In a media environment that is full of people breaking the rules (slush funds, sexual violence), the fact that it's become natural to speak of how "foreigners who break the rules" are a real stress on Japanese society requires we consider the assumptions that make that statement even possible

I do indeed feel tinkered with

The message being pumped out by this campaign that what’s important is to “save the LDP” has a massive potential to backfire, I got to say

Good article, but totally as an aside I absolutely hate how often “narrative” is used to explain so much more than it can account for. This is as someone who uses the word narrative a million times in their dissertation.

I increasingly think Nintendo should transfer its ideas about online interactions to government policy

My new book from @mitpress.bsky.social, Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right, is out today! The book explores how play and gaming culture have mainstreamed far right ideology through social media platforms. #digitalculture #games #politics #platforms

A wrinkle to the social media in polisci debate is that unlike previous iterations, this current slate of platforms have explicit political agendas they are promoting

There’s two pieces of stellar polisci that I constantly use to speak to social media dynamics, and neither of them actually talk about social media. I imagine that what happened is that their research began before social media was this unequivocally central to the phenomena they were looking at

The impulse was already there and had been for a while, white nationalism isn’t new. GG caused the creation/expansion of online infrastructure for networking, community building (mainly among young online people) and spreading/testing of tactics and propaganda. But it didn’t invent the fasc wheel.

Engaging antiliberals in good faith was (and continues to be) a critical mistake Normalizing antiliberal discourse was a critical mistake Social media was a critical mistake And normalizing the legacy and behavior of antiliberals is going to be just about a death blow, so let's not do that

Thinking about why Demon Slayer is so popular and so bad. It might be its deep commitment to trauma. Or that it gets its cake and eats it too: you simultaneously feel empathy for how the social order failed these characters while enjoying a paramilitary group of children mindlessly reasserting it

Will listen to NewJeans - How Sweet two times

I realize of course that the LDP still has a bunch of shiny objects it can dangle in front of the smaller opposition parties, making a unified opposition candidate almost impossible. But there's still room for missteps.

Calling on the opposition to just figure out who they want to be PM and vote for them, even if they're LDP. Essentially, the parties could become more like LDP factions than the actual factions they have now.

本稿では、参政党がいかに陰謀論的世界観を用いて極右思想を政党政治に持ち込んだか、そして、その思想にもとづく訴えがなぜ得票につながったのかを考察する。結論を先にいえば、同党の選挙での成功は、極右思想を、一般社会に受容可能な「ふつう」のものにしたことに起因する。仮に参政党の政治的な寿命が短命に終わったとしても、自由主義・民主主義的な社会に対するネガティブな影響は長期に及ぶに違いない。

【『地平』2025年10月号】new!! 参政党の台頭はなぜ可能になったか――解かれた極右の封印 マルカントゥオーニ・ロメオ（早稲田大学大学院アジア太平洋研究科博士後期課程在籍） chihei.net?p=5517 参政党は2025年7月の参議院選挙で14議席増を果たした。↓

losing my shit at tom clancy's daughter immediately setting this to her banner after seeing it

Do please read it, a lot of effort went into this piece

The takeaway: 👉 Accommodating the radical right on immigration doesn’t win back voters. 👉 It alienates the progressive base. 👉 And it raises the salience of the very issue the radical right owns. In short: it’s electoral self-harm.

Het zoveelste wetenschappelijke bewijs dat het radicaal rechtse migratieverhaal papegaaien averechts werkt:

My piece for Chihei is available in bookstores on Friday!

My piece for Chihei is available in bookstores on Friday!

There is just so much going on in this picture. LinkedIn is a disaster

Je mag ervan uitgaan dat de Japanse uiterst rechtse partij Sanseito precies hetzelfde zal proberen eens Kamiya verplaatst moet worden, heel waarschijnlijk door Yoshikawa Rina (die ongeveer 100 percent overeenkomt met zijn eigen gedachtengoed)

i lost it again 😔

Hopping on what @mrjeffu.bsky.social noted here the racist account here is likely not Japanese, and unsurprisingly, the claim that this is viral in Japanese twitter though is 100% false: there are no hits for the image with characters on it before the OP (4chan even took it from them), ... (1/2)

Morning-after pills (ECPs) to become available without prescription in Japan. An expert meeting at the MHLW made the decision on August 29th. However, the pills will not be allowed to be sold online, meaning they can only be sold through drugstores. digital.asahi.com/articles/AST...

I hated Civil War by Alex Garland, but it seems to me that everything happening now mirrors the lead-up to that movie’s plot (as much as I can remember was being hinted at)

In 2024, 1 in 29 (~3.4%) working people in Japan was a foreigner. This means that the share of foreigners among the working population has more than tripled since 2009, when it was 1 in 112 (~0.9%) 日本で働く「29人に1人」が外国人　割合急増、産業維持へ不可欠 digital.asahi.com/articles/AST...

A terrorist targeted federal workers last week. There wasn’t much reporting on it. But I’m not finished thinking about it! 🧵 An anti-vaxxer fired more than 500 gunshots into CDC Atlanta, shattering 150 “blast-proof” windows on 6 buildings. Employees were pinned down in terror.

A Sanseito supporter made a music video full of low quality AI-generated footage of the political party's leader. One scene has him the cockpit of an airplane, with his arms coming out of the side of the plane's body. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmIe...

This is an extraordinary provocation for anyone tempted to replace coalition politics with preference agregation. That is: AI-enabled democracy is probably not going to be democracy.

Luistertip 🚨 Goh, wat is @leoniedejonge.bsky.social toch goed in het begrijpelijk en duidelijk uitleggen van uiterst-rechts en de rol van media en politiek in haar opkomst. De discussie over eten/voedsel en gastronationalisme is de kers op de taart. 👏

I meant to say Sanseito was the one making the allegation. See this official post they made on the issue: sanseito.jp/news/n4158/

Sanseito wasted little time acting on their impulses by throwing out a reporter at their press conference because he was known to the party as a critic and alleged to be working together with Shibakitai, an antifa style anti-racist group mainichi.jp/english/arti...

An interview with Nikkei Asia on Sanseito. Full discolure: I didn’t actually realize this was going to be a long-form video and was mostly trying to hit sound bites. But good experience to be thrown into the deep end these past few weeks of Sanseito coverage. youtu.be/s3K1lzia4eM?...

This weekend thousands of people in the UK stood up against racists and far-right thugs only to have representatives of a nominally leftwing government support, enable and empower the racists. Why do you not hear the worries of those trying to protect minority rights and liberal democracy?

I'm in agreement with this thread. I think you have to be constitutional scholar to come up with a take like this.

In this article, constitutional scholar Ito Makoto gives two reasons why Sanseito's "ridiculous constitution" was a good thing: (1) It made people see the Constitution as "their own"; (2) It highlighted how good the current one is by comparison. I do not agree... mainichi.jp/articles/202...

Donald Trump seems to be considering a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator and confidant. Despite their performative outrage, far right influencers, right-wing media, and MAGA will continue to support Trump — and recast Maxwell as a victim. How? Meet MAGA’s new enemies:

QAnon Isn’t Dead. It Lives in the Heart of the Republican Party.

Edo Naito's Japan Times piece about Sanseito is extremely misleading: "There is no evidence of historical revisionism in the policies or draft Constitution." Sanseito's politicians are very open about their nationalistic views on history.

It is no secret that I am a huge fan of Katherine Cramer and I really loved her short methodological chapter on "Interviewing and Listening to Ordinary People" in the fantastic new textbook "Doing Good Qualitative Research" by Goodman & Cyr.

New piece by Edo Naito on Sanseito does very little other than aid the normalization of far-right views. He also calls this characterization of the party 'snarky, which feels like a dismissal of the time and effort me and others have put into our research 🧵 www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2...

This page by MarriageForAllJapan shows the position of all members of parliament (based on Todai-Asahi survey) on same-sex marriage. In HoR, 50 percent of members are in favor of same-sex marriage (including "somewhat supportive"). In HoC, the number is lower at 45 percent. meter.marriageforall.jp

If Ishiba is replaced, I wonder if they'll outlast the cabbage

"While Sanseito largely avoids identifying specific immigrant groups, [ @rmarcantuoni.bsky.social], a Tokyo-based academic who has studied the party, said it taps into latent concerns ranging from badly-behaved tourists to conspiracy theories about sneaking Chinese influence."

"The “crisis” doesn’t seem to be that boys are doing particularly poorly of late. It seems to be that girls are finally being rewarded in the form of college attainment and more equal pay for their efforts."