Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Today's political leaders - When the satire becomes real

The deterioration of the quality of the world’s politicians has been happening for a while now but 2025 might become the year political satire finally dies. The reality is fast becoming too bizarre to be ridiculed.  

There has always existed the irritating background noise of absurdness, truth bending, corruption and stupidity around politics, pretty much everywhere in the world. It has been so since prehistoric man was first dumb enough to elect their first cave leader. 

In modern times, when politics was still a serious business there remained a good chunk of ethics and morality in play, with the occasional lapses rich pickings for gleeful journalists and comedians to pounce-on and poke fun at those who rule over us.

Politicians would see it as a badge of honour if they were satirised. I was lucky enough to visit No.11 Downing Street a number of times when I was a lobby correspondent for Reuters during the 1990s and the staircase at No.11, the Finance Minister’s London residence, is lined with framed political newspaper cartoons dating back decades.      

 Once in a while we were treated to an entertaining full-blow scandal with accompanying banner headlines as red-faced politicians apologised for impropriety, or were embarrassed into resigning to ‘spend more time with their family’.

However, in the past decade or so politics has been infected by more extreme forms of behaviour where bad has become the norm, outright lies accepted as ‘alternative truths’ and downright stupidity and gaffes by wannabes seeking high power commonplace.

The zeitgeist, it has to be said, largely driven by western politicians, has changed. Sadly there are leaders here in Taiwan who appear to have seen Trump and other western politicians as role models and copied their style. Lying, switching sides when it suited them, making ridiculous statements expecting them to be believed and, perhaps worse, thinking they are above the law.

‘If they can do it, we can do it.’ A lot of political behaviour in Taiwan politics in recent years has been straight out of Trump’s playbook. It’s sad that they can’t even have their own style of awful but have to copy someone as unbalanced as Trump.   

What used to be satire has turned into simple reporting as lies and absurd statements have become commonplace and not a rarity. It’s tough to satirise the already absurd, ridiculous or corrupt. Like the guys who want to cut the budgets of the Transport Ministry, Police and Foreign Ministry because it will improve the safety of trains, somehow make scams less prevalent and make wooing back previously supportive countries easier. It makes so little sense it’s impossible to make fun of.          

In the decades following World War II there existed an integrity around politics, particularly in the west, where the mind-bending horrors of the war were so fresh in the collective memory that the need for ethics and decency were prominent in voters' minds. Politicians easily risked the ire of the electorate should they stray too far from a path of being relatively upright.

Sadly, that collective memory has evaporated as the wartime generation has died off. Both my father and mother died within the last ten years. He was a conscripted soldier while my mother lived through the Blitz and survived the bombs raining down on her East London home. 

Both had lived through a traumatic experience which was the direct result of a man who in a very short time destroyed the German republic, turning it into a totalitarian dictatorship in perhaps the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy.

As has often been said, mankind never seems to learn from history and it seems the lessons of a century ago when a democracy was given over to a nationalist dictatorship resulting in a World War, a hundred million deaths, economic collapse and the global misery has passed from living memory. 

Now, we are witnessing a return to aggressive nationalism in many countries, and in some the erosion of democracy accompanied by leaders seeking to rule by decree by undermining the judicial system and the constitution. Most of this is happening against the background of a shift towards the right wing of the political spectrum, authoritarianism and, most strikingly, blaming immigrants for a country's ills.  

But surely no one in the world who is in their right mind wants another Hitler, right? 

Until recently most journalists have avoided comparing what is going on now to what happened in the 1930s in Germany for fear of falling foul of Godwin’s Law. US lawyer Mike Godwin was an early adopter of the internet and in 1990 observed…"As a discussion on the Internet grows longer, the likelihood of a person/s being compared to Hitler or another Nazi, increases." 

For decades this law appeared to hold true and it was deemed that once someone in a thread compared someone or something to Hitler or the Nazis, they had run dry of meaningful  argument as the comparison was held to be so extreme as to be absurd. 

It is now 35 years on and the current crop of world leaders and their bizarre antics, lies and undermining of democracy is tragically becoming normal and seen, by some, as acceptable behaviour. 

From US President Elect Trump’s crimes, endless lies and insults in the United States, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s constant lies and mishandling of Brexit and Covid and former Prime Minister Liz Truss disastrous premiership in the United Kingdom, to Taiwan’s current political scandals, turncoat politicians, lies and the undermining of the Constitutional Court’s powers.  

The KMT are simply refusing to accept any judges put forward so the Constitutional Court is not quorate and cannot make decisions. They are using the democratic tools at their disposal to undermine the Taiwan constitution, just as Trump is doing with the Supreme Court in the US. 

In 1933 Hitler did a similar thing. His erstwhile lawyer Hans Frank, later executed for his complicity in Nazi atrocities, said Hitler’s was an expert in sensing “the potential weakness inherent in every formal form of law” and then ruthlessly exploiting that weakness.

Just like Trump, he was a fierce supporter of freedom of speech and like Trump used his   constitutional right to free speech to huge rallies and spew malicious attacks on Bolsheviks (a far-left faction of Lenin’s Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, social democrats, immigrants, Jews and even fellow rightwing nationalists. 

Trump has done the same thing with the democrats, Mexicans and America’s immigrants generally. Hitler’s oft stated claim was to make Germany great again, a startling and worrying reminder to us all of Trump’s - Make America Great Again.   

Hitler exploited his small political power within the democracy to gridlock legislative processes and crush political opposition, undermining democratic structures, thus transforming a democratic republic into a constitutional dictatorship. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who on May 1, 1945 killed his six children and wife in the Berlin Bunker then committed suicide, once said, “The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction.”

Trump’s rhetoric regarding immigrants into the US has undoubtedly been vile. Variously describing them as coming from “shithole countries” and stating “They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums. You know, insane asylums, that’s ‘Silence of the Lambs’ stuff…” He has promised mass deportation of migrants. 

Thirty five years on Godwin said recently, “Trump’s opening himself up to the Hitler comparison,” he said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine at the end of last year. In his view, Trump is actively seeking to evoke the parallel, setting himself up for a dictator-like administration. 

Which brings us back to the crop of authoritarian wannabe dictators in the world today. It seems clear Trump will do everything in his power to remain in office and manipulate the existing US constitution to bolster his power and satisfy his lust to take over other countries like Canada, Greenland and control of the Panama Canal. All that rhetoric might seem mad, and it is, but don’t underestimate the unbalanced nature of Trump’s psyche or overestimate his intellect to do much more than decide which burger to have for lunch.

The rise of the right-wing across the world is something that should worry us all, it is not just the US. The Netherlands, Argentina, Italy, France, Sweden and Finland have all seen right-wing populist parties gain more power. Surprisingly, Germany’s AfD (Alternative for Germany) with its promise of mass deportation of migrants is a serious electoral contender in February’s elections.

All this plays into the hands of authoritarians and if you scratch an authoritarian, there is a dictator just below the surface.  

The rise of right-wing nationalism globally is worrying for Taiwan. A Trump with imperialistic ambitions for Canada and Greenland are not a million miles from the imperialistic ambitions we have witnessed with the South China Sea, Africa and Taiwan. I am convinced Trump will not lift a finger to help Taiwan if it suits his own selfish ambitions for the United States. Remember, as a wannabe dictator, he has openly admired other dictators around the world. He wants to be like them.   

That is not the only worry for Taiwan. Just as we are seeing elsewhere and as history illustrates, it is possible to undermine democracy using the very tools that are designed to keep it in place. Those in Taiwan who want Taiwan to be closer to China are on a daily basis undermining the existing democratic process by locking Parliament’s doors to force through votes. The parties with the small majority in parliament are also making the Constitutional Court impotent and pushing through laws which makes it easier for China to make inroads into Taiwan society.

All this is happening fast as with such a tiny parliamentary majority the KMT and TMD know only too well that if they do not act fast to ingratiate themselves with China there is a risk the voters will catch on and vote them out. Why else do you think they are meddling with the recall rules making it more difficult for the public to get rid of MPs. They are using the existing rules to stymie the democracy we currently enjoy. 

Democracy is far from perfect with inherent flaws built into a system that is supposed to ensure the ‘people’ get what they want. Unfortunately the flaws in the system enable the likes of the KMT and TMD to gain a toe-hold in the Parliament to force through policies that bring Taiwan closer to China. It is abundantly clear that is what they want to do. It must be obvious to anyone who voted for the KMT or TMD last time that they voted for closer ties with China and sadly that is what might get.   

The United States is obviously happy with Trump and will reap what they have sowed. The only way of gauging that is waiting to see what happens now. Maybe the US system of democracy is strong enough to prevent him from rolling Canada, Greenland or Panama in a move similar to what we have seen in the South China Seas, and to some extent Africa. 

If the last democratic election in Taiwan signalled a desire by the voters to get closer to China and push for closer integration with all that entails, that is the will of the people. If the electorate wants to turn Taiwan into Hong Kong and kill democracy, that is their right under the current democratic rules.

What I would say is just as the United States had every right to vote for a potential dictator who is also so clearly an idiot, Taiwan had the right to vote for an administration that will obviously undermine their democracy and make the country a potential slave to its neighbour. Will we witness hard won democracy and freedoms destroyed by the very system they are designed to uphold.    

Given the history of what dictatorships have done to the world, it is tragic to see a young and proud Asian democracy being pushed into the arms of a totalitarian dictatorship by the very system designed to keep it free.    

But in a democracy, you get the government you deserve and have to live with the consequences.  

Tinkerty Tonk... 

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