Splinter Tendencies Within The Sunflower Movement
As with many movements, the Sunflower Movement had splinter tendencies within it
It would be a common occurrence within social movements for there to be both a “mainstream” of the social movement as well as a splinter tendency which is more politically radical, a sort of division between “core” and “periphery”. A comparative example, for example, would be between the mainstream of the Umbrella Movement as represented by Joshua Wong (黃之鋒), Scholarism (學民思潮), and Occupy Central (佔領中環), and the more anarchic Mong Kok (旺角) encampment. Or in Occupy Wall Street, between the socialists, who called for a concrete demand to emerge out of the movement as a whole, and the anarchist participants of the movement, who were against the idea of a single demand as limiting.
This was also the case with the Sunflower Movement, in which the mainstream of the movement was led by the occupiers of the Legislative Yuan, but various splinter groups emerged during the course of the movement. Obviously, there were many individuals who were dissatisfied with or crucial of the actions of the central leadership of the movement and many groups participated in the movement, each with their own interests in doing so, but that does not always mean that such individuals or groups would to come to form a concrete splinter group or opposition political tendency either. The main splinter groups which emerged from the Sunflower Movement were the Untouchables’ Liberation Area, Le Flanc Radical, the NTU Department of Social Sciences group, and the Second Floor Slave Workers.