I think the LDP has been in crisis for quite some time, and hasn’t recovered from the crisis. The fact of the matter is that voters are deeply unhappy with the corruption scandal, and the persistent inability to handle even basic issues like the cost of living increasing, energy price increasing, and the rice shortage.
Voter apathy is also greater with younger people, because as most of my friends have expressed, many feel overshadowed by older voters.
In other words, the crisis has been ongoing since the original corruption scandal broke, and the ineffective governance has reiterated this.
A Japanese commentator on a place I follow elsewhere remarked that the single biggest fault in party politics are the politicians who think the international market that buys Japanese services are a black box for receiving national income that they never have to worry about it going away even though it's been diminishing and losing reliability for several years already. Does this reflect what you see?
Observationally, there are many systems in Japan that place disproportionate value on international income and demand. Some of them are supported by data and others are not. I think that international markets are a relatively good place for Japan to focus, but it is the case that particularly with the US levying tariffs on Japan, people are now questioning this status quo more. In the spaces I'm familiar with, there is ample market data to show overseas growth, but this mostly focuses on Japan's historical market exports, like culture and IP. Almost on a yearly basis, there is some meaningful cultural export that Japan is able to export quite effectively. Japanese companies, who previously would have licensed this to an overseas distributor or team of companies are starting to move in house. The most prominent example of this is Sony acquiring Crunchyroll, Funimation, and RightStuf, all of which contribute to Sony creating a vertically integrated anime production stack, with Aniplex owning end-to-end domestic-to-overseas production, merchandising, and distribution.
There is definitely room to be worried, but the increase in tourism (perhaps, one might refer to it as "overtourism") supports the credence that there are valuable elements of Japanese culture that have demand overseas.
I think the more you stray from traditional mainstay IP and culture exports, the more unreliable it is. Again, a notable prolific example is Nippon Steel attempting to gain profit from operating US Steel, rather than simply taking market share.
On the topic of tariffs, though, I would definitely say that many Japanese people are upset about the tariffs, first directly at the US, and second at Ishiba for not negotiating a lower tariff rate. But here the sentiment is that the tariffs themselves are not only unjustified, but also deleterious to the US-Japan relationship. Japan is rather unique in the aspect of being militarily-tethered to the US, and the US has asked it to make uncomfortable (and difficult to gain large support for) economic investments in its own JSDF for the US's benefit. Subsequently, the tariff impact makes the LDP's position quite upsetting, because the LDP failed to negotiate tariffs and more-or-less shoved the military changes through with the intention of strengthening ties with the US.
So, there are a lot of things at play, but the current economic winds and the international relationship with the US has definitely skewed people towards isolationism and made it difficult for the LDP to retain the support they have.
Not surprising after the recent severe rice shortage and there was a glut of news showing foreigners from a certain country selling hoarded bags of rice only to countrymen on social media
Wasn't that mostly because Basmati rice actually ended up becoming less expensive than Japanese rice - and so the spike in demand would basically ensure people from the Indian-subcontinent to get their rice supplies ?
(Japanese rice is very different from Indian-rice).
He meant China, the usual suspect for many other social problems in Japan according to many internet gurus, was promptly named the culprit of the ongoing nation wide rice shortage and price speculation, because some of them were found to be reselling their rice stocks on Chinese social media, and mysterious Chinese were buying directly from local rice farmers sidestepping the farmers association that controls all national agricultural trade.
This sort of rhetoric is precisely what is fueling the rise of "the other side." It's exactly like when religious conservatives were in power and proclaiming that everybody who disagreed with them was some sort of family hating, country hating, religion hating, entity. Ummm, no - I can disagree with your views without hating much of anything or anybody, but you're doing a damn fine job of projecting your own hate, thank you very much.
And it's the same thing now a days, except the roles are largely reversed. Somebody who puts the interest of their nation and the citizens of that nation first isn't a "fascist." That sort of rhetoric, let alone the sharp rise in violence against it (to say nothing of the condoning, if not outright support of such), is just driving everybody who was kind of in the middle more and more away from the 'name callers.' I think you can see this in the US where polls show independents increasingly leaning right on most issues, whereas not that long ago they tended to lean left. And given our basically 50/50 split, independents have the power to pick which side wins.
I feel politics is like this perpetual motion machine where you reach some absolute extreme on end where the side in power starts to do really dumb stuff which ends up driving people to the other side until we trend (over what feels like a ~25 year cycle) to the next opposite extreme and the cycle begins anew.
It takes a special personality to be able to see the difference between Nazis killing Jews, and Jews killing Nazis, I guess. Especially in the midst of so much propaganda. Most Germans thought they were doing the right thing to protect their country. The Nazis were all like "the Jews are killing us so this is just self-defence!" and the Jews were also like "the Nazis are killing us so this is just self-defence!". Yet, one of those statements was correct. You'd have to really pay attention to know which one was correct, because the TV (if they had TV in that era) wouldn't tell you.
Politics is a perpetual motion machine because there are always people who seek to dramatically increase their own power and will use any excuse to do so - that is a constant. What fluctuates back and forth is which excuses work - that is the apparent pendulum, but it's the same constant driving force underneath. When protecting the country is in vogue, power-seeking sociopaths will use excuses related to protecting the country. When religious freedom is in vogue, power-seeking sociopaths will use excuses related to religious freedom. When liberating the working class is in vogue, power-seeking sociopaths will use excuses related to liberating the working class. Those aren't different sides - they're just different excuses used by the same side.
I'm oddly impressed by your initial paragraph and knowledge of history. Because it's indeed completely accurate. Few are aware that the Hitler weaponized 'victimhood culture' to an extreme degree. But I'm quite confused by your conclusion, at least if you're implying what I assume you are. Charlie Kirk's entire schtick was giving people a loud platform to speak where he'd engage with them in complete civility, letting them go on monologues, and debating in a completely respectful fashion - avoiding the typical trappings of ad hominem, strawman, and so on. It was actual real debate, not the news stuff where people just scream over each other. Then he'd post the entire thing, unedited, online. Everything he was doing was literally about as much of the the opposite of fascism as you could possibly get.
You know the paradox of tolerance certainly. In it, who do you think Popper was talking about? The people happy to openly engage and debate anybody in a fair and respectful fashion? Or the people shrieking for censorship, denouncing debate, demanding people not be heard, and then going on to start murdering people over their views?
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"But we should claim the right to suppress them [intolerant ideologies] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
Putting the "interests of their nation and the citizens of that nation" first is the meaningless populist rhetoric part, that always appeals in a racist, bigoted populous (so every nation ever pretty much). That's like people suffer economically from neoliberalism, so you redirect to unrelated scapegoats, that's trivial, happened a million times.
Historically the fascist then, will use economic populist policy. That's like when Hitler built the Autobahn, you alleviate the economic grievances, support for the autocrat cements and then the real fascist stuff begins, that's when term limits go away and their enemies go in the oven.
But they don't do that economic populist part do they? These new right-wing movements in the west aren't doing this part of the equation.
Because we are now in the "interesting", novel case where the autocrats themselves are also just more neoliberals, the real power hasn't really moved an inch, like they are all paid by the same set of oligarchs, power is already fully consolidated. So I suspect nothing much will happen, it will just swing back to the center that shifted the overton window a bit more to the right in the meantime, the status quo didn't change so people are perpetually unhappy with no idea why.
> I feel politics is like this perpetual motion machine where you reach some absolute extreme on end
Yeah man! Totally! It's like when we move from Reaganomics in the 80s to Clintonomics in the 90s, from one "absolute extreme end" to the other! TF
Contemporary issues have on novel nuance you aren't considering - globalism. Many political leaders, particularly in Western democracies today, are much more at home among other globalists than amongst their own people. And these people tend to be extremely unpopular. For instance Germany's Merz's approval rating is 30%, a rating France's Macron and his 17% approval rating would love. It's extremely dysfunctional.
In the past such unpopular leaders could never have been able to maintain power. So you have this weird dissonance growing where countries are ruled by people who don't particularly care for their country, and people who don't particularly care for their leaders. The 'populist' rhetoric isn't some veiled proxy for supremacy, but simply getting rid of this really weird state of affairs. The entire point of a representative democracy is for the people who lead to be representative. And in many countries around the world, that's no longer the case.
I would take myself as an example of the problem. I am an advocate for free speech, against war/screwing around in other countries/military industrial complex, against political correctness, and strongly support equality of opportunity. In other words I'm pretty much a textbook liberal of 20 years ago, yet these values leave me far closer to contemporary "conservative" populist parties, worldwide, than to liberal parties, again - worldwide.
I find many of the values that "liberal" parties espouse now a days are rather illiberal and extremely similar to conservative policies of some 20+ years ago. Censorship, war, deplatforming, political correctness, and so on. I think we may actually be living through a 'flip' akin to what happened in the early 20th century in the US.
Populist denotes leaders who say anything the people want to hear - in other words, leaders who are very effective at propaganda. A populist will say they want to reduce the debt. People will vote for him, because they want the debt to decrease. That populist will increase the debt more than any other president in history and his followers won't find out - he'll tell them some different propaganda. He might even say he lowered the debt even though he obviously didn't.
A populist will say he supports free speech, then make it illegal for certain people to speak on TV, cut funding to universities where people are allowed to say things he doesn't like, take ownership of the largest social media platforms and ban everyone who disagrees with him, all while repeating the claim of supporting free speech.
A populist will say every other politician is corrupt and he's the only one who can end the corruption. When elected, he'll be more corrupt than anyone else ever, while proclaiming there's no corruption any more, and we have always been at war with Eastasia.
> What's even more enraging than the rise of fascism is the fact that only fascists have figured out how to be popular in the age of social media.
I'll put aside your thought-killing use the the f-word.
What's really going on is liberals (of the social and pre-market variety) has embraced a "there is no alternative" style in and attempt to collapse political politics into kind of "unipolar" political moment, where the only option is to agree with them. They has quite a lot of success for a long time.
Well they're not wrong? The choices were fascists (they are - obviously - don't sugar coat it) and some useless non-fascist politicians. Most people would expect the majority to think that literally anything is better than fascism, but the majority doesn't think that. The majority actually voted that literally anything is better than useless do-nothings. Which is the same way Hitler got elected by the way.
Conservative populists meet people where they are and talk to their fears and dissatisfactions. 'Hey I see you're working hard but still struggling, It didn't used to be like that, and hey .. look at all these foreigners around now .. isn't so unfair this 'tax free' shopping they get to do? How come you're in your own country and struggling, but foreigners are paying less for things..'
where as socially or culturally progressive side of things what ever you want to call it is more likely to start with 'hey that thing you're doing is wrong and you need to change that', even if they are in fully realised practice the more accepting and inclusive of the two..
The difference between truth and propaganda, I guess. Having the truth on your side barely matters; being able to do good propaganda is what wins elections and wars.
The representation of "radical left" (whatever that means) is no more than a drop in the bucket compared to the rise of authoritarian right-wing viewpoints in the media and especially politics.
Communist political parties practically don't exist while authoritarian right wing parties running on austerity, cracking down on personal freedoms, and spreading hate towards all sorts of out-groups are gaining mainstream appeal in a lot of the world.
Unless you're using the bastardized American definition of "radical left" where any viewpoint to the left of centre, like "our systems are crumbling, rich people should be taxed more" is labeled "radical left".
Maybe less Left than Corbyn was, but they are a left wing socially progressive party.
That there’s legitimately no money left is caused by austerity. You can’t spend your way out when your debt to GDP ratio is far exceeding 100%. More borrowing will increase the countries interest payments and further cripple the economy.
> I don’t know, arresting people for hate speech for writing the letter “N” on social media or being arrested for saying “I love bacon”
I can't believe you're saying this with a straight face. I really wonder how it feels living in a complete fantasy and constantly whining about made-up stuff. Truly, deeply pathetic. Grow. the. fuck. up.
I could foresee you linking to conservative rags or social media posts. Sorry, I don't let (most probably false) anecdotal "evidence" dictate my politics, unlike you.
My point still stands btw, nothing from the left equates one one thousandths of what the right is currently doing. Sending the boots to blue cities. Defunding blue states. Silencing blue voices.
But it seems like you don't care about material reality, so I'll stop wasting both our times and leave you to your sad, sad fantasy.
Instead of being obtuse, just because left wing media is not reporting it doesn’t make it untrue maybe we can all challenge our assumptions that we’re being fed what we want to believe?
I think there's a reason why none of these stories are being reported by trustworthy sources. The fact that you're getting all this from social media sounds to me like their manipulation is working on you.
Another alternative could be similar to what happened in the US with Iryna Zarutska: whereby because it might inflame racial tensions and divisions it is intentionally downplayed.
One can make the argument that 30,000 people a year being charged with hate speech since Labour took government could be related to Russian interference online, but Russia can’t make our police officers arrest people for saying “I love bacon”, an objectively harmless statement. It wasn’t as if it was threatening - it was just unkind.
Do Japanese have strong rice candidates from other countries? In India, people will be displeased without their childhood rice variety, so the massive effort to transport them via truck, flight and ship within and outside the country.
the old guard also got over rolled by the algo heavy media like TikTok or X... they don't effectively engage on these channels. young Japanese people don't own TVs
and get an idea of the mish-mash of policies they put foward and their 'we're not racists we just like Japanese people more than foreigners' kind of rhetoric
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT4vY_SJimE
If you have to preface most of your speech and repeatedly say "we are not racists" then you know what the issue is. Blaming the other instead of looking at your own issues.
I've lived in Japan a long time; working in IT, I pay all my taxes, speak fluent Japanese and follow the rules like everyone else.
From what I can gather this is the issues she lays out:
1. The rice shortage is due to shipping Japanese rice overseas plus the foreigners eating too much of it... This in fact is due to government protectionism and they should be fighting against the LDP not some tourists in the country for a week.
2. Foreigners are buying up lots of apartment buildings and raising the rent. There have been some high-profile cases of Chinese nationals buying apartment buildings and doing this. I agree with taking some action on this - I think it's an easy fix to have a non-resident tax similar to what Singapore does (I believe theirs is %60)
3. Socioeconomic forces have made it impossible for women to stay at home with a child. Not sure kicking out all the foreigners would help this at all, seems like an issue with the stagnant wages and high taxes in Japan more than anything.
4. Foreign students are going to university in Japan and getting large scholarships / room and board paid by the government. Don't have much of an opinion on this one.
The main issue I have with their party is rolling all residents, tourists and the like into a single group and othering them. I agree the government needs to take action on a lot of these issues but just blaming all non-Japanese doesn't help either party.
It’s fine, but she’s saying I only want to support people I love so I don’t want to support foreigners. The implication being she cannot love anyone if they are a foreigner. Which is kind of a racist position.. but even if we give that the benefit of the doubt. Okay we can’t say who anyone should or shouldn’t love.. but then maybe we can think of some cases of people we couldn’t love, but still deserve to receive support of the society they live in. (Like we might be disgusted by the thought of two very fat ugly people having sex, but our reaction to that doesn’t make it morally wrong) We might have no interest in sports or traditional music, but even if we don’t love it we can support it, or I might not personally have any people close to me in wheel chairs but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t support accessibility policies. This is what I mean that it’s racism pretending not to be. It’s a politics of exclusion basses on racial prejudice, just with one more node on the causation graph.
I'd have imagined that the first thing that "Japan First" would imply would be to kick out the US-bases, defend against the feudatory-lord like shake-down measures by the US.
It's so strange - the "Japan First" gang infact appears to be pro-occupation (let's not pretend this is not what this is), and have even been raising funds for the likes of imperialists like Kirk.
Almost seems like it's meant to keep Japan artificially glued to the US and out of Asia, and not let geography work. Reminds me of what Brezhinsky feared about Germany / Russia getting together (and is now playing out in Europe).
Really sad though, since JICA and the prev. generations really gave Japan a very good name across Asia.
This is a disingenuous strawman. "Japan First" doesn't have to mean your naïve interpretation of some maximally xenophobic isolationism. If the US bases are good for Japan, then it's perfectly "Japan First".
Some people might disagree—certainly plenty of right-wing Japanese do disagree—but many also believe that the US alliance and the bases are critical to Japan's greater sovereignty and prosperity. Without the security treaty and cooperation, Japan would on their own against China, diverting far more funds to defense and accepting much higher security risk.
Not wanting huge numbers of foreign army base in your country is Xenophobic Isolationism ? I'm sorry; I guess I'm all hopped up on the the anti-colonial struggles of Asia (ironically, many of them, supported by Japan).
The China issue is orthogonal to all this. US-Japan relations were atleast beneficial till now (unlike say Europe's colonial possessions in Asia), but it looks like the country will first suck all its vassals dry before going down.
If by "people" they mean "the people residing there" then maybe ok. If they mean "this particular ethnicity", like it's the case here, then it's fucked up and leads to an encore of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.
The solution is pretty straight forward: give people what they want if you want to stay in power. You don’t need to go full left or full right, because at the extremes there are not that many people you need to fully please.
* Big swings to populism (even if the populist leaders are merely lying about their populist beliefs to entrench their power and set up an oligarchy) come about because of loss of legitimacy in the mainstream political spectrum.
* In the absence of a large and unexpected disaster, a loss of mainstream political legitimacy comes from mass alienation slowly attriting away the base of support.
* Japan is an import-heavy country with an educationally demanding labor market in a time of global uncertainty driving up trade costs across the board and impacting people's available cognitive energy budget. Under such circumstances, I'd be shocked if Sanseito hasn't already collaborating with AfD for a while.
Everyone is so pissed at each other. Let have a World War. This time it will surely resolve all of the issues. If not, some subsequent Civil Wars will do the trick.
We do not want world war. We want good health care, good food and 4-day work weeks. Just chill out & enjoy life. Time is short.
More than happy if we can get an island and turn it into a free-for-all arena and then all you war mongers can go get it out of your system. Leave the rest of us in peace.
>Everyone is so pissed at each other. Let have a World War. This time it will surely resolve all of the issues. If not, some subsequent Civil Wars will do the trick.
Nobody needs/wants war. That's never the solution to our problems.
OP isnt even correct. Japan has loads of crisis level problems, but the 'ruling party' would win the election if it happened today.
It’ll all come to a head at some point. It’s only a matter of the nation’s ruling class being able to direct the anger elsewhere rather than to themselves. All that anger and desperation needs an outlet.
I think the LDP has been in crisis for quite some time, and hasn’t recovered from the crisis. The fact of the matter is that voters are deeply unhappy with the corruption scandal, and the persistent inability to handle even basic issues like the cost of living increasing, energy price increasing, and the rice shortage.
Voter apathy is also greater with younger people, because as most of my friends have expressed, many feel overshadowed by older voters.
In other words, the crisis has been ongoing since the original corruption scandal broke, and the ineffective governance has reiterated this.
Has the LDP ever not been "in crisis", since the end of the real estate bubble last century?
I was going to say something like that.
I am not knowledgeable about Japanese politics but I swear this is a narrative I hear constantly.
A Japanese commentator on a place I follow elsewhere remarked that the single biggest fault in party politics are the politicians who think the international market that buys Japanese services are a black box for receiving national income that they never have to worry about it going away even though it's been diminishing and losing reliability for several years already. Does this reflect what you see?
Observationally, there are many systems in Japan that place disproportionate value on international income and demand. Some of them are supported by data and others are not. I think that international markets are a relatively good place for Japan to focus, but it is the case that particularly with the US levying tariffs on Japan, people are now questioning this status quo more. In the spaces I'm familiar with, there is ample market data to show overseas growth, but this mostly focuses on Japan's historical market exports, like culture and IP. Almost on a yearly basis, there is some meaningful cultural export that Japan is able to export quite effectively. Japanese companies, who previously would have licensed this to an overseas distributor or team of companies are starting to move in house. The most prominent example of this is Sony acquiring Crunchyroll, Funimation, and RightStuf, all of which contribute to Sony creating a vertically integrated anime production stack, with Aniplex owning end-to-end domestic-to-overseas production, merchandising, and distribution.
There is definitely room to be worried, but the increase in tourism (perhaps, one might refer to it as "overtourism") supports the credence that there are valuable elements of Japanese culture that have demand overseas.
I think the more you stray from traditional mainstay IP and culture exports, the more unreliable it is. Again, a notable prolific example is Nippon Steel attempting to gain profit from operating US Steel, rather than simply taking market share.
On the topic of tariffs, though, I would definitely say that many Japanese people are upset about the tariffs, first directly at the US, and second at Ishiba for not negotiating a lower tariff rate. But here the sentiment is that the tariffs themselves are not only unjustified, but also deleterious to the US-Japan relationship. Japan is rather unique in the aspect of being militarily-tethered to the US, and the US has asked it to make uncomfortable (and difficult to gain large support for) economic investments in its own JSDF for the US's benefit. Subsequently, the tariff impact makes the LDP's position quite upsetting, because the LDP failed to negotiate tariffs and more-or-less shoved the military changes through with the intention of strengthening ties with the US.
So, there are a lot of things at play, but the current economic winds and the international relationship with the US has definitely skewed people towards isolationism and made it difficult for the LDP to retain the support they have.
Not surprising after the recent severe rice shortage and there was a glut of news showing foreigners from a certain country selling hoarded bags of rice only to countrymen on social media
Wasn't that mostly because Basmati rice actually ended up becoming less expensive than Japanese rice - and so the spike in demand would basically ensure people from the Indian-subcontinent to get their rice supplies ?
(Japanese rice is very different from Indian-rice).
Care to elaborate? Not familiar.
He meant China, the usual suspect for many other social problems in Japan according to many internet gurus, was promptly named the culprit of the ongoing nation wide rice shortage and price speculation, because some of them were found to be reselling their rice stocks on Chinese social media, and mysterious Chinese were buying directly from local rice farmers sidestepping the farmers association that controls all national agricultural trade.
Oh I see, thank you.
What's even more enraging than the rise of fascism is the fact that only fascists have figured out how to be popular in the age of social media.
It takes a certain kind of person to be popular on social media. The venn diagram of both is very nearly a single circle.
This sort of rhetoric is precisely what is fueling the rise of "the other side." It's exactly like when religious conservatives were in power and proclaiming that everybody who disagreed with them was some sort of family hating, country hating, religion hating, entity. Ummm, no - I can disagree with your views without hating much of anything or anybody, but you're doing a damn fine job of projecting your own hate, thank you very much.
And it's the same thing now a days, except the roles are largely reversed. Somebody who puts the interest of their nation and the citizens of that nation first isn't a "fascist." That sort of rhetoric, let alone the sharp rise in violence against it (to say nothing of the condoning, if not outright support of such), is just driving everybody who was kind of in the middle more and more away from the 'name callers.' I think you can see this in the US where polls show independents increasingly leaning right on most issues, whereas not that long ago they tended to lean left. And given our basically 50/50 split, independents have the power to pick which side wins.
I feel politics is like this perpetual motion machine where you reach some absolute extreme on end where the side in power starts to do really dumb stuff which ends up driving people to the other side until we trend (over what feels like a ~25 year cycle) to the next opposite extreme and the cycle begins anew.
It takes a special personality to be able to see the difference between Nazis killing Jews, and Jews killing Nazis, I guess. Especially in the midst of so much propaganda. Most Germans thought they were doing the right thing to protect their country. The Nazis were all like "the Jews are killing us so this is just self-defence!" and the Jews were also like "the Nazis are killing us so this is just self-defence!". Yet, one of those statements was correct. You'd have to really pay attention to know which one was correct, because the TV (if they had TV in that era) wouldn't tell you.
Politics is a perpetual motion machine because there are always people who seek to dramatically increase their own power and will use any excuse to do so - that is a constant. What fluctuates back and forth is which excuses work - that is the apparent pendulum, but it's the same constant driving force underneath. When protecting the country is in vogue, power-seeking sociopaths will use excuses related to protecting the country. When religious freedom is in vogue, power-seeking sociopaths will use excuses related to religious freedom. When liberating the working class is in vogue, power-seeking sociopaths will use excuses related to liberating the working class. Those aren't different sides - they're just different excuses used by the same side.
I'm oddly impressed by your initial paragraph and knowledge of history. Because it's indeed completely accurate. Few are aware that the Hitler weaponized 'victimhood culture' to an extreme degree. But I'm quite confused by your conclusion, at least if you're implying what I assume you are. Charlie Kirk's entire schtick was giving people a loud platform to speak where he'd engage with them in complete civility, letting them go on monologues, and debating in a completely respectful fashion - avoiding the typical trappings of ad hominem, strawman, and so on. It was actual real debate, not the news stuff where people just scream over each other. Then he'd post the entire thing, unedited, online. Everything he was doing was literally about as much of the the opposite of fascism as you could possibly get.
You know the paradox of tolerance certainly. In it, who do you think Popper was talking about? The people happy to openly engage and debate anybody in a fair and respectful fashion? Or the people shrieking for censorship, denouncing debate, demanding people not be heard, and then going on to start murdering people over their views?
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"But we should claim the right to suppress them [intolerant ideologies] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
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Why did Charlie Kirk only ever win debates against 19-year-old college students studying things other than politics?
Putting the "interests of their nation and the citizens of that nation" first is the meaningless populist rhetoric part, that always appeals in a racist, bigoted populous (so every nation ever pretty much). That's like people suffer economically from neoliberalism, so you redirect to unrelated scapegoats, that's trivial, happened a million times.
Historically the fascist then, will use economic populist policy. That's like when Hitler built the Autobahn, you alleviate the economic grievances, support for the autocrat cements and then the real fascist stuff begins, that's when term limits go away and their enemies go in the oven.
But they don't do that economic populist part do they? These new right-wing movements in the west aren't doing this part of the equation.
Because we are now in the "interesting", novel case where the autocrats themselves are also just more neoliberals, the real power hasn't really moved an inch, like they are all paid by the same set of oligarchs, power is already fully consolidated. So I suspect nothing much will happen, it will just swing back to the center that shifted the overton window a bit more to the right in the meantime, the status quo didn't change so people are perpetually unhappy with no idea why.
> I feel politics is like this perpetual motion machine where you reach some absolute extreme on end
Yeah man! Totally! It's like when we move from Reaganomics in the 80s to Clintonomics in the 90s, from one "absolute extreme end" to the other! TF
Contemporary issues have on novel nuance you aren't considering - globalism. Many political leaders, particularly in Western democracies today, are much more at home among other globalists than amongst their own people. And these people tend to be extremely unpopular. For instance Germany's Merz's approval rating is 30%, a rating France's Macron and his 17% approval rating would love. It's extremely dysfunctional.
In the past such unpopular leaders could never have been able to maintain power. So you have this weird dissonance growing where countries are ruled by people who don't particularly care for their country, and people who don't particularly care for their leaders. The 'populist' rhetoric isn't some veiled proxy for supremacy, but simply getting rid of this really weird state of affairs. The entire point of a representative democracy is for the people who lead to be representative. And in many countries around the world, that's no longer the case.
I would take myself as an example of the problem. I am an advocate for free speech, against war/screwing around in other countries/military industrial complex, against political correctness, and strongly support equality of opportunity. In other words I'm pretty much a textbook liberal of 20 years ago, yet these values leave me far closer to contemporary "conservative" populist parties, worldwide, than to liberal parties, again - worldwide.
I find many of the values that "liberal" parties espouse now a days are rather illiberal and extremely similar to conservative policies of some 20+ years ago. Censorship, war, deplatforming, political correctness, and so on. I think we may actually be living through a 'flip' akin to what happened in the early 20th century in the US.
Populist denotes leaders who say anything the people want to hear - in other words, leaders who are very effective at propaganda. A populist will say they want to reduce the debt. People will vote for him, because they want the debt to decrease. That populist will increase the debt more than any other president in history and his followers won't find out - he'll tell them some different propaganda. He might even say he lowered the debt even though he obviously didn't.
A populist will say he supports free speech, then make it illegal for certain people to speak on TV, cut funding to universities where people are allowed to say things he doesn't like, take ownership of the largest social media platforms and ban everyone who disagrees with him, all while repeating the claim of supporting free speech.
A populist will say every other politician is corrupt and he's the only one who can end the corruption. When elected, he'll be more corrupt than anyone else ever, while proclaiming there's no corruption any more, and we have always been at war with Eastasia.
> What's even more enraging than the rise of fascism is the fact that only fascists have figured out how to be popular in the age of social media.
I'll put aside your thought-killing use the the f-word.
What's really going on is liberals (of the social and pre-market variety) has embraced a "there is no alternative" style in and attempt to collapse political politics into kind of "unipolar" political moment, where the only option is to agree with them. They has quite a lot of success for a long time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative
Well they're not wrong? The choices were fascists (they are - obviously - don't sugar coat it) and some useless non-fascist politicians. Most people would expect the majority to think that literally anything is better than fascism, but the majority doesn't think that. The majority actually voted that literally anything is better than useless do-nothings. Which is the same way Hitler got elected by the way.
Conservative populists meet people where they are and talk to their fears and dissatisfactions. 'Hey I see you're working hard but still struggling, It didn't used to be like that, and hey .. look at all these foreigners around now .. isn't so unfair this 'tax free' shopping they get to do? How come you're in your own country and struggling, but foreigners are paying less for things..' where as socially or culturally progressive side of things what ever you want to call it is more likely to start with 'hey that thing you're doing is wrong and you need to change that', even if they are in fully realised practice the more accepting and inclusive of the two..
The difference between truth and propaganda, I guess. Having the truth on your side barely matters; being able to do good propaganda is what wins elections and wars.
That’s not really the issue, it’s that fascist talking points cause uproar and thus engagement and thus gets rewarded by the social media companies.
Also, too many rich people seem to feel way too comfortable with fascism, probably thinking their wealth will insulate them from the consequences.
Nah, also radical left wing people get popular. Any radical person figure out how to be popular quickly
The representation of "radical left" (whatever that means) is no more than a drop in the bucket compared to the rise of authoritarian right-wing viewpoints in the media and especially politics.
Communist political parties practically don't exist while authoritarian right wing parties running on austerity, cracking down on personal freedoms, and spreading hate towards all sorts of out-groups are gaining mainstream appeal in a lot of the world.
Unless you're using the bastardized American definition of "radical left" where any viewpoint to the left of centre, like "our systems are crumbling, rich people should be taxed more" is labeled "radical left".
To be honest with you, I see a lot less of the Authoritarian Right than I do of the Authoritarian Left…
And as a person who does not like authoritarianism, it informs my opinion.
Well, time to get your eyesight checked maybe? If Trump sending troops to major blue cities isn't Authoritarian, I don't know what is.
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Authoritarian? Yes. Left? No.
They've been implementing austerity measures and cutting benefits for disabled people for crying out loud.
Labour are left wing.
Maybe less Left than Corbyn was, but they are a left wing socially progressive party.
That there’s legitimately no money left is caused by austerity. You can’t spend your way out when your debt to GDP ratio is far exceeding 100%. More borrowing will increase the countries interest payments and further cripple the economy.
It’s a mess. Ask your economist friends.
> I don’t know, arresting people for hate speech for writing the letter “N” on social media or being arrested for saying “I love bacon”
I can't believe you're saying this with a straight face. I really wonder how it feels living in a complete fantasy and constantly whining about made-up stuff. Truly, deeply pathetic. Grow. the. fuck. up.
Hello.
Where have you been?
Man Arrested for saying “I love bacon” at a construction site: https://x.com/tpostmillennial/status/1958224670093709319?s=4...
Police showing up to confiscate young girls phone for online speech: https://youtu.be/lVP-ysIad0I?si=g74BBHd-s1PVlu-g
The “N” letter one is hard to find due to it being a hard pattern to search unfortunately.
Edit: found it; https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPB4bmxDtNV/ or https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=591735277262669&vanity=ForTr...
(for what its worth I’m actually dubious of the truth pertaining to the last one).
I could foresee you linking to conservative rags or social media posts. Sorry, I don't let (most probably false) anecdotal "evidence" dictate my politics, unlike you.
My point still stands btw, nothing from the left equates one one thousandths of what the right is currently doing. Sending the boots to blue cities. Defunding blue states. Silencing blue voices.
But it seems like you don't care about material reality, so I'll stop wasting both our times and leave you to your sad, sad fantasy.
Instead of being obtuse, just because left wing media is not reporting it doesn’t make it untrue maybe we can all challenge our assumptions that we’re being fed what we want to believe?
Here’s the ground news article, it includes a fact check and a statement that its not been picked up by left wing media: https://ground.news/article/uk-coppers-arrest-man-for-saying...
I think there's a reason why none of these stories are being reported by trustworthy sources. The fact that you're getting all this from social media sounds to me like their manipulation is working on you.
Yes, possibly.
Another alternative could be similar to what happened in the US with Iryna Zarutska: whereby because it might inflame racial tensions and divisions it is intentionally downplayed.
One can make the argument that 30,000 people a year being charged with hate speech since Labour took government could be related to Russian interference online, but Russia can’t make our police officers arrest people for saying “I love bacon”, an objectively harmless statement. It wasn’t as if it was threatening - it was just unkind.
There is no real rice shortage, so it's more like a self-imposed rice shortage when they don't want to import foreign rice.
Do Japanese have strong rice candidates from other countries? In India, people will be displeased without their childhood rice variety, so the massive effort to transport them via truck, flight and ship within and outside the country.
I don't know!
the old guard also got over rolled by the algo heavy media like TikTok or X... they don't effectively engage on these channels. young Japanese people don't own TVs
I think its neat you can see exactly the kind of ads they are running in meta transparency tool
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...
and get an idea of the mish-mash of policies they put foward and their 'we're not racists we just like Japanese people more than foreigners' kind of rhetoric https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT4vY_SJimE
If you have to preface most of your speech and repeatedly say "we are not racists" then you know what the issue is. Blaming the other instead of looking at your own issues.
I've lived in Japan a long time; working in IT, I pay all my taxes, speak fluent Japanese and follow the rules like everyone else.
From what I can gather this is the issues she lays out:
1. The rice shortage is due to shipping Japanese rice overseas plus the foreigners eating too much of it... This in fact is due to government protectionism and they should be fighting against the LDP not some tourists in the country for a week.
2. Foreigners are buying up lots of apartment buildings and raising the rent. There have been some high-profile cases of Chinese nationals buying apartment buildings and doing this. I agree with taking some action on this - I think it's an easy fix to have a non-resident tax similar to what Singapore does (I believe theirs is %60)
3. Socioeconomic forces have made it impossible for women to stay at home with a child. Not sure kicking out all the foreigners would help this at all, seems like an issue with the stagnant wages and high taxes in Japan more than anything.
4. Foreign students are going to university in Japan and getting large scholarships / room and board paid by the government. Don't have much of an opinion on this one.
The main issue I have with their party is rolling all residents, tourists and the like into a single group and othering them. I agree the government needs to take action on a lot of these issues but just blaming all non-Japanese doesn't help either party.
Cool tip on the ad transparency, but this isn't the "ruling party".
I'm sure you're aware, but I think others will be confused by the link with no context. This is one of the "right-wing rivals".
Every country should have a government that likes their own people more than anyone else on the planet. It would be horrible to have anyone else.
The trick is defining "their own people."
It’s fine, but she’s saying I only want to support people I love so I don’t want to support foreigners. The implication being she cannot love anyone if they are a foreigner. Which is kind of a racist position.. but even if we give that the benefit of the doubt. Okay we can’t say who anyone should or shouldn’t love.. but then maybe we can think of some cases of people we couldn’t love, but still deserve to receive support of the society they live in. (Like we might be disgusted by the thought of two very fat ugly people having sex, but our reaction to that doesn’t make it morally wrong) We might have no interest in sports or traditional music, but even if we don’t love it we can support it, or I might not personally have any people close to me in wheel chairs but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t support accessibility policies. This is what I mean that it’s racism pretending not to be. It’s a politics of exclusion basses on racial prejudice, just with one more node on the causation graph.
I'd have imagined that the first thing that "Japan First" would imply would be to kick out the US-bases, defend against the feudatory-lord like shake-down measures by the US.
It's so strange - the "Japan First" gang infact appears to be pro-occupation (let's not pretend this is not what this is), and have even been raising funds for the likes of imperialists like Kirk.
Almost seems like it's meant to keep Japan artificially glued to the US and out of Asia, and not let geography work. Reminds me of what Brezhinsky feared about Germany / Russia getting together (and is now playing out in Europe).
Really sad though, since JICA and the prev. generations really gave Japan a very good name across Asia.
This is a disingenuous strawman. "Japan First" doesn't have to mean your naïve interpretation of some maximally xenophobic isolationism. If the US bases are good for Japan, then it's perfectly "Japan First".
Some people might disagree—certainly plenty of right-wing Japanese do disagree—but many also believe that the US alliance and the bases are critical to Japan's greater sovereignty and prosperity. Without the security treaty and cooperation, Japan would on their own against China, diverting far more funds to defense and accepting much higher security risk.
Not wanting huge numbers of foreign army base in your country is Xenophobic Isolationism ? I'm sorry; I guess I'm all hopped up on the the anti-colonial struggles of Asia (ironically, many of them, supported by Japan).
The China issue is orthogonal to all this. US-Japan relations were atleast beneficial till now (unlike say Europe's colonial possessions in Asia), but it looks like the country will first suck all its vassals dry before going down.
If by "people" they mean "the people residing there" then maybe ok. If they mean "this particular ethnicity", like it's the case here, then it's fucked up and leads to an encore of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.
The solution is pretty straight forward: give people what they want if you want to stay in power. You don’t need to go full left or full right, because at the extremes there are not that many people you need to fully please.
Some root cause analysis:
* Big swings to populism (even if the populist leaders are merely lying about their populist beliefs to entrench their power and set up an oligarchy) come about because of loss of legitimacy in the mainstream political spectrum.
* In the absence of a large and unexpected disaster, a loss of mainstream political legitimacy comes from mass alienation slowly attriting away the base of support.
* Japan is an import-heavy country with an educationally demanding labor market in a time of global uncertainty driving up trade costs across the board and impacting people's available cognitive energy budget. Under such circumstances, I'd be shocked if Sanseito hasn't already collaborating with AfD for a while.
I wonder what happened, printing money is not enough?
Everyone is so pissed at each other. Let have a World War. This time it will surely resolve all of the issues. If not, some subsequent Civil Wars will do the trick.
We do not want world war. We want good health care, good food and 4-day work weeks. Just chill out & enjoy life. Time is short.
More than happy if we can get an island and turn it into a free-for-all arena and then all you war mongers can go get it out of your system. Leave the rest of us in peace.
That’s the voice of reason. Unfortunately less and less want to listen to that.
Sorry best we can do in the west is liberalism with fascist characteristics.
>Everyone is so pissed at each other. Let have a World War. This time it will surely resolve all of the issues. If not, some subsequent Civil Wars will do the trick.
Nobody needs/wants war. That's never the solution to our problems.
OP isnt even correct. Japan has loads of crisis level problems, but the 'ruling party' would win the election if it happened today.
It’ll all come to a head at some point. It’s only a matter of the nation’s ruling class being able to direct the anger elsewhere rather than to themselves. All that anger and desperation needs an outlet.