Reviving Japan’s Imperial glory and rewriting history to exorcise Japan’s war atrocities has always been an Abe obsession. But teaching ‘Mein Kampf’ in the schools?  Modelling a new Japanese constitution after the Nazis?  Japan joins the roster of threatened democracies. (Originally published in May of 2017)

The recent article in The Daily Beast opens as follows: Imagine a world in which the Nazis and Imperial Japan won the second world war—that’s the premise of the critically acclaimed TV series The Man In The High Castle, which is science fiction. But as a matter of fact, the grandson of a war criminal, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, seems intent on turning that dark fantasy into something more like a reality TV show. The premiere is scheduled for 2020, and he’s drawing on some classics for the scenario: Mein Kampf recently was approved for Japanese classrooms, and the suggestively titled Hitler’s Election Strategy is popular with some members of the Abe Cabinet.

…..In the summer of 2013, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso, famous for his verbal gaffes declared in a speech to his political supporters, “Germany’s Weimar Constitution was changed into the Nazi Constitution before anyone knew. It was changed before anyone else noticed. Why don’t we learn from that method?”
Two of Abe’s Cabinet appointees were associated with Japan’s Nazi Party and several of his comrades wrote laudatory blurbs for a book called Hitler’s Election Strategy, published in 1994, and written by a member of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The book was banned after international criticism.

Comparisons with the Nazis are hard to brush off if your Cabinet members are looking up to them as role models…..

For the whole article please go read this below. Under the link we will be posting a few more things to consider, mostly in Japanese

Japan: Shinzo Abe’s Government Has a Thing About Hitler. It Likes Him.

Comments are welcome, trolling not so much.

If you’d like you understand how the nazis rose to power, the following article by Peter Ross Range is excellent. How Hitler Seized Power and Shocked His Opposition.

Hitler did exactly what he said he would do. And Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Vice Prime Minister are doing exactly what they said they would do, change the constitution just like the Nazis did. And create the Imperial Japan that once ruled over the people without any democratic restraints or worries about “human rights”.

But Hitler surprised everyone by doing exactly what he had been preaching for more than a decade: turning Germany into an ethnically pure, nationalistically-driven economic machine for making Germany great again. And he thought he could do it fast.For that, Hitler had Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels. In 1933, they were not yet the monsters of history that they later became. But they were ambitious political operatives with a radical agenda and a charismatic leader. They acted with speed and force.The Abe Government Borrows From The Nazi Party↙

Here would be the modern day Japan rewrite of Mr. Range’s article:

But Abe surprised everyone by doing exactly what he had been preaching for many years: turning Japan into a Japanese first, Shinto-worshipping, Imperial and nationalistically-driven economic machine for making Japan great again. And he thought he could do it fast. For that, Abe had Cabinet Minister Suga, the right-wing Shinto cult,  Nippon Kaigi, and The Yomiuri Shimbun and a timid press core. In 2012,  they were not yet the monsters of history that they later became. But they were ambitious political operatives with a radical agenda and a charismatic leader. They acted with speed and force.

Below is a chart in Japanese of ways in which the LDP and Prime Minister Abe have stolen from the Nazi playbook. It’s not much of a surprise but the similarities are striking. Perhaps because the LDP really did learn from Hitler’s Election Strategy, a book written in 1994 by an LDP member, and blurbed with great praise by several past and present members of Prime Minister Abe’s Cabinet at the time it came out.

 

 

Here are the key things Hitler did to consolidate power, as noted by, Mr. Range.

—let loose the police against Jews and Communists to a degree never seen before;

—won emergency powers to govern by decree following the incredibly well-timed February 27 arson against the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building;

—begun the shutdown of dissent and diversity in German publishing and culture through a policy of Gleichschaltung, or forcing everybody onto the same page.

And here is what Prime Minister Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party are attempting to and have done

—let loose the police against dissenters, critics, and protests to a degree never seen before with the passing of the Conspiracy Laws this week (May 2017)

—win emergency powers to govern by decree in their new constitution as soon as they can find a suitable emergency (by 2020)

—continue the shutdown of dissent and diversity in Japan publishing and culture through a policy of Gleichschaltung, or forcing everybody onto the same page, passing a Special Secrets Act, and gradually crushing press freedom. (Japan was ranked #11 in the World Press Freedom Index in 2011 before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took power. It is now #72).

Wiser men then myself said a few years ago that the much vaunted Abenomics was just a sexy smokescreen for Abe’s nationalist agenda–and like every great big lie, everyone has fallen for it. While the investors and true-believers of the world wait for the 4th arrow that will never come, Prime Minister Abe and his cronies are quietly getting Japan prepared for their vision of the 4th Reich.

Maybe it will be good for the economy.