Shinzo Abe, your new Japanese prime minister

from the standpoint of wanting to live in a world of fewer things to worry about, it's not so great.

well it's exactly the moving away from that stance that has brought out the "nationalist" labels. i understand, in broad terms at least, the cycle that japan's going through, and it seems close to inevitable. (germany kind of sublimated its neo-nationalism into the reunification effort, although there's still some strong strains of militant nationalism kicking around in the hinterlands.) and, you know, the u.s. isn't in any position to lecture anyone else on the perils of nationalistic hubris. still, resurgent japanese patriotism doesn't thrill me any more than anyone else's resurgent patriotism. i don't think japan's a big threat to invade manchuria, and like i said above, a more bristly japan vis a vis china and korea has some real advantages for outside states.

also, of course, japan's pacifism and easy accession to the west have been easy to exaggerate from the outside, because of how much they flattered our own sense of accoplishment (we made them just like us!), when the reality has been a lot more complicated.

While nationalism on a pre-1945 scale is obviously just NOT going to happen again in Japan, there is however a perennial, underlying jingoism that leaves a bad taste in the mouth, such as regional leaders such as Mayor Ishihara in Tokyo blaming (in effect, all) foreigners for (in effect, all) rising crime, the ostrich-like insistence that everything and everyone non-Japanese in the world is defined only by its foreignness, and the daily routine of vans blaring out inflammatory right-wing comments.

Certain contributors here have written in detail about how Japan's sheer otherness makes it quite justified in resisting the corrupting influence of 'our' foreign-ness but that's the 3D, real world truth.

The story is old, I know, but it goes on.

but this seems inevitable as long as the events remain in living memory. for people who were alive at the time, or who grew up listening to the people who were alive at the time, of course that lingers. we're moving out of the living-memory era for wwii, so naturally some of that fades. of course it's "normal" that japan would want to stop doing penance and self-abnegation. otoh, as someone who thinks that more countries could do with some penance and self-abnegation, i'm not gonna be exactly thrilled to see anyone rejoin the ranks of the chest-puffy and militaristic.

Certain contributors here have written in detail about how Japan's sheer otherness makes it quite justified in resisting the corrupting influence of 'our' foreign-ness but that's the 3D, real world truth.

This is also OTM.

It's only been 60 years. Not a hell of a long time, considering.

It all comes down to the fact that Japan has never properly apologized for it's actions in WWII. I know that various PMs have at times made vague overtures in that direction, followed by a bow or two, but Koizumi's insistence on visiting Yasukuni shrine shows where they are really at. Japan hasn't shown the world that it is truly ready to be a "normal" country again yet. Japan never went through the introspection and soul-searching that Germany did after 1945, and now want everyone to just forget about it because apparently enough time has passed, and it's ancient history. 60 years isn't that long. There are still a lot of people in all the countries involved, who remember the war. The question of "How did we let this happen?" was simply never asked, let alone addressed, so why should those that suffered at their hands accept their word that it won't again? I don't deny for a second that Korea, and especially China, use this as a convenient excuse to avoid addressing their own domestic problems, but Japan's failure to deal with the whole thing properly, continues to provide them with this excuse. Does anyone really believe for a second that France, England and the United States would interpret a German Chancellor's visit to a shrine commemorating dead Nazis as an "internal matter"?

Abe was (very) arguably the "best" of a really poor bunch, but I can't see Japan prospering under his rule.

This is correct and troublesome, particularly as Shinzo Abe is another supporter of the Yasukuni Shrine, and has claimed that "there are different perceptions of who did what and why."

"He thinks seriously about Japan's national interests," said Ryohei Saito, 65, who was visiting Yasukuni. "Japan has been too weak till now, so we need to be more assertive. I think Abe can build a strong Japan."

This doesn't make sense. Japan is a powerhouse and has the world's second-biggest economy at the moment, as well as being increasingly influential on the world stage.

According to Wiki, in a recently published best-selling book by Shinzo Abe, he claims that Class-A War Criminals who were convicted in the Tokyo Tribunal after World War II were not war criminals in the eye of domestic law. His denial of Japanese sexual slavery is also abhorrent.

This appointment is a step backwards from my point of view.

FIRST

FIRST

FIIIIRST!!!!!

http://www.ritilan.com/archives/images/blogimages/hirohitomed.jpg

And Hirohito is just the most well known figure reinstated after WWII. Many others were as well. See Occupation "Reverse Course."

Fundamentally, I think Momus is OTM.

http://www.newleftreview.net/?page=article&view=2625

Reaction to events in China has played a central part in modern Japanese thinking, from the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate down to the present day. Japan’s forced industrialization in the late 19th century was a direct response to the sight of a weak and prostrate China carved up by the Western powers. For fifty years after the 1895 Sino-Japanese War, much of what Japan did abroad was premised on attempts to forestall the rise of an independent Chinese power, while buttressing its own. Japan’s long postwar acquiescence to the status of an American protectorate is in part, as we have seen, a matter of following the path of least resistance. But it is also due to the belief, held by much of Tokyo’s political elite, that the alternative to American protection is incorporation into a new Chinese Empire as a tributary state. As Japan’s economic dependence on China deepens, the rationale for an American counterweight becomes all the more obvious; to Beijing of course, as well as to Tokyo.

This may explain some of the theatrics of Sino-Japanese relations over the past few years. To outsiders, the spectacle of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, of visits by prime ministers to shrines celebrating Japan’s war efforts, of brouhahas over the wording of a few passages in school history texts, can seem bizarre. But in a region where politics has long been practised as theatre, the striking of these poses suggests underlying messages: ‘Do not confuse our investments with tribute; we will not fall into your orbit’. ‘We are prepared to make things difficult for you—very difficult—if you continue to acquiesce in the hegemonic ambitions of an external power in blocking our return to our historical pre-eminence in Asia’. Increasing world-political tensions under the Bush administration have only accentuated these stances. The Chinese know that the radical foreign-policy intellectuals who assumed positions of influence in the Bush White House had identified China as the new American enemy and were spoiling for a fight, until their attention was diverted by Osama bin Laden. While Japan hastened to prove itself the perfect ‘ally’ in the Bush war on terror, to its neighbours the country increasingly looked like an American patsy that could never be trusted.

...

Koizumi himself is a case in point. The office of the prime minister is exceptionally weak in Japan; a prime minister must not only be supported but guided by one or another element of the bureaucracy to accomplish almost anything. But the very position itself and its de jure powers allow for wilfulness, particularly when the usual restraints collapse. In this case, the restraint should have come from a Foreign Ministry that in the past had been able to intervene with some of Koizumi’s equally nationalist predecessors. But a demoralized Ministry still reeling from events early in Koizumi’s term has been unable to prevent him from wreaking havoc on Japan’s relations with its nearest neighbours. They cannot halt his stubborn insistence on demonstrating that he is above any outside influence by paying obeisance to the institutional embodiment of the darkest chapter of Japan’s past. Many other elements in Japan’s elite circles, particularly within the business community, are appalled by Koizumi’s intransigence, but they have no way to reach him. And it will be politically difficult for his successor to stop the visits; too many Japanese now would regard this as backing down to foreign pressure. Koizumi has created a problem where none existed: an inevitable loss of face for someone, somewhere, no matter how things turn out—dangerous in a region where such things are taken with great seriousness.

Personally, I see a large gap between the Japan that accepted and cooperated with American occupation (and the civilians who were glad to see the war end and generally blamed THEIR government for it) and the current batch of nationalists who seem more enamored with Kita Ikki's (kind of bizarrely unrealistic) visions for Japan's future (which Japanese WWII military leaders were kind of aspiring to in ways) than based in any actual reality of the pre, during, or post-WWII situation. Remember that for fifty years the Japanese Constitution (essentially written by Americans and forced through the Diet) has been unopposed, including Article IX. Japan has bounced between accepting Western/foreign ideals and practices and utterly rejecting them since the Meiji Restoration--realistically Abe will probably do as little as Koizumi or any other Japanese PM and this is not really a huge issue outside of regional politics.

Abe seems like a good choice. And the WW2 angle the papers take is as irrelevant as discussing Angela Merkel and referring to the Gestapo et al.

Except that Angela Merkel isn't the granddaughter of a convicted war criminal and she doesn't insist on going 'round to Nazi shrines.

Jon is basically OTM regarding Hirohito. And you can turn this around onto the US all you want, but we do actually own up to My Lai, as opposed to Japanese attitudes toward Nanjing.

Basically, this isn't a big deal re: Japan's domestic politics/policies toward the West, but will make regional diplomacy even more strained and does make me wonder how the US is planning on continuing this "well, Japan and China should deal with N. Korea" stance. IMO of course.

Geoff's linked article is pretty awesome.

Actually 200,000 government officials, including 180,000 military officers, were purged from the Japanese government after WWII.

And a great number of those officials found their way back into government through U.S. supported political parties. Once again, see "Reverse Course." This book is considered pretty authoritive on the topic:

http://images.bestwebbuys.com/muze/books/69/0393046869.jpg

well yeah, and obv. that's why the u.s is soft-peddling criticism of japan (tut-tutting at yasukuni etc. but not really making much of a deal about it). it's really just an evolution of the role japan has served for us for the last 60 years, as a regional hedge against china (and korea). china and korea are changing, and obviously japan's going to change too -- and better to have all three of them more suspicious of each other than united in suspicion of us. (exactly the formula that iraq was supposed to give us in the middle east vis-a-vis iran and syria, but oops.)

actual conflict between any of them seems like a very remote possibility at the moment (although, you know, give it 80 years and check back).

curious: what is the status of japan's relations with vietnam and indochina in general?

"The whole Germany and Japan comparison is a strawman. The situations are not comparable. Can we just drop that?"

I don't think that the comparison to Germany is irrelevant. Especially in light of how the relationship between the former Allies and Axis countries in Europe have evolved over the past 60 years when compared to east Asia.

"And where's America's soul-searching for the appalling fire-bombing of Tokyo, and the dropping of two atomic bombs on two civilian cities?"

I think the Americans have done a fair bit of soul searching, especially over the atomic bombs. 6 decades later people are still arguing over whether or not it was the right thing to do. And Momus, Nagasaki was a non-military target. Hiroshima was not.

Make that ‘former’:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/world/asia/shinzo-abe-resign-japan.html

ummmm...???

BREAKING: Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was shot at a campaign event Friday, broadcaster NHK reported, citing Japanese police sources. NHK reported Abe was showing no vital signs. At least two gunshots were heard on-site.

More to come. https://t.co/vDgmlt99UQ

— Michelle Ye Hee Lee (@myhlee) July 8, 2022

Frightening.

lot of hot takes in this thread

Here's FNN reporting the gunman as a former SDF member:https://t.co/sqLQuK2XGb

— Tobias Harris (@observingjapan) July 8, 2022

lot of hot takes in this thread

how do you do fellow alive people pic.twitter.com/EZw9klXrLf

— Summer of Brandon (@punishedhoover) July 8, 2022

for UKpol watchers, our new chancellor just tweeted that Abe was dead, then deleted the tweet.

New UK finance minister deletes tweet erroneously saying Japan's Abe had died https://t.co/wS79yVvWoo pic.twitter.com/N5D0zVrLIn

— Reuters (@Reuters) July 8, 2022

It’s probably just premature, saw reports saying he was unresponsive

Abe or Nadhim Zahawi?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXHTX1eXEAMOK8h?format=jpg&name=medium

Zahawi has always been braindead. Dril on the other hand is a true prophet.

it has been confirmed he has died now.

Is Zahawi back to being Chancellor, as that Reuters headline says?

he didn't quit in his letter yesterday, so still officially chancellor.

just curious as to whether he shared classified information or saw things online and came to his own premature conclusion, which sort of incompetence is he showing off here?

Zahawi also referred to Abe as the Japanese PM rather than former in the deleted tweet.

Mere details! Now the former former PM anyway.

I think everyone was saying he’s dead hours ago, but Japan apparently has reporting restrictions around these events. Anyway, Japanese Reuters is confirming he’s dead now.

安倍元首相が死去＝報道 pic.twitter.com/CD2MjcI3aM

— ロイター (@ReutersJapan) July 8, 2022

People openly joking about this (saw and liked one funny tweet about it, which came from Abe's supposed denial of Japanese crimes during WWII) on twitter. This violence is ofc all around us, one day on 'our' side, the next on 'theirs', with no clue on how to even begin to undo it.

Honest Abe.

Fascist shot, boohoo

I’d only seen bits and pieces re motive- homemade gun suggests planning ahead but apparently the shooter was looking to shoot a religious leader who wasn’t there (?) but saw Abe, who was on an unscheduled stop and shot him because he was “dissatisfied” (??) but then in police custody was like “actually I have no problem with his politics” (???) so none of it sounds like anything rather than several coincidences given info so far. The Japanese far right have been on this since the moment it happened, trying to make out the shooter is ethnically Korean or Chinese. Things will just get worse as a result of this, they usually do.

the US gun lobby will be saying you see what happens when countries have strict gun control laws if Abe had been packing a glock .. etc.

All my Abes gone

I got you Abe

Seems the guy had a stockpile of weapons, and had a grudge against Abe (last part seems kind of obvious I guess).

people keep saying this is something that usually only happens in America, but I can't even remember the last time one of our former prime ministers was assassinated.

New david peace plot just dropped

nah in America it's not the powerful who use their status to oppress millions who are threatened with gun violence, it's schoolchildren

the only way this chartbook could have come out this quickly is if Tooze knew the Abe assassination was coming https://t.co/R96LiVLp2e

— BO (@bo_austin_) July 8, 2022

hah hah, his grandad who was a Soviet spy would be so proud of him for being involved in a shady assassination program.

I read that and was like “Abe’s war criminal granddad was spying for the Soviets while he was committing atrocities in Manchuria?!” but ofc you meant Tooze.

That's a lot of likes.

I feel sympathy for Abe. I publicly expressed my sympathy in a post today on Chinese social media Weibo. The post garnered 86,000 likes in just over an hour and is one of the hottest posts about Abe's incident on the Chinese social media. pic.twitter.com/BB7kPGlsau

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) July 8, 2022

Very normal reactions out there.

of all the people you could falsely ID for a political assassination, the guy who directed Metal Gear Solid has got to be the funniest. https://t.co/rDgYAY5xw2

— レズとしてのPS1開始音 (@janusrose) July 8, 2022

US: 400,000,000 guns, 0 dead politicians

Japan: 1 gun, 1 dead prime Minister

we should be absolutely embarrassed

— 🐞 (@klssyourenemy) July 8, 2022

gabby giffords not finding that one so funny

Steve Scalise evens it out.

rip in peace Shinzo Abe, you may have chosen some weird hills to die on throughout your life, but at least you're dead. 🪦 pic.twitter.com/4vMTw4qt8r

— 영노 (@yeongno3) July 8, 2022

right it's not too soon now.. lol I really don't gaf he got murdered and I don't even care about the wider implications of this - it's not hyperbolic to say he was a fascist cunt. The only thing I'm thinking about is the disparity between the Real Japan here, where someone has to construct some crude DIY elephant gun and the hard-boiled urban crime fiction version like in A Dog in Water where the characters seem to have no shortage of high powered pistols and AK47's etc

The only thing I'm thinking about is why someone would murder the leader after they retired.

how do you do fellow alive people

😂😂😆🤣🧑‍🌾🐅🛸

Greek TV took the Kojima as assassin tweet seriously.

Greek news channel using pictures of Hideo Kojima wearing a Soviet ushanka, Joker t-shirt and standing next to a photo of Che Guevara - saying he’s Shinzo Abe’s assassin!? pic.twitter.com/JiwZKtA7pJ

— The Kavernacle (@TheKavernacle) July 8, 2022

seriously hoping this turns out to be the work of the Phantom Thieves

Shinzo Abe Assassination Prompts Americans To Wonder What It Would Be Like If Someone Got Shot In U.S. https://t.co/S2aISqwag5 pic.twitter.com/VHQhHv1Ukn

— The Onion (@TheOnion) July 8, 2022

https://t.co/dBYrgz0w4G pic.twitter.com/mOSXzaCJBX

— okay gooner (@jroy35848) July 8, 2022

"high powered pistols and AK47s etc"

Wasn't it a cliche of cyberpunk fiction that the Yakuza circa the distant future of 2015 would be armed with monofilament katanas, or something like that? Or they would be able to make people's brains explode by filling them full of data. Hundreds of megabytes of data.

I'm trying to remember Johnny Mnemonic, which had hidden blades and so forth. Which raises the question of whether a home-made shotgun is more or less advanced than a monofilament katana, given that on the one hand it has greater range, but on the other hand it's much less futuristic.

I recently bought a pair of 16mb memory sticks to go in my sampler. They came in a little case with a product leaflet because when they were new 32mb of memory was a heck of a thing. That was a long time ago.

A Chinese club

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣pic.twitter.com/2TmzkdqVlX

— Chinese Government Shitposter (@ChineseBot2B) July 9, 2022

lol

This took a turn

A Japanese media outlet has broken the silence and released the name of the religious group that Abe's assassin has a grudge against. It's the Unification Church. https://t.co/0opIinAx2Q

— Jeffrey J. Hall 🇯🇵🇺🇸 (@mrjeffu) July 9, 2022

Kodansha's business news site is reporting that Tetsuya Yamagami shot and killed Shinzo Abe because he believed Abe had promoted the Moonies (Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church), which Yamagami says bankrupted his mom. Quite the rabbithole here. https://t.co/NxN3b9rOkL

— 🌴 🐺🍹Matthew Phelan 🏝️📡 (@CBMDP) July 9, 2022

That's . . . interesting.

They have a media presence here in the U.S., through The Washington Times and perhaps others as well. You wouldn't know the paper was connected with the Unification Church unless you dug. Kind of like some of the more outré tenets of Scientology.

That splinter Sanctuary Church group, the ones who worship with AR-15s, bought a big tract of land here in Tennessee. For a training center/retreat or something.

I didn’t know about their alliance with Falun Gong and other “new religions.” Even if that’s not the direct cause of this shooting, it’s an interesting development.

at the end of the june, as part of a television election debate, kurokawa atsuhiko of the nhk party, which is against the nhk, despite the name, demanded the liberal democratic party representative on the panel clarify abe's links with the unification church. he then sang a parody song to the tune of "ymca" about abe's grandfather being a cia agent. he broke a taboo.

the liberal democratic party maintained power because of their position at the commanding heights of a rapidly growing economy; they could hold onto regional politics by doling out contracts. that changed with economic restructuring and electoral reform in the 1990s and 2000s. this led to the liberal democratic party falling from power in the mid 2000s. they don't actually have a base. new religious groups are one of the ways to hold majorities. the liberal democratic party plays ball and they deliver votes.

the most visible example of this is the rise of komeito, the political wing of a buddhist group called soka gakkai. okawa ryuho, the reincarnation of el cantare, runs his own political wing of happy science. but new religions do not need to directly launch parties. there are factions within the liberal democratic party that can be influenced. this is the secret of nippon kaigi, the big bad nationalist cabal. their conservative politics have most recently been driven by funding and influence from new religious groups. like the unification church. they both benefit each other. it's complicated.

the history goes back quite far. the unification church could be described as liberal democratic party patrons, i believe, linked to kishi nobusuke (the cia grandfather that kurokawa mentioned) and sasakawa ryoichi, who helped run the world anti-communist league after getting off war crimes charges. sun myung moon was on board with the anti-communist program, as well, and he could be a go-between for various projects around free asia. so, there's that complicated history, which i'm mostly hinting at. and then they can also deliver votes when the liberal democratic party gets in trouble.

it's hard for the liberal democratic party to crack down on unsavory activity by new religious groups. there are reasons for this more complicated than protecting grassroots organizations that bring in votes. cracking down on aum was done very carefully, even after they started killing people. the americans left behind a constitution that is quite strict about these sorts of things and there are barriers to screwing with it.

there is anger at groups like the unification church and anger at the fact that they are difficult to control. the shooter's mother supposedly went deep in debt making donations. if he got it together to lash out, the target doesn't totally make sense. but close enough.

i'm only a casual observer. but bigger picture, i think there's not much impact. i think abe's own imagemaking confuses things. it was clever, the way he did this, using his conservative bonafides to push a mostly pro-business agenda that included initiatives like bringing in more foreign workers than ever before. he was a charismatic standard bearers for conservative social values, so he was favored by grassroots organization, like the shinto shrine association (the unification church, too). his interest in cranking defense spending was not out of some hereditary disgust with communism. the japanese defense budget has risen since 1960, whoever was in charge, whatever was happening in the world. other than that, his factional power might have served as a barrier to repudiating his particular brand of economic thinking (this is why kishida's new capitalism ended up so thoroughly diluted, according to recent reports that had abe lieutenants directly intervening). his mishandling of pandemic controls was a black mark on his record, which might be remembered more for a delayed scheme to send ill-fitting cloth masks to everyone in japan than a fat relief check. but abe could tap the grassroots. he made a lot of friends at home and abroad. he couldn't be discarded.

some reporting from overseas i've read seems to imagine the liberal democratic party as headless or having its heart cut out. that doesn't seem true. kishida has power. he isn't a placeholder. he didn't luck his way into running the show. it's arguable that there is going to be less factional friction but in the end, the liberal democratic party still looks the same. the defense budget will go up, as it always does, but i would put money on kishida continuing to downplay constitutional change, even though the election tonight makes it a possibility. but... i don't think it means much. we might get a new cyber security bill out of it or something, just because those are always useful and it looks like he's doing something. my ability to predict japanese politics is limited, though.

See the Libertarians are 2nd.

Japan,

Upper House election, national PR popular vote, 52% reporting:

LDP (Conservative): 36.4% (-2.4)
Ishin (Libertarian): 14.0% (+1.6)
CDP (Centre-left): 12.5% (-)
Komei (Centre-right): 12.2% (-0.4)

+/- vs. 25% reporting

➤https://t.co/qFPmJRw7nE#参院選2022 pic.twitter.com/FIe3gKTiLH

— Asia Elects (@AsiaElects) July 10, 2022

he was a charismatic standard bearers for conservative social values

Photo of #ShinzoAbe in a training jet 731 sparked outrage in #Korea and #China, as #Japan's Unit 731 was an Auschwitz equivalent which slaughtered hundreds of thousands, including in chemical and biological experiments. Abe was an imperial history denier. https://t.co/Rqn7TMen3J pic.twitter.com/q3hAXV1x7j

— tim anderson (@timand2037) July 9, 2022

he was hated in China, and not by accident, he would always make a point of trolling the CCP, for example

🇯🇵🇹🇼🍍 Abe making one of his statements last year — after China's politically-motivated import ban of Taiwanese pineapples, the ex-PM posted this photo with a box of Taiwanese pineapples in support. It's the kind of thing people in Taiwan will remember him for. https://t.co/RSb93T1yf7

— Melissa Chan (@melissakchan) July 8, 2022

Idc about his beef with the CCP, that’s hardly unusual, care about how ordinary Chinese and Koreans felt about him. From what i can tell, rightly despised?

from a Chinese pov the two things are very difficult to disentangle, the CCP is thought of as a parent and criticism of the government is taken personally.

Not to undermine the atrocities committed in Auschwitz, but from reading the Wiki, Unit 731 seems way worse? (Not a competition, I know, I guess it's hard to imagine how low humanity can go)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_Manchukuo

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2013/05/14/politics/Abes-pose-resurrects-horrors-of-Unit-731/2971580.html

All this indicates that he is more than just a "standard bearer of conservative social values," unless Trump and Abe are now the standard?

think from the vantage point of the UK we can understand a society where drawing attention to the terrible things your country has done in its most successful era is treated as unpatriotic

or "successful" but ykwim

the most visible example of this is the rise of komeito, the political wing of a buddhist group called soka gakkai. okawa ryuho, the reincarnation of el cantare, runs his own political wing of happy science. but new religions do not need to directly launch parties.

Soka Gakkai also runs Soka University here in Southern California.

I think Tina Turner was into Sokagakkai for a while...

"standard bearer for conservative values"

"he denied war crimes!"

both are true.

there's no reason to think he didn't genuinely believe in the various causes he promoted but his craven nature, thorough corruption, and misanthropy has to be taken into account, too (i can't find a linkable version of that image of him posing with huckabee and a yakuza capo, but imagine that inserted here). i wouldn't write off letting the religious activists go nuts, textbook editing, giving approval to continued harassment of zainichi koreans, and denial of war crimes as merely fundraising platforms. it's deeper and more wicked. rolling into the 1990s and 2000s, since the 1955 system that guaranteed liberal democratic party majorities was altered and the developmental economy that paid out the regions was switched to neoliberal restructuring, nurturing far right constituencies was an alternative to delivering material benefits. the nationalist rhetoric and family values requires three decades of decline, prolonged by economic restructuring. nurturing those shoots of hatred in the soil of three lost decades created the conditions for a guy blasting ball bearings at him out of a trash gun.

i was commenting on what his untimely exit means. i think it's inconsequential at this point. maybe i wasn't absolutely coherent. if the debate here is over whether he was evil or not evil, definitely the former.

from happier times, a collection of instances of the prime minister pronouncing things "juicy"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7wQUOjSqhc

that image of him posing with huckabee and a yakuza capo

maybe the funniest thing about the shinzo abe assassination is that it worked - not only did the dude kill abe, but the widespread reporting on his motivations led to resignations and the establishment of an agency to crack down on the moonies' scams lmao

— trashlord confessional (@goblinpunk9) August 17, 2022

The assassin has shown us the way.

Absolutely crazy that a popular former leader gets assassinated and the whole of society concludes "you can't be doing that but otoh he kind of had a point" https://t.co/MgTL1Q5goH

— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) August 31, 2022

direct action works

for a long time Libs have been telling us assassination doesn't work but i say we haven't tried hard enough