golden bubble posted:

Guess I might as well post this for anyone who wants to know more about who Abe was


Shinzo Abe first came to prominence by promoting a weird right wing conspiracy that the mainstream media and even most members of the LDP (Japanese conservative party) thought was absolute bullshit, but turned out to be 100% correct. The theory, which was actually completely right, was that North Korean agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese nationals in the late 70s and early 80s, including a 13 year old girl. Like there were literally North Korean submarines kidnapping random people in Japan for no reason.

His first real presence on the world stage was convincing then-prime minister Koizumi Junichiro to walk out of economic negotiations with North Korea unless they returned the kidnapped citizens, and then when North Korea let them leave to see family, he convinced the prime minister to not cave into North Korean demands and go back on their promise to return them back to Korea, because they are Japanese citizens. This makes the far right love hime because he is super tough on North Korea, and gets him into positions where he could be on committees at the Education Ministry where he helped select which history textbooks could be used in schools. That's why Japanese school history books in the 90s were super hosed. Abe doesn't believe comfort women were real, war crimes committed by Japan were both Cool and Good, and everything great that happened in Korea is actually Japanese, and he was a head of the Education Ministry choosing the school history books.

As a result of this, Abe is super popular to the far right faction of the LDP, and his place at the Koizumi cabinet makes him popular to his sub-faction, leading to him being elected president of the party and then to the prime minister position. His first time as Japanese PM is mostly notable for the largest LDP defeat since 1990, and that time he got into a diplomatic slap fight with a Japanese-American member of Congress because the latter made some comment about the Japanese empire which led to a months long back and forth.

Abe resigns as prime minister in 2007, then like a goddamn phoenix made out of bad opinions he surges back in 2012, following the collapse of the DPJ (center-left part), becoming the first prime minister ever to resign and then come back. He spends the next 8 years absolutely destroying Japan's relationship with South Korea, reinterprets Japan's constitution to allow for collective self-defense and what he calls "Proactive Pacifism" via some legally dubious means and all the while, he manages to piss off Bush jr., Obama, and Biden. Yes, even W. Bush hated him, and Biden is very vocal about how much he loathes Abe. He didn't piss off Trump, but Abe hated Trump so much he forced the Imperial Family to entertain Trump rather than meet Trump in person, ever.

Next, Abe gets the Olympics, and it's thought he was going to use the popularity boost from that as a way to get support for his proposed constitutional amendment which would completely end Japanese pacifism and turn the Self-Defense Forces into a normal military, a goal of his and his war criminal grandfather*. Then he fucks up COVID response, resigns again, gets popular again, and was starting his comeback tour for round 3 baby when he gets shot with a gun made from two pipes, some duct tape, a few batteries, and scrap wood.



* granddad was an administrator of Manchukuo and a suspected "Class A" war criminal who got lucky that the US War Crimes tribunal for Japan was such a shitshow that they gave up after the first round of trials. Granddad was allowed back into politics because some prominent Americans said he "wasn't so bad" and he is "harsh on communism." Granddad became a Japanese prime minister and immediately tried to give the Japanese police unlimited power, create a secret police again, and turn Self-Defense Forces into a normal military. This backfired so hard that Abe's granddad was banished from politics forever.

Terrifying Effigies posted:

I was doing some Wikipedia sleuthing, and did you know that the United States once had a battleship called the USS Maine, that blew up...in Cuba? Little known facts of American history, I wonder how the press and public at the time handled such an incredible accident.

pantslesswithwolves posted:

Hi, can you make a thread about your experiences working my dream job?

Acebuckeye13 posted:

CMYK BLYAT! posted:

canyons are pretty great

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

Yo this is awesome

Platystemon posted:

IRA Joe

Milo and POTUS posted:

Tensions rose when donald trump tried to grab bidens hat without consent

I suppose I know already but what is trump's home state supposed to be? good lord irish gaelic phonetics are wild

CRUSTY MINGE posted:

Watch the old 9/11 firefighter speeches he gave. Anger was kind of his thing after satire.

Sacrist65 posted:

Mark Kelly has to deal with the same electorate as her, yet doesn't feel the need to do any of this bullshit. Every one of these stunts hurts her in the next primary. Kelley is up like 7 points in his next race.

Soul Dentist posted:

Lots of posters showing their rear end itt so to speak