[Crantag]

Oh, by the way. I'm also a citizen of the United States of America.

And I also am part Jewish.

I'm part Arabic as well.

That doesn't provide me with a license to pronounce factual inaccuracies.

[Rei Murasame]

It also doesn't endow any of you with any ability to squeeze one single milligram of guilt out of a Japanese person. We who stood with Axis, we regret nothing, like how the Mafia regrets nothing whether it wins or loses.

No matter who you are, we don't actually care.

War involves fighting in different kinds of ways, and clearing out partisans with death squads and terror, is a part of modern warfare. It's still in use now, in the Middle East.

[Crantag]

It also doesn't endow any of you with any ability to squeeze one single milligram of guilt out of a Japanese person. We who stood with Axis, we regret nothing, like how the Mafia regrets nothing whether it wins or loses.

No matter who you are, we don't actually care.

War involves fighting in different kinds of ways, and clearing out partisans with death squads and terror, is a part of modern warfare. It's still in use now, in the Middle East.

I mostly ignore your posts.

But I will say one thing. Are you really so arrogant as to think you speak for all Japanese people?

[Rei Murasame]

I mostly ignore your posts.

And I mostly ignore yours as well, you are the kind of person who I already know is impervious to any other point of view.

You are only out to make your point through critique, and of course that doesn't work on people who don't feel guilt for anything in the first place.

But I will say one thing. Are you really so arrogant as to think you speak for all Japanese people?

Are you really so arrogant that you think that you can prescribe a universal morality onto humanity from your 'lofty' ethno-racial position? You must be a real darling of the liberals and communists with a racial background like yours, it's like concentrated victimhood, but you must know that it will get you absolutely nowhere with me.

[benpenguin]

Also about the reference to the Jewish people: ok well I'm actually part Jewish myself? I think the nation of Israel is in the wrong in MANY ways. You can easily condemn government of Israel for what it's done, it doesn't at all rise to the level obviously of the Holocaust but still. And obviously Jews never dominated Germany or Europe so... not a good analogy obviously. Jews have barely had their own state at any time and are a numerically tiny group

Sigh...this is tiring. You are confusing "being a colonizing power" (If you consider the tributary system "colonizing"), and "murdering citizens en masse".

I never claim China is some patron saint, I am saying that our wars has never been genocidial. If I am angry about Japan because they "colonized" us, why ain't I angry with Mongolians, Manchus, British, French, Germans, Russians and the long list of countries who lined up to carve up China when it is weak? It could be due to the fact that they didn't bayonet babies for fun and lock people up for sexual pleasure and biological weapons testing...think about it.

Your points against Chinese complaining WWII would carry about the same weight to me saying "Well the Jewish state is evil therefore all talks about the Holocaust is just Israeli propaganda. " I wouldn't give a flying fuck whether you are Jewish or Texan or Martian when you say it.

[Rei Murasame]

Just a sidebar, does anyone actually really listen to what Israel says about the holocaust when deciding what policy to take toward Israel in 2015? Does anyone on PoFo really follow the thought process of, "Okay, the holocaust was a truly devastating event, therefore whenever Israel invokes that word I will fall down and do precisely as they say, lest I appear heartless".

No, right? No one is following that logic other than the most doctrinaire liberals. People still complain about Israel perpetually and constantly, despite the fact that Israel rolls around on the floor and invokes the memory of the holocaust at every conceivable opportunity.

But when Barack Obama and John Kerry sit down to decide what they'll be doing with Israel, they are not thinking about the holocaust. They're thinking about their strategic interests. People at the high levels support Israel because it is at a key crossroads in the Levant and it has a lot of guns and knows how to use them. Everything else they do is just padding.

[annatar1914]

Imperial Japan was indeed not guilty of standing by while China imploded as a Civilization late 19th-early 20th century, and neither was Tsarist Russia. Japan however got suckered into a war with Russia in 1905, and once they played their role, they received nothing for all their efforts. As could be predicted of every expendable pawn of the Anonymous Forces. (Saddam Hussein, checking Iran, is then checked himself, etc...)

After this, as China continued to slide into Warlordism and Bolshevism, Japan re-instated the Manchu Emperor within his ancestral homeland, and was sucked into an undeclared war with China. America, having contained Tsarist Russia by means of Japan, then sought to contain Japan directly, and so war was on.

Anybody who has studied what one President Roosevelt and the rest of his Cabal did in 1905, could have predicted the outcome of the war ended in 1945 between the United States and Imperial Japan. The goal? The aim of 'Manifest Destiny' is China.

The Game is so up-level, that it makes 'Vulcan Chess' look like Checkers.

[Rei Murasame]

Japan however got suckered into a war with Russia in 1905,

Japan had to fight against Russia both because Russia is an enemy of all East Asian peoples, and because the Japanese Empire could not have existed without clearing Russia out of the areas that it had aspired to control.

The Anglo-Japanese alliance was not some kind of baiting game, it was actually the logical culmination of centuries of regional developments. However, you are overlooking the fact that Britain is not monolithic. There were people in Britain who wanted Russia to get and hold Korea because they just didn't like Japan, and there were others who favoured Japan.

America - by the way - at that time uniformly favoured Russia and was thus working against Britain.

Also, as a basic principle, one should also kill the near enemy first. The first and original near enemy of Japan (and all of Asia) was Russia. Russia was even trying to make incursions into the Japanese archipelago even during the time of the Kamakura Shogunate and the Tokugawa Shogunate. For whatever reason, be it racial, religious, economic, or some combination of all three, Russians are a permanent enemy, and the only way to deal with them is to bankrupt them and break up the Russian Federation so that they can no longer threaten our interests in the region again.

Given the option, I would choose to stand with Britain over Russia every time. And I would also choose to stand with Nazi Germany over Russia every time. And I'd choose to stand with NATO over Russia every time. Russia is literally a white invader camping out atop Asian people's resources and trying to prevent me from profiting. It's only logical that we would want Russia to die.

A failure to kill Russia, has resulted in the existence of Gazprom. Those pipes in the freezing cold drawing up oil and gas, should be making money for us, not for some Russians. And one day that will be the reality if we keep pushing Russia down the path to destruction. Someday, all of that will be Asian living space.

[benpenguin]

What has China gained out of remembering WWII anyway? The only response we got from the world is scorn.

Jesus people, what's wrong with a country remembering itself getting massacred?

[Rei Murasame]

I didn't have to reach far to seize on it, given that you guys put the ethnicity card into play, and furthermore it's a discussion about a war that had an ethnic dimension.

I can understand Ben's position because for him it would be logical that if he was with the Chinese warlords or the Chinese communists, then he'd not be happy about the Kwantung Army (which was staffed by both Japanese and Koreans by the way) [1]prancing around killing anyone who looked like a Chinese insurgent and alternately [2]killing anything that appeared to be Russian or Russian-sympathising.

What I cannot agree with though, is the idea that somehow the Kwantung Army and its backers should be repentant for defending the economic interests of Japan and attempting to advance the project for a Greater East Asia. Even if you hate these things and would prefer to have a divided Asia with white colonialists prancing everywhere, you should still be able to admit that it would be crazy if I or any of the pro-Axis side were to see it that way. Why should we be expected to argue against our own selves?

The reason why no one believes that Japan will be repentant, is because everyone else knows that when they themselves do the same things they are not repentant either. No one in Asia ever really apologises for anything, because if it was in your interest to do it, and you did it, and you don't actually think that what you were doing would have been wrong if you had won, then any apology that is produced will be empty. At the most, Japan could apologise for 'killing the wrong people', maybe, or 'being too quick to label people as insurgents', maybe, but Japanese people - and by this I mean mostly the political right, those who have not taken on a leftist orientation - are simply not going to feel apologetic about having had a war that the people in Axis really wanted to win -- and Japanese people wish that Axis had won.

I say it in a harsh way and I get nasty with people sometimes, but it has to be said. For Japanese, and for anyone else in Asia who still sympathises with the cause from that time, the sympathy is real. For Japan and believers in the Pan-Asian idea who looked to Japan as the torch bearer at that time, Japan is seen as 'the good guys'.

People will always see their own side as 'the good guys'.

The only exception to this in all of history is the Germans, who uniquely were able to become convinced that their own side was depraved, and that somehow it was depraved precisely because it was all about them. Germans going on about how 'ultranationalism is dangerous'. Is it? Dangerous to who, really? The people who seem to be the most afraid of ultranationalism in Asian countries were the people who were trying to keep those countries colonised by the west.

So when people are like, "Why can't Japan be like Germany?" They can't, because Germany hates itself and is insane, that's why.

The same question also applies to the ruling class in South Korea, Thailand, and India, although no one ever asks them the same question. Park Geun-hye is president of South Korea partly because her father was a deliberate Axis collaborator who enjoyed every moment of his work and was happy to show off about it. Thailand and India are full of totally unrepentant people. Narendra Modi has openly praised Axis collaborators as 'freedom fighters' who fought against imperialism, he is the Prime Minister of India. Thailand I don't even need to talk about.

"Why can't the South Korean, Thai, and Indian state leaders be more like Germany's?" They can't, because Germany hates itself and is insane, that's why.

Germany is the exception here, not Japan.

Germany is the only Axis belligerent that actually has a population that really believes that it was 'good' to lose the Second World War, 'good' to have all their cities devastated, and 'good' to lose massive amount of territory. Only the Germans are glad to lose, and I don't know what was done to their brains to make them feel them enjoy losing, but whatever it was must be pretty drastic hardcore brainwashing.

[Frollein]

The only exception to this in all of history is the Germans, who uniquely were able to become convinced that their own side was depraved, and that somehow it was depraved precisely because it was all about them. Germans going on about how 'ultranationalism is dangerous'. Is it? Dangerous to who, really? The people who seem to be the most afraid of ultranationalism in Asian countries were the people who were trying to keep those countries colonised by the west.

So when people are like, "Why can't Japan be like Germany?" They can't, because Germany hates itself and is insane, that's why.

That's because the occupying forces in Germany - a country in the middle of Europe - were infinitely more interested in brainwashing reeducating the German population than they were in doing this to Japan (an island at the outer rim of the world). If you want to remove a threat, the most elegant way is to castrate the people spiritually. What's more potent than to instill self-loathing into a whole population? You have to admit that it's on one level an admirable feat.

[Rei Murasame]

Yep, you just beat me to the edit, basically it is brainwashing.

It is some of the most hardcore brainwashing in human history. It's is now a world where Germans cannot seem to vocalise a desire not to be blown up at Dresden and wherever else because "Hitler is super-evil unlike anything in the universe", but then people are still walking around praising Tamerlane -- and Tamerlane was objectively one of the most ramshackle, divisive and destructive leaders in the whole world, ever.

But liberals will still give Tamerlane a place in the world hall of heroic fame. Seriously, check liberals on this issue, they will suddenly start talking about artwork and architecture, completely overlooking that Tamerlane had a global geopolitical entity at his disposal which he used to more or less deliberately kill 5% of the entire world's population, because he felt like.

Seriously, I've tried it, you should try it, bring out Tamerlane at liberals and watch how immediately the whole framework for assessing someone's legacy changes, it immediately changes to a different framework. Suddenly when it's Tamerlane the great patron of the arts, it becomes a mere side issue when you kill 17 million people, or 17 million people die in the conflagrations that erupt in the process of transformation, or whatever the preferred phrasing is.

So even if a person actually bought into the anti-Axis propaganda, being exposed to even one publicly-funded statue of Tamerlane which elicits no condemnation from anyone, should cause a 'moral black hole' to immediately open up and destroy this whole paradigm. A world where Hitler is 'the ultimate evil' and Tamerlane is 'just some guy', is a world that isn't even attempting to make sense on its own ridiculous terms.

But then, you don't even have to go back to Tamerlane to open up that black hole. You could just look to Joseph Stalin and to Kim Il-sung and the same result occurs.

In fact, on 09 May 2015, who will be attending the 70th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Moscow? Kim Jong-un. He will be there. And then everyone will get really quiet on PoFo when I ask them about how North Korea is 'enjoying' the kind of liberation that only communists and liberals could in tandem bring to a people who had the misfortune of living near Russia's ever-expanding arrogant borders.

[Frollein]

Yep, you just beat me to the edit, basically it is brainwashing.

It is some of the most hardcore brainwashing in human history. It's is now a world where Germans cannot seem to vocalise a desire not to be blown up at Dresden and wherever else because "Hitler is super-evil unlike anything in the universe", but then people are still walking around praising Tamerlane -- and Tamerlane was objectively one of the most ramshackle, divisive and destructive leaders in the whole world, ever.

Well, historically, Germany a) has a different moral and philosophical tradition (Roman, Christian, Enlightenment) than Japan, and the values of the Nazis were against everything that tradition stands for. So the condemnation of the war crimes did resonate deeply with the population. And b) wars in Europe were on the whole not wars of extinction, but means to gain the upper hand in the peace negotiations. I don't know if Japan has a tradition of Kabinettskriege?

I don't excuse or condone the war crimes of the Nazis. But I think the "educators" of the German people overshoot by a wide margin with their "never again" program. If people can't even voice their grief or condemn the bombings of Dresden, Würzburg, Potsdam etc. or the ethnic cleansing and raping of the population of East Prussia without getting a "you deserve it" as response; when a people has the Nazi terror as the national founding myth and therefore defines itself completely within the framework of those twelve years, then something has gone seriously wrong. Just as basing one's identity solely on one's shortcomings and living from an attitude of shame and self-loathing isn't healthy for an individual, so it can't be healthy for a people.

But then, you don't even have to go back to Tamerlane to open up that black hole. You could just look to Joseph Stalin and to Kim Il-sung and the same result occurs.

In fact, on 09 May 2015, who will be attending the 70th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Moscow? Kim Jong-un. He will be there. And then everyone will get really quiet on PoFo when I ask them about how North Korea is 'enjoying' the kind of liberation that only communists and liberals could in tandem bring to a people who had the misfortune of living near Russia's ever-expanding arrogant borders.

Ha, I had that kind of conversation a while back here, regarding the question if the Holodomor qualifies as genocide or not, considering that the definition of genocide was written with the participation of the USSR. Imagine, a definition of a crime, written by the perpetrator of that crime is not flawed, according to PoFo!

[Crantag]

[Dagoth Ur]

The British, famous for their Irish and Indian famines, also participated in that definition frollein. Sounds more like a German trying to play "yeah sure the holocaust nevermind that, but did you know the Soviets had their own genocide called the Holodomor?" It is almost like the entire concept was drawn up to draw an equivilency between fascism and bolshevism... oh yeah, right, that is exactly what it is.

Oh and anti-germans are scum.

EDIT:
I just noticed Rei claimed that liberals support or are in favor of the DPRK. Next she'll tell us about how they love Assad.

[Frollein]

The British, famous for their Irish and Indian famines, also participated in that definition frollein. Sounds more like a German trying to play "yeah sure the holocaust nevermind that, but did you know the Soviets had their own genocide called the Holodomor?" It is almost like the entire concept was drawn up to draw an equivilency between fascism and bolshevism... oh yeah, right, that is exactly what it is.

That was not what I was saying, as you know perfectly well. But do go on cheering the Soviets, because mass killings are totally ok when they happen for the right reasons.

I certainly did not read.

Then complement that with "certainly don't write." Saves space.

[Dagoth Ur]

I know what you were saying. That it is a conflict of interest for those committing potential genocide to define genocide. Labeling famines as genocide however is completely bullshit and undermine the term, which is precisely why political killings are also not genocide. I mean hell the so-called holodomor was such an effective genocide that Ukraine became the number two power in the USSR (not to mention that this genocide extended well into Russia and killed a fuck-ton of Russians).

That the Soviet Union was the greatest nation to ever grace our planet is irrelevant to the fact that there was no targeted attack against Ukrainians on the part of the Soviets.

[Frollein]

[Rei Murasame]

Well, historically, Germany a) has a different moral and philosophical tradition (Roman, Christian, Enlightenment) than Japan, and the values of the Nazis were against everything that tradition stands for. So the condemnation of the war crimes did resonate deeply with the population. And b) wars in Europe were on the whole not wars of extinction, but means to gain the upper hand in the peace negotiations. I don't know if Japan has a tradition of Kabinettskriege?

Japan has something almost like Kabinettskriege, but in Japan there was never a stipulation that you couldn't just kill people if they were resisting and being insurgents. Basically, this allowed Japan to transition almost seamlessly into the total war concept.

A lot of the soldiers who carried out the more brutal tactics, were the ones who were posted to China first, and got a taste of a what modern insurgency looks like, and it was those guys who reformulated their approach on the fly by simply reclassifying civilians as their opponents. That was not their default behaviour, but it was something they just picked up.

The ease of picking it up is I think of course because of cultural tradition. The Ashigaru used to just shoot people if they came to fight since back in the day it was expected that if you came out with a weapon then surely you are fighting to the death. The idea that someone would deliberately set out to get captured was a strange new innovation in their view.

On a deeper level, Japan is the same culture that even while having something close to Kabinettskriege during the Warring States period, at the same time did not have it for the reasons that the Germans had it, because the Japanese view did not inherently value the life of a person -- that wasn't the reason for their restraint, it's just that if the main population isn't fighting then it wouldn't make sense to use up time on them. After all, the same Samurai and Ashigaru had the crossroads-killing tradition, and the authorisation to cut and leave tradition.

In crossroads-killing, someone who wants to test a new weapon like a sword or something, would just go and station themselves at a crossroad on a dark night, choose a subject and attack that person. So it's like a checkpoint, except sometimes it's hidden and it can randomly kill. The rationalisation during the feudal era was that conducting the test can be the difference between victory and defeat when the weapon actually has to be used, and so the person being killed (or almost-killed/seriously-frightened, depending) is an acceptable sacrifice, particularly if the person isn't even one of your own subjects. Crossroads-killing only stopped because eventually the Tokugawa Shogunate decided that they didn't like it (after the country was unified and the practice thus no longer had a strategic purpose), and that anyone who did it thereafter would be accused of 'murder', rather than being allowed to claim it was about defence. But no one ever said, "Oh, I'm sorry about all the time before 1600 CE when it was happening."

In authorisation to cut and leave, that is similar to the American castle doctrine and stand your ground doctrine, except this applied to feelings as well. A person of higher rank was allowed to fight and kill a person of lower rank if that person provided a credible threat or posed a serious insult to that person. There had to be one witness, and they would have to give an account for themselves if they were in someone else's territory when it happened, otherwise they could just do it.

These things only ended because peace was established, but not because anyone really formulated a principle of "you just can't do this stuff". They could, if they wanted to.

During the 1980s all of these things were being talked about by Anglo-American liberals apparently, maybe because the 1980s was 'the return of Japan' and the liberal multiculturalists were finding it difficult to comprehend how these things could be seen as a normality for the incredibly long durations that they were in the culture, and it led to Mary Midgley writing some hilarious line like, "It should be possible to absolutely condemn a culture that was okay with these things".

And then Islamic immigration became a thing, and liberal multiculturalists suddenly decided that actually, they could indeed take a culturally-relativist view of who can kill who and under what circumstances. So we would be told that Japanese crossroads-killing during the Warring States Period up to the 1600s was 'absolutely morally wrong', but that Islamic Sharia punishments should be examined relativistically within the context of the culture in which they arose. What can even be said? You know how it goes.

Ha, I had that kind of conversation a while back here, regarding the question if the Holodomor qualifies as genocide or not, considering that the definition of genocide was written with the participation of the USSR. Imagine, a definition of a crime, written by the perpetrator of that crime is not flawed, according to PoFo!

Indeed, it's stunning.

________

I just noticed Rei claimed that liberals support or are in favor of the DPRK.

I didn't say that, I said they produced the result. Obviously they didn't like the result since now they can't find enough words to condemn the DPRK with.

[Dagoth Ur]

How did they produce the result? If liberals had their way it would have been ROK all the way to Russia.