[A-List] Jim Craven on Taiwan

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(This is a response to a debate taking place on Marxmail about Taiwanese
nationalism. Perry Anderson has a useful article on the question at:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n11/ande01_.html)

When I was recently in northern B.C. in Canada on some Indigenous Reserves
I was told by local activists that they had been approached by individuals
from Taiwan to set up "sports exchanges" with Indigenous Nations in Canada.
They asked for my take on what it was about and I said that it is my
opinion that: a) This is part of an overall process of the Taiwan regime
trying to look and act like a nation and to do what nations do (forming
relations with other nations and/or individuals of other nations); b) they
are trying to claim being "Indigenous Peoples" and an "oppressed Indigenous
Nation" in order to piggyback the issue of--and summarily assert rights
to--self-determination, independence, freedom and sovereignty of all
nations. I advised them that they would be better off not having anything
to do with the current Taiwan regime as this regime has more in common with
the "Vichy Indians" of the "official" U.S.-Government-endorsed/utilized
"Tribal Councils" operating under the BIA than any kind of sovereign
government of any kind of truly sovereign nation.

Those who see Taiwan (the classical name for Taiwan is Liu Qiu) as a nation
and/or who see any parallels between the situation of Taiwan and that of
real Indigenous Nations existing geographically within the asserted land
bases of larger capitalist nations, simply do not understand what
makes--and legitimates--a given group of people as a nation and/or do not
understand the realities of both Taiwan and the Indigenous Nations of the
Americas and elsewhere. Further, they are slandering and setting back the
just struggles of Indigenous Nations in the Americas and elsewhere that are
victims of capitalist states and their genocidal policies with these bogus
comparisons or analogies with the Taiwan regime and situation--e.g. those
who ran (rather than were victims of) the same kinds of genocidal policies
against the truly Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan (the "Gaoshan" ) or the
Han/capitalist-based Kuomintang.

One of the reasons that Florida and eight other states have laws fobidding
convicted felons from voting is that old die-hard Confederates after the
civil war set up structures, laws and processes designed to make the
continual and ongoing disenfranchisement of Blacks possible--controlling
the courts it is possible to make anyone a "convicted felon" and thus
unable to vote. What if those ex-Confederate scum, operating as stooges for
foreign powers bent on destroying the system of the U.S., had managed to
set up their own government in Florida, and claim, on the one hand, not to
be a part of the U.S. and yet also make the contradictory claim to be the
sole and "legitimate" representatives of all of the U.S.? What does anyone
think the U.S. government would do about that situation? Would the U.S.
government allow secession and the fiction that Florida was somehow a
separate--and sui generis--nation with fundamental rights to independence
and sovereignty?

My father flew on 94 missions on B-25s with the 490th Bomb Squadron of the
14th Air Force (the successor to the "Flying Tigers") in China and Burma
during World War II. He told me stories about how they would lay awake in
their tents in the jungles with their weapons near them because Kuomintang
troops would come in the night and attempt to bayonet U.S. forces
(supposedly their "allies") in their tents and steal their money, watches
and other valuables. My father had an abiding hatred for the Kuomintang and
Chiang Kai Shek (whose hand he refused to shake once when Chiang Kai Shek
was a passenger from Taiwan to Japan when my father was a co-pilot for
Northwest Airlines--the captain on that flight told me the story). He told
me the only principled Chinese, and the only real fighters against the
Japanese imperialists, were the communists. Around the late 1960s, when the
Taiwan was previously trying to act like a nation and had awarded a "China
War Medal" to U.S. forces that had served in the China-Burma-India Theater
during World War II, my father told me that he would only accept such a
medal from "the only legitimate government of China--in Peking"; my father
had it right all along and he knew the Kuomintang types and the Taiwan
situation very well.

Jim Craven


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