Author: Gabriel Persechino-Forest Published: August 15th, 2018
#MeToo Marches on
#MeToo is continuing to be pushed in Japan. First we have Japanese actress Chino starting a #MeToo group supposedly to help victims of harassment. There is nothing inherently wrong with starting a support group; many already exist and do a lot of good for the people who need them, there is no question about that. I do find it strange that someone would specifically start a #MeToo group though. Why not simply a support group for victims of sexual harassment? #MeToo is a social engineering tool so we should be wary of such moves. Although it may also be how the media are painting the event as Chino didn’t explicitly use the term #MeToo.
To try and further push this movement, we also have new allegations against a high profile Japanese politician, a member of the Foreign Ministry, Mori. They are claiming he harassed a reporter. You have to appreciate how everything #MeToo related revolves around politicians, celebrities and public figures (Both perpetrators and victims). I thought this was a movement of the people? Yet, as the people continue to shrug, the public figures of authority continue to push. It seems they desperately want a means to control people and eliminate opposition, and movements like #MeToo, one that aims to redesign what is and is not “Appropriate” to say and do and one that can be used to target and disgrace anyone without the need for a pesky trial is certainly an attractive proposition for the establishment.
Then of course, with #MeToo having been colossal failure in Japan to a greater degree than it was in the West, they had to find a way to relaunch it. This would be #WeToo. Even with politicians, journalists and other media celebrities pushing it, the movement still failed to take root so now they are blaming Japan’s “Cultural attitude of victim blaming” on why that is and are relaunching the movement with the new twist.
Source: Article Image: The Daily Beast
The Continued Push Onto Mainstream
The establishment’s desire to make anime mainstream as part of an attempt to be able to further regulate it through proxy is continuing as we speak. First we have Polygon that is trying to run a list telling you about what anime to watch on Netflix; an attempt to push anime and Netflix as the means of watching it, no doubt. You also have BuzzFeed pushing this with a list of the most “Funny” anime series and finally, Click on Deroit made an article trying to tell people how to get average folks into anime.
Then The Daily Eastern News is literally telling you in the title to give the medium a chance: Give anime and manga a chance before you shun it away. The article has interesting titbits throughout:
You can get over the nerdy aspect about it because honestly this medium is becoming more mainstream in the West everyday.
The article also goes to Netflix for recommendations, rather than any of the other anime streaming outlets that exist (Funimation, Crunchyroll, HIDIVE…), much like most mainstream outlets do.
I understand that it is a hard medium to get into, but try to watch the anime “Death Note”. Even if you do not watch any other anime after it, watch “Death Note” because it is a well written compelling story, that I am sure most people will enjoy. There is nothing wrong with starting something new right? So go ahead and give this medium a try, and see how you enjoy it!
Seriously! It has been a long time since I saw mainstream media try to push something this hard, they’re at begging now.
In looking through all of this, you have to bare in mind that until a few months ago, no one in mainstream cared about anime and they did their best to avoid talking about it. Now they can’t do enough to encourage you to watch it and it keeps being brought up by entertainment outlets of all Western mediums and by various celebrities. Anime was popular before mainstream decided to acknowledge it and people were finding their way to this hobby on their own so we don’t need the mainstream media push, which always comes with the caveat of censorship, fandom shaming and a politically charged agenda overshadowing artistic integrity.
Internet Censorship
Normally I wouldn’t tackle topics that don’t concern Japanese culture but this concerns anyone who actually uses the internet. First off, let me start by saying that while this is about Alex Jones, it has little to do with him or what he stands for. His beliefs and whether or not they are worth anything is irrelevant, as is what you might think of him. This is about censorship, plain and simple.
So a bit of background. Info Wars, Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory channel, was recently shut down from YouTube, Facebook, Apple, Disqus and Spotify. All of this happened simultaneously, leaving little doubt that it was an intentional and coordinated effort. Vimeo has also joined in. The Proud Boys, another conservative group, also saw censorship recently at the hands of Twitter.
The idea here is that many people are getting tired of corporate giants acting as censorship tool of the state and this is the answer to remedy that. With such a blatant and obvious attack, they (The political establishment) are hoping to rally people against big tech in the hopes that they will demand something be done, and the establishment is already prepping the answer: Government control. And trust me, they want to take control:
The government needs an excuse to take control of social media and be able to implement China-level censorship, something which would not be accepted as of right now. So they are creating this crisis by offering their big corporations as “Out of control” so government has to step in to solve the problem. The goal is to willingly make people accept and demand government oversight. Make no mistake, big corporations are a problem. But government control is merely authoritarianism and considering the fact that the corporate problem is one of monopoly, handing over these resources to the biggest monopoly of all, government, will solve nothing and will only accentuate the problem. Right now big tech is limited in how much censorship they can do because most people wouldn’t stand for it. But under government, there would be little limits in implementing widespread censorship in the interest of “Public safety”, creating a “Welcoming and safe environment” and so on…
Don’t get me wrong, we definitely have a problem of censorship and it needs to be addressed. But it must addressed by the people confronting and holding these corporate parasites accountable and by the people willingly choosing alternatives to strip them of their monopolistic powers, not by handing over control to the very source of our problem: Centralised authority.
For a more detailed look at all of this, Corbett has a nice video explaining the trap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqC82zmHccU
Further reading: