What do we know about these images of Taiwanese people carrying Nazi flags?

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• On April 21 and 26, a Twitter account which regularly shows pro-Chinese propaganda posted photos of Taiwanese men posing with Nazi symbols. 
• The images are indeed authentic. They were taken on April 20, when some young men took a photo with a Nazi flag in a Taipei restaurant.
• There have been other such incidents where people in Taiwan showed off Nazi flags or uniforms. Still, according to experts, these incidents are marginal and do not prove that neo-Nazi ideology has a significant presence in Taiwan.

   

The fact-check, in detail

“Why are Taiwan young people so passionate about the Nai logo?” wrote this pro-China Twitter account in a post on April 21. The post, viewed more than 750,000 times, contained several images of people, their faces blurred, in front of the Nazi flag or even wearing SS uniforms. 

On April 26, the same account shared another image, supposedly of a group of young Taiwanese people celebrating the birthday of Adolf Hitler. 

The photo contains two flags. On the left is a red flag with a black swastika, the banner of the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany. On the right is a black flag with the symbol of the “black sun”, which has been associated with neo-Nazi movements. 

A gathering to celebrate Hitler’s birthday

The post links back to an article by English-language Taiwanese media outlet Taiwan News. It says that the incident took place on April 20, the anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birth, in a restaurant in Taichung, a city in the west of the island. 

The account of the event as reported in the article is consistent with that given by the pro-Chinese Twitter account. But Taiwan News cites only one source: a blogger named James Curly, who took the original photo.

We used a reverse image search (click here to find out how) to find the original post from James Curly. 

The post, shared on April 20, tells the same story in Chinese. “When we went to dinner, there was a group of men sitting at the next table. […] At the end of the meal, they hoisted Nazi and black sun flags right in front of the shop.”

Thanks to the characteristic details visible in the photo, it is possible to geolocate the scene to a traditional hotpot restaurant. It is indeed in the city of Taichung.

The date and location therefore appear to be accurate, although the FRANCE 24 Observers team has not been able to verify either the identity of the participants or the reason for their gathering.

Several real events

The other photos relayed by the pro-Chinese Twitter account in its April 21 post all come from similar controversial events, well-documented by the local press. 

At the bottom left are two images showing a Nazi flag hanging in a shop in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Published in January 2019 by an outraged American resident, the photos sparked controversy on Instagram. The Chabad Taipei Jewish Center, a local Jewish institution, had also commented on the incident, condemning the use of these flags.

Other photos shared in the post, however, date back to 2016. They show a mock military parade at a high school in the city of Hsinchu, southwest of Taipei. For the event, students dressed up in costumes reminiscent of the Nazi regime’s SS, as documented by the local press.

The Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei criticised the event and the school’s principal resigned. 

These three events are therefore real, but unrelated. They also occurred over a period of several years. 

‘The far right in Taiwan is almost non-existent’

These isolated incidents are also completely out of touch with the island’s political life, explains Paul Jobin, a researcher at the Taiwan-based Academia Sinica Institute of Sociology.

“The far right in Taiwan is almost non-existent, at least according to European standards,” he explained. “This doesn’t exclude sometimes contemptuous behaviour towards Southeast Asian migrant workers, for example, but there is no political party that encourages it, or even overt racist aggression, as is characteristic of neo-Nazi groups in Europe.”

Historical revisionism does exist, but it focuses on issues specific to the region, without a direct link to Nazism. “It’s not about that, but rather about the crimes of the Japanese army during the Second World War, or about the white terror, the period of the dictatorship of the Chinese Nationalist Party in the 1950s and 1960s,” Jobin added. “In Taiwan, we can talk about the leader of that regime, Chiang Kai-shek, as a dictator, but it is still difficult sometimes.”

So how can we explain the April 20 event where young Taiwanese people displayed Nazi flags? Jobin said it’s hard to know more without speaking directly to those who participated, but that education may play a role.

“Do they know what the Holocaust is? It’s not a given. But we can’t absolve them completely, because, in Taiwanese schools, Hitler is indeed described as the biggest criminal of the twentieth century.”

Still, the images shared online do not offer concrete proof of a widespread Taiwanese fascination with Nazi symbolism. Instead, they show isolated incidents that don’t relate back to the political climate of Taiwan. 

Similar fringe events have also taken place in other Asian countries where European history of the Second World War remains relatively unstudied, as reported in this article by CNN.

Article written in collaboration with Lucie Barbazanges.