Comment by shoobiedoo
Comment by shoobiedoo 12 hours ago
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
Comment by shoobiedoo 12 hours ago
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
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.
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.
The easiest thing to tap into for an uncomfortable populace is fear. Once you do that, the easiest thing to do is to redirect that fear to literally anything or anyone else. Social media is easy mode for fascism to do this the world over.
By the time you type out a subtle conversation and make a short and long term plans, the mobs will already form. The way engagement on social media works just amplifies the extremes and culls the subtlety.
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.
>Somebody who puts the interest of their nation and the citizens of that nation first isn't a "fascist."
No, but nationalism is a very common channel to rile up fascist behavior. Make the overly proud, then dehumanize whoever you want them to attack. Once they no longer see that other as a human, all ethics goes out the window.
>is just driving everybody who was kind of in the middle more and more away from the 'name callers.'
Don't act fascist if you don't want to be called one:
>Another issue grabbing national attention is rising numbers of foreign residents and visitors, which has fueled widespread anti-foreigner sentiment that sometimes turns outright xenophobic. Many argue that Japan is at risk of losing its way of life, or that Japanese workers are being edged out of jobs.
Uh huh. A familiar trend the far right takes advantage of. Blame the foreigners than take hostile action towards them.
My only surprise is that the job market in Japan is this impacted. I guess seven a bad economy can dwarf the under-population crisis.
> 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.
In January, yes. By now, independents in the US have already soured. Maybe they are still right wing, but they realize Far-Right actions aren't it.
I don't understand how you can say things like this when we live in a time where you have people trying to imprison their political opponents (and nearly succeeding), assassinate their political opponents (and again nearly succeeding), and even murdering people who just want to publicly debate, which you then had their base either apathetic if not outright supportive of. And it's the exact people calling everybody else fascists.
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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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.
> 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 truth helps under an audience of educated peers. You can't easily lie to your fellow congressman, nor a judge and lawyer.
Of course, that's nothing money can't fix.
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.
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).