this whole thing is so depressing to me because it happened in Hsinchu, and the whole class assigned to represent Germany decided it’s a good idea to dress up as NAZIs, and their homeroom teacher approved it all.
What’s worse is that the homeroom teacher is a history teacher… what’s beyond comprehension is that he dressed up as Hitler…
What’s so surprising about this? With all these campuses having plenty of statues of CKS, CKS memorial hall being a tourist site, and his birthday being a national memorial day, what do you expect? Even the local history is largely ignored, how would people care about something that has no connection to this place?
Has anyone told John Oliver yet?
You have to feel sorry for the students. I mean, they are getting a crash course in their societiy’s values. The director of the school took the blame and resigned. The students had to apologize. Funny thing is no one spoke againts this mess before it started. And it took time to make the tiger tank and the uniforms. How long to make the decorations alone? But in this culture you are not allowed to oppose or voice concerns if there are any, most probably not any, you do not oppose because you follow blindly. So, the students learned that when you follow blindly no worries, someone far away from you takes the blame. But only if someone complaints. If no ones says anything, life goes on. What lesson did they learned? Do they understand what they did, what was wrong? Nope.
As always, I am so curious about their curriculum. What the heck are they learning?!
My general feeling is that in Taiwanese society many people don’t pass moral judgement on dictators. They favor the “you have to break some eggs to make an omelet” argument and they respect strong leaders no matter how appalling their politics. I’ve had a number of people make the “two sides of a coin” argument with respect to Hitler. i.e. he killed all them Jews but united Germany (same as the 60:40 argument applied to Mao). Obviously a deplorable attitude but I think it highlights the fact there is very little awareness of western sensitivities towards the Holocaust. Hopefully this incident will put an end to this.
This is all true, but, and I hate to say it, there’s always been a fairly strong aspect of xenophobia involved here too. Wholly out of ignorance, rather than malice, but traditionally, in addition to the malawareness described by brother the_bear, there’s also been a measure of (and I’m aware how horrifying this sounds) “OK, millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc. but, after all, they were white. It’s not like there were millions of Chinese exterminated”. No matter how uneducated the students are, it’s pretty unlikely that they would have been OK with dressing up like a bunch of WWII Nipponese soldiers in Nanking and staging fake beheadings and gang rapes.
(And before anyone asks, there still seems to be an enormous inexplicable blind spot among locals when Mao’s slaughter of bazillions of Chinese during the GLF and Cultural Revolution comes up, I really don’t know why)
The good news is, I guess, that the immediate reaction among the media and politicians etc readily recognized the gross unacceptability of the activity, I didn’t see anyone trying to downplay the severity of the offence, like what happened way back in the day with the space heater ad debacles.
Have they downgraded him? It was 70:30 last time I checked. 
Yeah, local commentators also picked up on this saying, for example, that it was unlikely anyone suggested doing a 2-28 reenactment as part of the parade. But its ethnocentrism rather than xenophobia, although the two often go hand in hand. The same way western media will give pages of coverage to disasters where white people die, and a single column inch to disasters in “the hot places”.
Sorry, didn’t get the memo when he got upgraded. I still have a whole bag of Mao broaches/pins given to me in 1989 by a souvenir seller in Yangshuo who said he couldn’t even give them away to locals.
Yeah, a better word for what I meant.
Their teacher apparently warned them against the Nazi theme but in the end relented as the students insisted that’s what they wanted to do. He said he respected their democratic rights. I read somewhere the teacher dressed up as Hitler, but I haven’t seen pictures.
Yeah, I saw it on the news, he was all dressed up as Dolferoonie, moostache and all. That was him standing in the hatch of the Kartonpanzerkampfwagen seig heiling to everyone.
Kind of takes the poop out of his alleged protests, ya think?
So, what is it? Where is this idea coming from? I haven’t seen any popular Japanese manga doing this for them to copycat. Nor any Korean pop stars doing a sync dance Heil Hishter. I would like to dig a bit more.
I mean, they can dress up as any character and they choose this? Why? Where did they get the inspiration? Something is fishy here.
The news said the theme was historical figures.
Consider that we still have asswipes like this
walking around.
Someone evidently thought it would be “cool”.
Now they are reporting another group at the same school dressed up as aborigines and Japanese and re-enacted the Wushe Incident. The ‘aborigines’ called out ‘down with the Japanese. Restore the Chinese Nation.’ The article asks “Does this school really have a history teacher?”
Question is, did they change it so the good guys won this time???
High school students like to provoke, nothing unusual. The Third Reich was a long time ago on the other side of the planet, is a bit fuzzy for young folks, you know. Not many Jews living in Taiwan, not even many Germans. The only thing I kind of find shocking is that they were able to get all those uniforms and they must have done some thinking before deciding to wear the uniforms of mass murderers. What were they thinking? Would they wear ISIS outfits as well?
Student claims right of freedom of expression.
Ahem…
Now, I start to worry about the education these kids receive in that school. Does it offer proper physical education?
Those legs don’t look like very well developed…