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I keep hearing racist nationalists say stuff like this worldwide, and not matter how hard I squint it remains a non sequitur.
I mean, "we have a population crisis" and "don't let people come here" seem entirely contradictory unless you are... well, a supremacist.
Which they are, it's just the leap that gets me. So obvious, so rarely called out and never addressed.
Japanese people are being fed the same kind of propaganda as UK citizens and Americans. People say ridiculous things like "What if the number of foreigners increases to 20% of the total population? Then women will be sexually assaulted." Instead of immigrant gangs taking over apartment buildings and eating the pets it's foreigners buying up all the land to build compounds for foreigners to live in and pooping in the streets.
But there is also a feedback loop where nationalists in Japan make the news, and it's repeated by right wing foreigners who don't know Japan but admired their idealized, racially pure Japan where everyone is polite and orderly and this would never happen, and then that gets repeated to Japanese people as if it were large numbers of foreigners warning them not to let immigration ruin Japan as it has ruined those other countries. Most of the Japanese people in this loop don't understand English, and the right wing foreigners don't understand Japanese. The reality isn't always faithfully translated in either direction, and the language barrier makes it harder for people to realize the discrepancy.
Is there nowhere in the world now that fascist racists are not on the rise?
It feels like we are barreling towards another world war.
I wonder if economics has anything to do with this trend worldwide. When people have to worry about their next meal every day they tend to get frustrated and finding something or someone to blame, rightly or wrongly,is a way to vent that frustration.
With more and more wealth concentrating at the top 1% it stands to reason that the population that feels frustrated is increasing quickly.
it's a direct result of global economies. When things are bad financially the scapegoats are ALWAYS immigrants and the poor. always. every single time. "Things are tough for you? well it's that group over there...it's their fault!" and collectively our society in their infinite wisdom consistently fall for it hook, line, and sinker.
However unlike other countries Japan isn't pumping out kids regardless of the scape goats. So compared to other places this rhetoric coming from them is extremely idiotic. And if a Japanese person believes this is the way forward then I hold them in lower regard than your average MAGA cultist. I didn't think you could have a population more stupid than MAGA but Japan, good job, you proved me wrong.
Yeah the consistent and ever growing wealth gap as corporations continue to grow more profitable and people have more trouble affording food and housing is at the core of a lot of it. People are angry, but the corporations/1% are spending billions on social media, lobbying, funding certain political campaigns etc to convince people that their anger should be directed towards others around them. It’s the fault of foreigners, immigrants, minorities, women, LGBTQ, the young, the old, etc etc.
And on the other side of that, Russia has been working to stir up division in a ton of nations since the 90s and has gotten much better at it with social media, so these two groups have homogenized.
Then on the third level, the super rich billionaires like musk and Thiel want dark enlightenment, which is the collapse of society so they can create neofuedalism and run their own techno-slavery-kingdoms, so they want it just as bad.
Inequality breeds resentment, it's hardwired in our brains. And resentful people are easily led to blame minorities, something hateful and/or power hungry can use for political gains. The ones causing the inequality are more than happy to help this process asking as it usually keeps them from being blamed.
And as in the current political and economic system the inequality globally can only increase, blame and hate is what you get.
Its so depressing, swap just a few nouns around and it reads exactly like an article about the UK
... and just like the USA, it's all populism, rage baiting and ZERO actual solutions
As it turns out, we are all human and are all vulnerable to the same psychological manipulations. No country is immune without active resistance.
yes but the more ignorant a population is, the easier the target
Japanese people are extremely racist. They genuinely put republicans to shame.
The open secret of most Asian societies!
I've known several people who are half Japanese and whose grandmothers would never forgive them for that fact. They'd love all the cousins and shit on them. It's really sad.
Japan's population crisis is caused by its young people being too overworked and overcharged to want to have children. Their population by age is becoming very top-heavy which means that the young are paying a lot to keep the old alive.
The solution to this (apart from don't get into such a situation) is to import young workers to even out your population spread and to raise wages in line with the cost of living and raising a family.
They appear to be shouting "Damn foreigners! Coming over here and making all our elderly live longer than we can economically support them! Overworking our breeding generation so they don't want kids! Curse those foreigners!"
(overworks and robs an entire generation to death)
"Why would foreigners do this?"
Also I'm almost getting tired of posting this brilliant illustration but sheesh, if the jingoistic authoritarian entitlement clan isn't using the same playbook every. Time.
Japan will be the test case for declining populations. They will be the first to show us the consequences and the right and wrong ways to deal with the issue.
Short of Malthusian disasters, I don't think any sort of economy in human history has had to deal with this.
The nazi party is funded by Russia btw and there's so much propaganda in Japan rn its insane. One major piece still making news is that foreign tourists dont pay their hospital bills and losing "Japan so much money". The amount of unpaid bills was 400k usd that year and foreign tourists revenue was 58 BILLION usd. That's 0.00069% loss of total revenue.
This constant propaganda around the world is so depressing and not because its there but because truth is right next to it and nobody's looking.
funded by Russia btw
This constant propaganda around the world is so depressing and not because its there but because truth is right next to it and nobody's looking.
That much is obvious. Japan only has miniscule amount of foreigners compared to other countries but somehow managed to also have been stoken up with anti-foreign sentiment. It's all the dark money flowing into social media algorithms brainwashing people. And the truth is that data is the new gold. Personal information is not only commodified but also weaponised. However, as you said, the truth is next to it but nobody is looking.
They are really hell bent on self destruction.
It's actually scary how quick they're rising. I live in Japan, and I once heard them at a intersection nearby on a car giving a speech. I hated how they speak. They sounded like they were heavily appealing to the emotion and used a lot of sentence final particles like ne, in a tone that sounded half-aggressive and also... very conservative in a way. They were talking some shit about how Japanese people should come first and that we should "protect Japan", as if there was some sort of foreign force trying to tear Japan down to pieces. What's worse was that there were actually people cheering for them. I actually wanted to go downstairs to shout at them but I restrained myself from doing that. I still sort of regret not going there to shout at them.
Their society will collapse from this racism in a generation or so. No point in correcting people who can't see the writing on the wall. As much as the current regime tries to deny it, immigrants have been the strength of the US.
They are having a population crisis ... an aging boomer generation that just won't die and their many children who will add to the aging population while the generations after these groups had fewer children. The population is now full of old people with very few young Japanese to take care of them.
It won't matter how nationalist they want to be ... they're stuck with the problem of having a huge aging population and far too few young people.
Whether they like it or not, if they want to maintain the country's current level of development, they're going to need young people from somewhere else to fill the gaps.
More people need to raise hell about this group because they also have members who deny the Nanking Massacre.
Racism and xenophobia aside, how many humans do we need? Our poor earth. A declining population is probably an ok thing. I think it's the capitalist class ringing the alarm bell as they see their profit forecasts take a blow. How many hundreds of millions should that island hold?
Is anyone making a list of those anti-foreigner countries, so we know where not to shop, where not to visit, and where not to invest in?
A better question is if you can name a country that isn't "anti-foreigner" or don't have a significant % of the population that's anti-foreigner. This is a widespread problem everywhere you go, even supposedly "woke" European countries (especially those countries, really).
At any point they can start giving people a UBI and they will have the option to quit their jobs and raise a family.
The old ways of systemic slavery will not work as human societies progress, especially in our post scarcity world.
In December 2024, there were 3,768,977 foreign residents in Japan, representing 3.04% of the Japanese population.
Fucking foreigners sucking up all the jobs and destabilizing a country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Foreign_residents
When I was growing up too many people I knew wanted to move to Japan because of the technology sectors and the “modernity”. Turns out both are a lie, and after learning about Japanese work culture, it’s even worse than the USA. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to work in Japan over an EU country outside of family reasons.
RIP. I really want to study abroad there and have been making plans, but the current admin + Japan's rising anti-foreigner stance really dampens my hopes. I get there's been some awful, entitled, shitty tourists and vloggers over there in the past few years, but I wish they'd realize that we're not all like that...