I came to Taiwan because it rewards argument with attention rather than punishment. That conviction is why I agreed to appear in late 2023 on a local current‑affairs program to speak about my family for about 35 minutes, the experience of Palestinians under occupation, and why I believe Israel is an illegal and brutal occupying power. I also said plainly that Palestinians have a right to resist. I did not call for violence; I did not attack anyone in the studio. I asked to be heard.

After the segment aired, there was no tidal wave. I did not see mass virality, a swarm of threats, or a coordinated campaign. What I saw was quieter and, to me, more instructive: mixed comment threads under the outlets that carried the interview—some curiosity, some hostility, a lot of silence. 

A subset of commenters objected sharply to my claims. A few called for my dismissal or deportation like “Why are any of these people in Taiwan? ”, “Hazem Almassry should be let go from his position in Taiwan and deported immediately for supporting terrorism and spreading propaganda” and some even said “Deport this garbage”.

That was the extent of it. No HR meeting appeared on my calendar. Immigration did not contact me. Platforms did not label my posts or cut my income. No organizer cancelled a talk. If you want a sensational story, I cannot give you one. But if you want to understand how public speech becomes an administrative object even at a small scale, this is the story I can tell.

What the episode revealed is a pathway rather than a pile‑on. You can see it even in a handful of posts and emails: identify an institutional lever (HR, a manager’s office, immigration, platform policy), invoke it by quoting codes out of context, and suggest that inaction would be irresponsible. The ambition is not to refute what I said; it is to reclassify it—from testimony and political judgment into a risk to be managed. The pressure is not a court order; it is the hint of a procedure.

I call this “decentralized coercion”: the accumulation of small, local moves—tags, complaints, insinuations—that, even when they do not trigger formal sanctions, make the possibility of sanction present enough to discipline the speaker. It is “decentralized” because no one needs to coordinate it. It is “coercion” because the effect is to narrow what feels sayable when your job, your visa, or your standing might suddenly depend on how an administrator interprets a screenshot.

The second concept is “borrowed authority”. People who disapprove of your speech do not need power of their own if they can conscript institutions that already hold power over you. A single comment that cc’d immigration or cites an employee code can change the temperature of a conversation—especially when you are a foreign academic, on a contractor, in a society where institutions reasonably worry about reputational risk. The complaint borrows the authority of others and returns it as a threat you are expected to manage.

The reactions I saw also bore the marks of “selective sympathy”. Where some viewers heard a bereaved person trying to speak with moral clarity, others heard a foreigner affirming disloyalty. The same sentence—“Palestinians have a right to resist”—was, to some ears, an argument within international law and political theory; to others, it was evidence of extremism. 

The difference was not only ideological; it was structural. Taiwan’s democracy lives under a military threat from a neighboring power that supports Palestinian claims in other contexts. In a discourse shaped by that pressure, Palestinian testimony can be read as proxy politics rather than as testimony. That is the pivot on which borrowed authority turns: if your grief can be reinterpreted as a security risk, then your employer and the state can be asked to mitigate it.

Some will say: if nothing “happened,” what is the problem? The problem is that the boundary of respectable speech is increasingly drawn not by law but by procedures that can be triggered by a few strategically framed messages. In a media environment as dense and immediate as Taiwan’s—where talk shows move fast, messaging  apps and boards like PTT and LINE circulate clips quickly, and small pages can punch above their weight—there is no need for a million views. There is only a need for plausible leverage.

It matters to say, again, what did not happen. My employer did not discipline me. Immigration did not question me. That restraint is meaningful and deserves credit. Editors and colleagues who kept their judgment and their nerve made it possible for me to write this. 

The point of naming decentralized coercion is not to claim persecution; it is to describe a risk architecture that many people inhabit—precarious staff, international students, public‑facing workers—where the line between speaking and triggering a workflow is uncomfortably thin.

I still believe in Taiwan’s democratic resilience. The classrooms I taught in, the newsrooms that invited me, and the everyday conversations I have here all testify to a public that knows how to argue. The danger is not argument; it is the quiet migration of argument into back‑office workflows where a few messages can turn testimony into a file to be managed. A television clip should not become a dossier that trails a person across institutions because someone knows which code to quote.

The comments I saw did not reassure me on these tests. They did not terrify me either. They taught me that the line between speech and sanction in networked societies is thinner than we admit and easier to cross than it should be.

(This piece reflects the author's opinion, and does not represent the opinion of CommonWealth Magazine.)

CommonWealth Magazine welcomes op-ed submissions. Please send your article proposals to [email protected]

About the author:

Hazem Almassry is a Postdoctoral Researcher based in Taiwan. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Research and Cultural Studies from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. Born and raised in Gaza, Almassry focuses on social justice, social movements, and Palestinian issues, actively advocating for awareness of the humanitarian and political situation in Gaza. His academic and public work aims to challenge misconceptions and promote understanding of Palestinian struggles under occupation.

Have you read?

• ‘Just Stay in Taiwan’: Perspectives from a Lebanese in Taipei Throughout the ‘Israel-Hamas War’
• Should Taiwan Speak For Palestine?
• Are Deportations Undermining Taiwan’s Freedom of Speech?

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