7 ms·

A good man? Do people here read anything non-tech related? Shinzo Abe was a world-renown revisionist who tried to turn Japan back into a far-right, ultra-racis

A good man? Do people here read anything non-tech related? Shinzo Abe was a world-renown revisionist who tried to turn Japan back into a far-right, ultra-racist country. Look, you guys are super smart with computers, but stop this absolute nonsense. https://jacobin.com/2017/03/abe-nippon-kaigi-japan-far-right https://jacobin.com/2017/03/abe-nippon-kaigi-japan-far-right

sixQuarks 4y ago
syockit 4y ago
- fithisux 4y ago
  Far-left? He was trying to reverse the clock for Japan.
  - xupybd 4y ago
    I think he was talking about the magazine the article was written in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(magazine) "Jacobin is a magazine aimed at the American Left based in New York. It offers socialist perspectives on politics, economics and culture. As of 2021, the magazine reported a paid print circulation of 75,000 and over 3 million monthly visitors" "Jacobin has been variously described as democratic socialist, socialist and Marxist." I think it's fair to say they are Far-left by definition. Unfortunately that is often used as a slur but I think it is accurate in this case.
  - kapp_in_life 4y ago
    The Jacobin is a far left rag.
- new299 4y ago
  I don't think much of what it written in that article is up for debate? You can check his wikipedia page for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe#Political_positions_and_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe#Political_positions... "Abe is affiliated with the openly ultranationalist organization Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference). He is considered a right-wing populist and ultra-conservative within the LDP, and some media and books have referred to him as a far-right politician" There were also numerous scandals during his tenure, most of which were not widely reported outside Japan... but, an example is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritomo_Gakuen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritomo_Gakuen "In March 2018, it was revealed that the finance ministry (with finance minister Tarō Asō at its head) had falsified documents presented to the parliament in relation to the Moritomo Gakuen scandal, to remove 14 passages implicating Abe."
  - mellosouls 4y ago
    I don't think much of what it written in that article is up for debate? You can check his wikipedia page for example: Political pages on Wikipedia are notorious for left-leaning editorial domination and are not a useful measure in the way you intend.
    - rtpg 4y ago
      You can go look at primary sources. Nippon Kaigi I’d a nationalist organization, plain and simple. It’s public record he’s in it. Moritomo Gakuen as well. What source of info would you believe in summarizing Shinzo Abe’s policy? The Economist? Basically any in depth coverage of Abe would go into this (not to judge but to state the current political conditions in Japan) so it’s findable
      - mellosouls 4y ago
        To be clear, I'm not taking a position - just pointing out the problems with wiki referencing for impartiality.
hunterb123 4y ago
if you do want to toss out such a strong accusation with a link, please choose the strongest points in your mind from that terrible article. edit: half of this conversation was nuked. wonderful flagging system. my comments were simply asking people to expand on their accusations.
- plaguepilled 4y ago
  Criticising a previous leader is racist? Or is criticising pro-militarisation racist? Please explain Edit: there was a comment below stating that the GP was slandering Abe (which is false: slander means false and malicious statements. It cannot be labelled false if there is a pretense for the claim, and if you think that comment is malicious... That's a touch delicate, no?). The comment also said GP was picking a 'classy time' to make such a remark, which is also perhaps not accurate. GP seems to be responding to OP, who stated known falsehoods. I'm that sense, it is not a 'poor time to say that' because it is a correction.
  - hunterb123 4y ago
    - plaguepilled 4y ago
      Slander? Wat? There is a pretense to support the claim, it is not slander if it is supported. The timing relates to OPs harmful take. GP even addressed OP directly.
      - hunterb123 4y ago
elefanten 4y ago
The irony of lamenting people's reading material and then posting a Jacobin article the reads like a wall of text internet rant with some tabloid scuttlebutt sprinkled throughout. This is NOT a serious take on Abe. Centrist and professional IR academics laugh at the narrative that he's a fascist. A take that lives up to your handle. Edit: example from (center)left leaning academic economist blogger that speaks specifically to the racist/fascist take you propagated here. https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-japan-that-abe-shinzo-made https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-japan-that-abe-shinzo-...
- plaguepilled 4y ago
  Jacobin's tone sucks, but by your logic you should be ashamed to link noahpinion, right? He's an academic but that doesn't automatically obviate him from being scorned for his style.
- deleted 4y ago
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- eganist 4y ago
  To back the consensus opinion that he's a revisionary nationalist, here's one analysis: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53950704 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53950704 Still, assassination is the wrong way to bring about change. As of now, he seems to still be alive; I hope he recovers, and I doubly hope that regardless, Japan is spared the chaos that sometimes follows assassinations.
- noSyncCloud 4y ago
- wisemang 4y ago
  At the very least he’s an apologist for Japanese war crimes. Also pretty fascist imo but whatever, I’m also just some rando on the internet who could cherry pick articles to support whatever narrative I was looking for or am already biased towards. Lol substack. Anyways how about the far-right ultra-nationalist party he was an advisor to[0]? I wonder if it was a pissed off Ryukyu native[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Kaigi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Kaigi [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/7bd3ee/this-one-island-is-the-centre-of-increasing-tensions-between-china-japan-and-the-us https://www.vice.com/en/article/7bd3ee/this-one-island-is-th...
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at-fates-hands 4y ago
>> Japan back into a far-right, ultra-racist country. I was under the impression from friends who taught English there and other family members who worked there in various positions, this is how the country has always been - exclusionary to outsiders, racist and very intolerant to outsiders. Was there a time (I lost track of the country after the first dot com bust in 2001) that the country wasn't like that? I'm genuinely curious.
- rayiner 4y ago
anshumankmr 4y ago
I haven't read an in depth dive of Japan's internal politics but he helped my country with some major investments, which has in turn helped some of my close relatives get good well paying jobs. Also, generally I have a lot of respect for Japanese people in general due to having met and worked with some people from there.
- anshumankmr 4y ago
  That being said his historical revisionism seems like a damn shame. I personally didn't know about that. However, I don't take all of the claims made by Jacobin seriously. Even here it tries to paint Japan trying to create it's own army as a bad thing when it is clearly in response to territorial aggressiveness from China.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    He did start a trade war with South Korea over the whole comfort women issue, when the countries had started off being closer allies. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/04/shinzo-abe-japan-south-korea-war-nationalism/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/04/shinzo-abe-japan-south-... > All of this drove South Korea-Japan relations to the brink, and then Abe’s most egregious misstep marched the relationship off the cliff.All of this drove South Korea-Japan relations to the brink, and then Abe’s most egregious misstep marched the relationship off the cliff. In order to settle the historical score, he weaponized the two countries’ trade relationship. In October 2018, South Korea’s Supreme Court issued the long-delayed opinion that Japanese corporations that used slave labor from Korea during World War II must pay reparations to surviving slave laborers. (The delay was in part because since 2013, Japan’s foreign ministry had been issuing barely disguised threats for the South Korean government to “respond appropriately” to the pending case, and the quasi-authoritarian Park Geun-hye government acquiesced and pressured the Supreme Court to delay the ruling in contravention of the most basic principles of separation of powers.) In response to the court’s opinion—which ordered the reparation of $89,000, a negligible amount for Japan’s largest corporations—Abe declared a trade war. The Abe administration announced export control against South Korea for three critical chemicals used in high-end display and semiconductor manufacturing, immediately after the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, in which the prime minister called for a free and fair trade. When confronted with the criticism that Japan was using trade for political purposes, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga (the front-runner to be the next prime minister) vaguely cited national security concerns as the reason for the export control, even as he dangled the idea that South Korea “did not offer a satisfactory solution over the issue of former workers.” So flimsy was the justification that some experts observing the issue noted that Japanese officials “haven’t provided any evidence” and “have not named companies or said how supplies may have been mismanaged.” Others went further, calling Tokyo’s excuse “duplicitous” and saying it was behaving “spuriously.”
genem9 4y ago
[flagged]
deleted 4y ago
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dang 4y ago
Please don't take HN threads into hellish flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. I understand the provocation in the GP comment, but reacting in full flame mode, complete with insults, is exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: you've started a bunch of other flamewars in this thread too. That's basically arson, regardless of right you are or feel you are. Please stop now. (We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32023133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32023133.)
- plaguepilled 4y ago
  I can respect the need to moderate incendiary remarks, but then why wasn't the parent post also reprimanded?
  - lolinder 4y ago
    This parent? What is there to reprimand? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32023133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32023133 > This is a terrible tragedy. Shinzo Abe seemed like a good man. I hope he pulls through, though reading the comments here makes it seem less likely.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  What about this one? > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
  - dang 4y ago
    I'm not quite sure what you mean? if you're asking why the Abe story didn't count as off topic under that guideline, I guess the gruesome reason is that a major assassination in Japan is somewhat of an "interesting new phenomenon"—not literally, but it hasn't happened in a very long time. Also, it contradicts many perceptions about Japanese society and culture. Also, sometimes a story is so big that moderating it is effectively impossible—the more you bury it, the more it spawns new threads and gets upvoted. Trying to stand in the way just leads to it taking up more space and oxygen. In such cases, we've learned to allow one big discussion to absorb the interest, after which the community is usually ok with us marking reposts as dupes or follow-ups. People still need to follow the site guidelines in such a thread though.
jesterson 4y ago
> turn Japan back into a far-right, ultra-racist country. Abe din't do anything like that. Japan was always ultra-right and racist, and there is nothing wrong with it. Certainly he was a controversial figure but nothing justifies this kind of violence.

sixQuarks 4y ago

syockit 4y ago

fithisux 4y ago
Far-left? He was trying to reverse the clock for Japan.
- xupybd 4y ago
  I think he was talking about the magazine the article was written in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(magazine) "Jacobin is a magazine aimed at the American Left based in New York. It offers socialist perspectives on politics, economics and culture. As of 2021, the magazine reported a paid print circulation of 75,000 and over 3 million monthly visitors" "Jacobin has been variously described as democratic socialist, socialist and Marxist." I think it's fair to say they are Far-left by definition. Unfortunately that is often used as a slur but I think it is accurate in this case.
- kapp_in_life 4y ago
  The Jacobin is a far left rag.
new299 4y ago
I don't think much of what it written in that article is up for debate? You can check his wikipedia page for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe#Political_positions_and_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe#Political_positions... "Abe is affiliated with the openly ultranationalist organization Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference). He is considered a right-wing populist and ultra-conservative within the LDP, and some media and books have referred to him as a far-right politician" There were also numerous scandals during his tenure, most of which were not widely reported outside Japan... but, an example is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritomo_Gakuen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritomo_Gakuen "In March 2018, it was revealed that the finance ministry (with finance minister Tarō Asō at its head) had falsified documents presented to the parliament in relation to the Moritomo Gakuen scandal, to remove 14 passages implicating Abe."
- mellosouls 4y ago
  I don't think much of what it written in that article is up for debate? You can check his wikipedia page for example: Political pages on Wikipedia are notorious for left-leaning editorial domination and are not a useful measure in the way you intend.
  - rtpg 4y ago
    You can go look at primary sources. Nippon Kaigi I’d a nationalist organization, plain and simple. It’s public record he’s in it. Moritomo Gakuen as well. What source of info would you believe in summarizing Shinzo Abe’s policy? The Economist? Basically any in depth coverage of Abe would go into this (not to judge but to state the current political conditions in Japan) so it’s findable
    - mellosouls 4y ago
      To be clear, I'm not taking a position - just pointing out the problems with wiki referencing for impartiality.

hunterb123 4y ago

if you do want to toss out such a strong accusation with a link, please choose the strongest points in your mind from that terrible article. edit: half of this conversation was nuked. wonderful flagging system. my comments were simply asking people to expand on their accusations.

plaguepilled 4y ago
Criticising a previous leader is racist? Or is criticising pro-militarisation racist? Please explain Edit: there was a comment below stating that the GP was slandering Abe (which is false: slander means false and malicious statements. It cannot be labelled false if there is a pretense for the claim, and if you think that comment is malicious... That's a touch delicate, no?). The comment also said GP was picking a 'classy time' to make such a remark, which is also perhaps not accurate. GP seems to be responding to OP, who stated known falsehoods. I'm that sense, it is not a 'poor time to say that' because it is a correction.
- hunterb123 4y ago
  - plaguepilled 4y ago
    Slander? Wat? There is a pretense to support the claim, it is not slander if it is supported. The timing relates to OPs harmful take. GP even addressed OP directly.
    - hunterb123 4y ago

elefanten 4y ago

The irony of lamenting people's reading material and then posting a Jacobin article the reads like a wall of text internet rant with some tabloid scuttlebutt sprinkled throughout. This is NOT a serious take on Abe. Centrist and professional IR academics laugh at the narrative that he's a fascist. A take that lives up to your handle. Edit: example from (center)left leaning academic economist blogger that speaks specifically to the racist/fascist take you propagated here. https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-japan-that-abe-shinzo-made https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-japan-that-abe-shinzo-...

plaguepilled 4y ago
Jacobin's tone sucks, but by your logic you should be ashamed to link noahpinion, right? He's an academic but that doesn't automatically obviate him from being scorned for his style.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
eganist 4y ago
To back the consensus opinion that he's a revisionary nationalist, here's one analysis: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53950704 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53950704 Still, assassination is the wrong way to bring about change. As of now, he seems to still be alive; I hope he recovers, and I doubly hope that regardless, Japan is spared the chaos that sometimes follows assassinations.
noSyncCloud 4y ago
wisemang 4y ago
At the very least he’s an apologist for Japanese war crimes. Also pretty fascist imo but whatever, I’m also just some rando on the internet who could cherry pick articles to support whatever narrative I was looking for or am already biased towards. Lol substack. Anyways how about the far-right ultra-nationalist party he was an advisor to[0]? I wonder if it was a pissed off Ryukyu native[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Kaigi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Kaigi [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/7bd3ee/this-one-island-is-the-centre-of-increasing-tensions-between-china-japan-and-the-us https://www.vice.com/en/article/7bd3ee/this-one-island-is-th...

deleted 4y ago

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at-fates-hands 4y ago

>> Japan back into a far-right, ultra-racist country. I was under the impression from friends who taught English there and other family members who worked there in various positions, this is how the country has always been - exclusionary to outsiders, racist and very intolerant to outsiders. Was there a time (I lost track of the country after the first dot com bust in 2001) that the country wasn't like that? I'm genuinely curious.

rayiner 4y ago

anshumankmr 4y ago

I haven't read an in depth dive of Japan's internal politics but he helped my country with some major investments, which has in turn helped some of my close relatives get good well paying jobs. Also, generally I have a lot of respect for Japanese people in general due to having met and worked with some people from there.

anshumankmr 4y ago
That being said his historical revisionism seems like a damn shame. I personally didn't know about that. However, I don't take all of the claims made by Jacobin seriously. Even here it tries to paint Japan trying to create it's own army as a bad thing when it is clearly in response to territorial aggressiveness from China.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  He did start a trade war with South Korea over the whole comfort women issue, when the countries had started off being closer allies. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/04/shinzo-abe-japan-south-korea-war-nationalism/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/04/shinzo-abe-japan-south-... > All of this drove South Korea-Japan relations to the brink, and then Abe’s most egregious misstep marched the relationship off the cliff.All of this drove South Korea-Japan relations to the brink, and then Abe’s most egregious misstep marched the relationship off the cliff. In order to settle the historical score, he weaponized the two countries’ trade relationship. In October 2018, South Korea’s Supreme Court issued the long-delayed opinion that Japanese corporations that used slave labor from Korea during World War II must pay reparations to surviving slave laborers. (The delay was in part because since 2013, Japan’s foreign ministry had been issuing barely disguised threats for the South Korean government to “respond appropriately” to the pending case, and the quasi-authoritarian Park Geun-hye government acquiesced and pressured the Supreme Court to delay the ruling in contravention of the most basic principles of separation of powers.) In response to the court’s opinion—which ordered the reparation of $89,000, a negligible amount for Japan’s largest corporations—Abe declared a trade war. The Abe administration announced export control against South Korea for three critical chemicals used in high-end display and semiconductor manufacturing, immediately after the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, in which the prime minister called for a free and fair trade. When confronted with the criticism that Japan was using trade for political purposes, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga (the front-runner to be the next prime minister) vaguely cited national security concerns as the reason for the export control, even as he dangled the idea that South Korea “did not offer a satisfactory solution over the issue of former workers.” So flimsy was the justification that some experts observing the issue noted that Japanese officials “haven’t provided any evidence” and “have not named companies or said how supplies may have been mismanaged.” Others went further, calling Tokyo’s excuse “duplicitous” and saying it was behaving “spuriously.”

genem9 4y ago

[flagged]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dang 4y ago

Please don't take HN threads into hellish flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. I understand the provocation in the GP comment, but reacting in full flame mode, complete with insults, is exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: you've started a bunch of other flamewars in this thread too. That's basically arson, regardless of right you are or feel you are. Please stop now. (We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32023133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32023133.)

plaguepilled 4y ago
I can respect the need to moderate incendiary remarks, but then why wasn't the parent post also reprimanded?
- lolinder 4y ago
  This parent? What is there to reprimand? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32023133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32023133 > This is a terrible tragedy. Shinzo Abe seemed like a good man. I hope he pulls through, though reading the comments here makes it seem less likely.
the_only_law 4y ago
What about this one? > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
- dang 4y ago
  I'm not quite sure what you mean? if you're asking why the Abe story didn't count as off topic under that guideline, I guess the gruesome reason is that a major assassination in Japan is somewhat of an "interesting new phenomenon"—not literally, but it hasn't happened in a very long time. Also, it contradicts many perceptions about Japanese society and culture. Also, sometimes a story is so big that moderating it is effectively impossible—the more you bury it, the more it spawns new threads and gets upvoted. Trying to stand in the way just leads to it taking up more space and oxygen. In such cases, we've learned to allow one big discussion to absorb the interest, after which the community is usually ok with us marking reposts as dupes or follow-ups. People still need to follow the site guidelines in such a thread though.

jesterson 4y ago

> turn Japan back into a far-right, ultra-racist country. Abe din't do anything like that. Japan was always ultra-right and racist, and there is nothing wrong with it. Certainly he was a controversial figure but nothing justifies this kind of violence.