Ep 248 | Stan from Poland: YouTuber Covers Political Commentary, Interviews, and News of Taiwan

Aug 4, 2023

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I met Stan Kwiatkowski, better known as YouTuber Stan from Poland 斯坦-波蘭ê台灣囡仔, at this year’s Taiwanese American Conference where he was one of the speakers. His YouTube channel now has over 200,000 subscribers. And if that wasn’t impressive enough, the first thing you’ll notice after going to his YouTube channel is how fluently he speaks Mandarin Chinese in practically all of the videos. The content that Stan and his wife produce for their YouTube channel consists of political commentary, interviews and news with a focus on topics related to Taiwan’s political situation and security. Stan also has some English videos on the Love Taiwan YouTube channel. We’ll share links to both of these YouTube channels on TalkingTaiwan.com for this episode.

I interviewed Stan in person when he was in New York in July. We started off talking about some of the key dates in Taiwan’s history such as the 228 massacre of February 28, 1947, and ended up discussing his thoughts on Taiwan’s upcoming presidential elections in January of 2024. If you’d like to watch my interview with Stan, we will also be posting a video of it to Talking Taiwan’s YouTube channel. Here’s our interview.

Here’s a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:

· How Stan got interested in Taiwan

· How Stan started his YouTube channel which took five years to get up to 200,00 YouTube subscribers

· Stan’s first YouTube video on his channel was about Poland’s independence day (November 11)

· How there are parallels between the democratization of Poland and Taiwan

· What brought Stan to Taiwan

· What Stan’s time in Taiwan was like

· Poland’s pursuit of independence in the early 20th century

· The misperception that Poland was previously a communist country by the will of its people but the constitution was amended by Stalin

· How Stan’s sees parallels between Poland’s democratization and Taiwan’s

· How Stan and his wife’s perspectives shape the content they create for their YouTube channel

· How a visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp opened up a conversation about Taiwan’s Green Island

· Stan’s view of Taiwan before he came to Taiwan and how it’s changed

· Stan’s upbringing and aptitude for languages

· Poland’s anti-communist law

· Stan has made about 10 videos about Poland’s transitional justice and democratization

· The challenges to Taiwan’s transitional justice

· The challenges Taiwan faces in reforming its constitution, official name of the country and anthem

· How Stan’s YouTube channel reached its first milestone of 100,000 subscribers

· How Stan has covered the topics of the how the World Health Organization won’t let Taiwan join as a member, how Taiwan developed its own vaccine, the National Security Law in Hong Kong, mafia affiliated YouTubers in Taiwan

· Stan has livestreamed during the U.S. presidential elections and about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

· The research that Stan does for his YouTube videos

· How Stan hopes that his viewers learn not to believe in propaganda and that they will go deeper and do research, and consult difference sources of information/news

· Stan tries to create 2 videos and do one livestream a week

· How difficult it is to predict which YouTube videos will get more views

· The most popular videos on Stan’s YouTube channel

· What Stan has learned about himself from the experience of building his YouTube channel

· How Stan also works as a freelance interpreter

· Stan’s reflections on some of the people he’s interviewed: General Yu, Miao Poya, Freddie Lim, Kira Rudyk

· How more people are learning about and from Taiwan

· Stan’s most pressing concerns about Taiwan

· The different types of Chinese propaganda that is harmful to Taiwan

· How Chinese propaganda and disinformation could impact the outcome of Taiwan’s elections

· How Stan hopes more people will create content about Taiwan and debunking Chinese propaganda

· Sources to learn about Taiwan that Stan recommends for people who don’t read Chinese

· Stan’s thoughts on the fear of Taiwan being attacked by China

· What Taiwan must do to protect itself from China’s attack

· Stan’s thought on Taiwan’s upcoming presidential election in 2024

· Why it’s important for people to vote in Taiwan’s upcoming presidential election in 2024

· Ko Wen-je and the Taiwan People’s Party

· The Rally for Justice that happened in Taipei on July 16

· The U.S. support of Taiwan

· What happened when Stan asked random people in the streets of New York City whether or not the U.S. should support Taiwan

· U.S. support of Taiwan vs. Vietnam

· What is most rewarding and challenging about the work Stan does for his YouTube channel

· Stan’s opinion of how the U.S. would react if China attacked Taiwan

· How much longer Stan sees himself creating political commentary and news-related videos

· Stan’s thoughts on Taiwan’s upcoming presidential elections (in January 2024)