Comment by somenameforme
Comment by somenameforme 11 hours ago
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.