turn Taiwan into a Nazi country.Aptly called the National Socialism Association, it now boasts a membership of about 800, most of them college and high school students.Literature on Nazism, including Hitler’s famous Mein Kampf (My Struggle), can be found on its Web site.
There is no need for concern, however.We are positive that their adulation of Hitler and Nazism is nothing but puppy love.They will outgrow it in no time.
Taiwan isn’t the Germany right after its defeat in the First World War.True it is that Taiwan has been seeing politicians squabble against each other on end and its economic doldrums making a mockery of the miracle of the twentieth century it wrought, but the post-WWI Germany saw things ten or even one hundred times worse.The once powerful and proud Second Reich was destroyed and the victors demanded indemnities that the country could never hope to pay, even if it worked harder than ever for a decade and a half to come.In the end, France invaded the iron-rich Ruhr.The German economy was ruined, with a runaway inflation that set the world record.In 1920, one U.S. dollar was worth 60-70 marks; by November 1923, it was worth 4.2 trillion marks. All this favored Nazism, with which the Fuhrer founded his Third Reich.
No matter how erratically the Democratic Progressive Party government may rule, Taiwan will never be plunged into anything like the chaos that confounded Germany prior to the rise of Adolf Hitler.The powers that be may rest assured that those students are not going to start a putsch or two anytime soon.
Politicians, however, had better stop squabbling to prevent social unrest.We know it’s impossible, now that at least six of them have kicked off their campaign for 2008.We only wish they would tone down the diatribe they would vent against one another lest the country should be further polarized.
（本文刊載於96.03.15 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
