- 8 Aug 2005
- 7,316
- 3,727
Kishida was promising to reshuffle his cabinet, but it seems to be more of a 3-card monty:
www.japantimes.co.jp
Rather than opt for more sweeping changes to his cabinet, it seems like the recent bad press regarding member ties to the Unification Church has led to swift action but not much change after all. In an effort to emphasize stability and rebound some public support, Kishida's new cabinet is mostly identical to his old one. Although there's been a bit of sweeping up, 5 members remain who have noteworthy connections to the "church." So the changes were met with a lukewarm reception, falling short of expectations...
I'm not super up to date on the specifics of Japanese parliamentary politics, but this story caught my attention because I'm seeing a slightly different story being passed around the far right propaganda machine: that the "ENTIRE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT HAS RESIGNED"
This screenshot was posted to someone's facebook feed, with no attribution.
I did some cursory searches and found nearly identical articles on Malaysian and Iranian "news' sites... All of the "articles" are pretty much worded the same, but seem detached from reality. The longest one I could find (and the most likely source of the above screenshot) is from a Malaysian 'news' site, which mixes plagiarized or rehashed text from Japanese news sources with this announcement of the "entire government" resigning: Japan's government resigns in its entirety - BusinessToday
I wondered if this was just a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of actual news, but nearly all of the articles are identical and cite Kyodo news as a source, but there's nothing of the sort reported on Kyodo. Maybe this is some kind of weird propaganda technique of taking lies and mixing them into current news to subvert public trust and a shared reality...
It's pretty clear that this stuff is only being passed around in certain circles, which kind of unearths a news ring of inter-linking pipelines for fake news to spread. The more sites reinforce each others' lie, the more plausible it seems to a lazy observer performing a cursory search.
Biggest red flag of all was seeing this crowed about on stormfront's forum. For those who don't know, stormfront is a straight-up nazi discussion board. I won't link to it, but rest assured that several of the responses were blatantly racist or anti-semitic. The OP contained this video, which is a pretty sterile reading of the same article content mentioned above, and the guy's channel is full of weird and questionable stuff. Dude has almost 80,000 subscribers, and a second channel reposting his own videos (possible to provide alternate revenue streams and a backup in case his main channel goes down)
Wowwww OK, check this out, clicking through these links on news sites I'd never heard of before, I found a couple articles that strangely referred to Shinzo Abe resigning (huh??), and I found one that cited Sputnik/RT (Russian) as a source. That led to this page (in Russian), the translation of which contains a VERY similarly-worded article from two years ago (September 2020)...
So, somehow some stale old news got churned back up and is being passed around the right wing internet as a recent development. I think the goal here is to get people in that mindset thinking "Hey OUR government needs a 'reset,' too. We should demand they all resign too."
Just look to the comments under the youtube video to get an idea of the intended effect this has had. As the guy says at the end of the video: "Anything is now possible, in bizarro world."
Indeed, weird internet dude making his living parroting stale Russian propaganda to tens of thousands of people... indeed.
Kishida opts for continuity and stability in new Cabinet
The new lineup is remarkably consistent with that of its predecessor, a government forged under the influence of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Rather than opt for more sweeping changes to his cabinet, it seems like the recent bad press regarding member ties to the Unification Church has led to swift action but not much change after all. In an effort to emphasize stability and rebound some public support, Kishida's new cabinet is mostly identical to his old one. Although there's been a bit of sweeping up, 5 members remain who have noteworthy connections to the "church." So the changes were met with a lukewarm reception, falling short of expectations...
I'm not super up to date on the specifics of Japanese parliamentary politics, but this story caught my attention because I'm seeing a slightly different story being passed around the far right propaganda machine: that the "ENTIRE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT HAS RESIGNED"
This screenshot was posted to someone's facebook feed, with no attribution.
I did some cursory searches and found nearly identical articles on Malaysian and Iranian "news' sites... All of the "articles" are pretty much worded the same, but seem detached from reality. The longest one I could find (and the most likely source of the above screenshot) is from a Malaysian 'news' site, which mixes plagiarized or rehashed text from Japanese news sources with this announcement of the "entire government" resigning: Japan's government resigns in its entirety - BusinessToday
I wondered if this was just a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of actual news, but nearly all of the articles are identical and cite Kyodo news as a source, but there's nothing of the sort reported on Kyodo. Maybe this is some kind of weird propaganda technique of taking lies and mixing them into current news to subvert public trust and a shared reality...
It's pretty clear that this stuff is only being passed around in certain circles, which kind of unearths a news ring of inter-linking pipelines for fake news to spread. The more sites reinforce each others' lie, the more plausible it seems to a lazy observer performing a cursory search.
Biggest red flag of all was seeing this crowed about on stormfront's forum. For those who don't know, stormfront is a straight-up nazi discussion board. I won't link to it, but rest assured that several of the responses were blatantly racist or anti-semitic. The OP contained this video, which is a pretty sterile reading of the same article content mentioned above, and the guy's channel is full of weird and questionable stuff. Dude has almost 80,000 subscribers, and a second channel reposting his own videos (possible to provide alternate revenue streams and a backup in case his main channel goes down)
Wowwww OK, check this out, clicking through these links on news sites I'd never heard of before, I found a couple articles that strangely referred to Shinzo Abe resigning (huh??), and I found one that cited Sputnik/RT (Russian) as a source. That led to this page (in Russian), the translation of which contains a VERY similarly-worded article from two years ago (September 2020)...
So, somehow some stale old news got churned back up and is being passed around the right wing internet as a recent development. I think the goal here is to get people in that mindset thinking "Hey OUR government needs a 'reset,' too. We should demand they all resign too."
Just look to the comments under the youtube video to get an idea of the intended effect this has had. As the guy says at the end of the video: "Anything is now possible, in bizarro world."
Indeed, weird internet dude making his living parroting stale Russian propaganda to tens of thousands of people... indeed.
