Nazi paraphernalia on sale at Banqiao station?

John Lennon had definetly a strange fascination with Hitler and Jesus, after the Beatles separation one of his songs, “God”:

God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain
I’ll say it again
God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain

I don’t believe in magic
I don’t believe in I-Ching
I don’t believe in Bible
I don’t believe in tarot
I don’t believe in Hitler
I don’t believe in Jesus
I don’t believe in Kennedy
I don’t believe in Buddha
I don’t believe in mantra
…"

Hitler is a strange name to mention in this list (ogother with Kennedy).

Why Hitler was a strange name to mention together with Kennedy?
Lennon wasn’t an American.

Nazism was a sort of religion and many people once followed it blindly. A.cult of personality was as reasonable to mention as any other cult.

You forgot a certain Nobel Prize winner.

About the “fascination” part though, you may be confusing him with another Englishman. You know, the one who lived in Berlin, not Hamburg. Lennon’s view seems to have been quite clear: “We’re all Jesus and Hitler” or something close to that, i.e. we’re all yin and yang.

If not for the religious controversy the year before Sgt. Pepper’s, maybe they would have gone ahead and included Jesus and Hitler on the cover.

Maybe he should have said they were “more popular that Hitler.”

All the names on the list had a big impact on history or culture, so I did’t understand the name Kennedy in the list (now I think just because they were contemporaries).

“Lennon wasn’t an American”

Obviously, so?

I agree, strange fascination were not the right words, but lennon was clearly influenced/pertubed by it:

In the group photo, among the people or figures who have an East Asian appearance, there are several that I don’t recognize.

But I’ll take a shot at the others:

First (bottom) row:

Fifth figure from the left: Wu Zetian

Sixth figure from the left: I don’t know.

Second row (going up):

Third figure from the left: Mao Zedong

Fourth figure from the left: Sun Yat-sen

Third row (going up):

I can’t tell whether second figure from the left is of East Asian heritage, and
in any case, I don’t recognize him.

Third figure from the left: Zhou Enlai

Fourth figure from the left: Chiang Kai-shek


Fifth figure from the left: I don’t know

Seventh figure from the left: Aung San Suu Kyi

Top row:

Sixth figure from the left: I don’t know.

Eighth figure from the left: I don’t know.

I didn’t know about that one.

All the names on the list had a big impact on history or culture, so I did’t understand the name Kennedy in the list (now I think just because they were contemporaries).

He was also a political activist, not just a musician.

So they are opening a Japanese restaurant in my street. They are just finishing up the decoration and just lighted up the front sign…where an Imperial Japanese flag takes up a quater.

Please remember my hood is mostly a veterans’ village, with several still living who fought against the Japanese. Oh, and it is right across from the Japanese massage place, owned by a mixed couple.

I mean, how stupid can they be?! What is the point of all thsoe tests and hours at buxiban if they do not know the basics of anything, say, history? Even if they are doing this on purpose as a publicity scheme -which I doubts- it is so stupid. I am sending the friggin pic to Apple and Next.

I think it is time Taiwan enacts some laws regarding idiocies like this.

Grow up and get a life people this is freedom of expression not present day Orwellian Germany. Perhaps you should ask them to pull down all relics and statues of Taiwan’s past colonizers the Spanish, Portugese, British, Dutch and Japanese all of who commited atrocities. Grow up snow flakes

The British didn’t commit atrocities here in Taiwan, they kinda failed before landing, twice. If there was a Portuguese presence, they were only here as a part of the Iberian Union.

The French and the Americans landed and killed a bunch of people, but in terms of invaders who failed to colonize the place, the French was the most successful if we are talking about numbers of people killed. They only fought Qing military and local militias as a part of their official war effort, so it probably shouldn’t count as committing atrocities.

Also, Taiwan’s past regimes did remove pretty much everything from their previous colonizers. You’d hard press to find actual Dutch or Spanish era buildings in Taiwan. The Japanese made some efforts to protect a few Qing dynasty buildings. The KMT went on a destruction rampage. Most of the Japanese era buildings you see today had to be restored to look like how it was originally designed.

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Well I was watching 柯南 on tv the other day and they showed the same flag in it. The imperial Japanese flag doesn’t really have the same connotations attached to it like the swastika does. Whether it should have is another issue.

There’s a Japanese restaurant near me which has Kamikaze written on the wall in big letters. I’ve no idea what that’s all about.

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The Hinomaru flag (no rays) hasn’t changed much since the 19th century. The version with18 rays is the Imperial Japanese Army flag if the sun is centered. If the sun is off-center (“skewed to the hoist”), it is either the Imperial Navy flag, or the flag of today’s maritime Self-Defense Forces. So at least one form of that flag is still in use.

What bothers me is that they had a choice. They selected that flag because it was more colorful, disregarding the context - a veterans’ village. They will bring trouble for themselves and worse, trouble for the foreign guy who is making an honest living for his family across the road.

The same way people like nazi stuff here because “Germany was powerful and Hitler made a lot to improve their economy”. There is a certain rational connection that is missing.

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Ehem, you left out a group who really committed massacres recently.

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Don’t forget–some “veterans” fought under that flag.

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Eh, define fighting against unarmed civilians. We are talking a specific incident in Taiwan, not abroad.

Unless you mention the ones who fought in the frontlines in Kinmen during the 50s. Those were really fighting.

Do not mix papayas and potatoes.

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Where is this shop?

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And the title says it’s on sale. How much on sale is it? Because I want to get a good deal on my Nazi-themed office furnishings!