3 ms·

Isn't it odd that a nationalist Japanese politician was associated with a nationalist Korean group?

Apocryphon 4y ago
It made more sense during the Cold War because they were all very anti-communist, no idea when and why the Unification Church is now supportive of North Korea.
stevenwoo 4y ago
I scoured articles trying to understand this, too! Is it simply the intersection of money/free volunteer labor and politics where money just wins? On the other hand we have something similar in the USA so who am I to judge? :) One party in our two party system appears to have lots of Russian connections now for some reason, and this does not bother most of their supporters which has approximately 45-50 percent of the population behind it. In past years this would have led to claims about treason or something similar from the same party, the path from Nixon to now it appears the only change has been how public the cooperation between the GOP leadership and countries openly antagonistic to the USA, i.e. Nixon/Kissinger with North Vietnam, Reagan/Bush with Iran and Trump with Russia.
pasabagi 4y ago
The history is even weirder: check out the story of Kishi Nobusuke[0], the class A war crimminal who brought the Unification Church into the Japanese political mainstream. Also the Yakuza. Also he's Abe's grandad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi
warabe 4y ago
Sun Myung Moon used fight against communism as a tool to establish a close relationship with LDP. Please refer to the article by Asahi shinbun. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14693688 https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14693688 Kishi Nobusuke, Shinzo Abe's grandfather, and Sun Myung Moon together found IFVC(International Federation for Victory over Communism). Long story short, Japanese politicians should have known better.
kmeisthax 4y ago
Yes and no. It is odd only in the sense that the actions contradict the rhetoric. But both parties are still achieving their own goals and the cooperation does not cancel out that goal. We often think of nationalism purely as the dark side of in-group/out-group dynamics scaled up to the size of an entire country. They are, but there's a dark, darker, yet darker side to this. The driving force behind those dynamics is a desire to purge the in-group of perceived weakness. There are plenty of reasons for a Korean person to hate Japanese people, or vice versa, but the reason that nationalists will consistently pick is that the out-group is "inferior". War crimes, national insults, and so on are all just window-dressing to that core claim. This same dynamic also applies to things you would not consider to be even in the same postal code as right-wing nationalism. Think about how much self-policing and internal policing happens in niche subcultures online to purge them of perceived weakness, and how many of the perpetrators of those purges are not much different from their targets. Nationalists care more about punishing their own citizens than fighting the enemy.

It made more sense during the Cold War because they were all very anti-communist, no idea when and why the Unification Church is now supportive of North Korea.

stevenwoo 4y ago

I scoured articles trying to understand this, too! Is it simply the intersection of money/free volunteer labor and politics where money just wins? On the other hand we have something similar in the USA so who am I to judge? :) One party in our two party system appears to have lots of Russian connections now for some reason, and this does not bother most of their supporters which has approximately 45-50 percent of the population behind it. In past years this would have led to claims about treason or something similar from the same party, the path from Nixon to now it appears the only change has been how public the cooperation between the GOP leadership and countries openly antagonistic to the USA, i.e. Nixon/Kissinger with North Vietnam, Reagan/Bush with Iran and Trump with Russia.

pasabagi 4y ago

The history is even weirder: check out the story of Kishi Nobusuke[0], the class A war crimminal who brought the Unification Church into the Japanese political mainstream. Also the Yakuza. Also he's Abe's grandad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi

warabe 4y ago

Sun Myung Moon used fight against communism as a tool to establish a close relationship with LDP. Please refer to the article by Asahi shinbun. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14693688 https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14693688 Kishi Nobusuke, Shinzo Abe's grandfather, and Sun Myung Moon together found IFVC(International Federation for Victory over Communism). Long story short, Japanese politicians should have known better.

kmeisthax 4y ago

Yes and no. It is odd only in the sense that the actions contradict the rhetoric. But both parties are still achieving their own goals and the cooperation does not cancel out that goal. We often think of nationalism purely as the dark side of in-group/out-group dynamics scaled up to the size of an entire country. They are, but there's a dark, darker, yet darker side to this. The driving force behind those dynamics is a desire to purge the in-group of perceived weakness. There are plenty of reasons for a Korean person to hate Japanese people, or vice versa, but the reason that nationalists will consistently pick is that the out-group is "inferior". War crimes, national insults, and so on are all just window-dressing to that core claim. This same dynamic also applies to things you would not consider to be even in the same postal code as right-wing nationalism. Think about how much self-policing and internal policing happens in niche subcultures online to purge them of perceived weakness, and how many of the perpetrators of those purges are not much different from their targets. Nationalists care more about punishing their own citizens than fighting the enemy.