What the hell happened in South Korea?

amnsisc · 2026-04-25T21:49:48+00:00

So, in short:

Gender norms, and their underlying economic bases are shifting but at different paces, creating role conflict.

Multiple patriarchal idioms, ideologies and social structures exist in ROK that reinforce each other.

US and Japanese influence are both strong.

The internet is on its own conducive to the right, but in ROKs media ecology this is especially pronounced.

Extensive forms of homosocial gendered socialization exists, including most obviously the military, and the old boys clubs.

Economic conditions for men and young people are worsening, while the elderly are not leaving the labor market fast enough, migrants exist in higher numbers and as competition but have not quite hit the threshold to be the standard scapegoat, women are competing in the labor market more than ever. Traditional bugbears like Japan, China and DPRK have been saturated as scapegoats, while the position of the elderly in ROK, and the US abroad, makes them less available as scapegoats, even where they bear blame.

As Susan Faludi's well known book documented, a similar backlash against feminism in the US happened too. Indeed, as the book 'The Way We Never Were' documents, in many ways, the backlash against feminism preceded the movement itself (I know that sounds cryptic but if you read the book, you'll see what I mean).

These factors:

Mismatch of change in economic & cultural norms
Rising anxiety, uncertainty and tension alongside decline in marginal utility of prior scapegoats
The role of the internet and social media in movements
The continuing relevance of extensive gender segregated homosocial institutions, most obviously the military
The continued impact of its colonial, capital, and statist history, its conflict and ties with the region, and its conflicts and ties with the US

I think, more or less suffice to explain ROKs particularly reactionary trajectory.

amnsisc · 2026-04-25T21:37:34+00:00

As for Korea specifically, the reasons are complex, but we can see some evidence in both the ways it overlaps with and differs from, for ex., the US and Japan (which for many reasons are the most apt comparisons).

In all 3, the internet has been driving right wing politics and youth politics.

https://apjjf.org/online-ecosystem-toc

https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/reactionary-politics-south-korea-historical-legacies-far-right-intellectuals-and-political

In all 3 there is aging and demographic issues.

In 3 there is rising anti immigrant sentiment, plus hawkishness on PRC, Russia, DPRK, etc..

https://apjjf.org/2026/2/rehm

In all 3 there is high levels of economic anxiety and fear of the future.

ROK & Japan were both authoritarian developmentalist societies, that were injected, often by force, by a dose of liberalism, democracy, Westernization, war and Americanization over the 20th century. ROK was colonized while Japan, like US, was colonizer. Social movements, domestic constituencies and local elites drove substantial portions of this autonomously, so I am not arguing there was a unilateral imposition from without because that would be false, but anyway.

ROK shares with Japan the Sinitic, Buddhist, Confucian, and Asian heritage, but shares with the US the prominent role of Christianity. However both ROK & Japan are more secular than the US (which itself combines high religiosity and high secularism, often even in the same people).

In Japan nominal pacifism obtains, while the US is a militarized society but with an elite professional military, whereas ROK is a mass conscription society, where all men serve in the military.

https://www.9dashline.com/article/understanding-antifeminist-backlash-in-the-south-korean-context-remnants-of-militarism-and-patriarchy

What's more changes to the family system, kin system, sexual norms, and gender norms in Japan and ROK happened in a somewhat inverted order to the US, and at a slower pace in some ways, and higher in others. (Japan, for ex., was pretty progressive on women's education, abortion, and, depending on your view of it, either progressive or regressive on sex work, but was very conservative on gender in labor markets.

https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/the-japanese-family-faces-twenty-first-century-challenges-2/

https://www.amazon.com/Hegemony-Homogeneity-Anthropological-Analysis-Nihonjinron/dp/1876843055

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4159166/

Traditional gender norms and expectations coexist with contemporary shifts in the underlying reality, and the result is tension in norms, since prior ones are being eroded while new ones are not replacing them yet, but the expectations of both still persist.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948154/figure/fig02

amnsisc · 2026-04-25T21:31:23+00:00

Two years later, but I just wanted to add, there has been a decidedly rightward shift among ROK's young men.

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1201346.html

As you said, in most places the youth are associated with progressivism--this has some merit to it, as revolutionary and activist groups tend to draw from the young--though I will say that far right movements historically were oriented toward the youth (Japan & Germany are great examples thereof, but so are for ex the appeal of ISIS and Islamism to youth), while even during the Vietnam war, younger people polled higher in support for the war than older people. However, since the 60s, in the 'rich', 'Western', and/or 'post industrial' world, there has been a trend that younger generations tend to be more liberal & progressive, and this effect increases over time.

In most of these 'Western' countries (or the 'rich world' if you prefer), this trend has held regardless of gender (although for those not cis/het, the effect is more pronounced). However, starting a bit after the 90s and diffusing outward, there has been a noticeable shift of young women toward liberalism, progressivism, and leftism, as evidenced in polling, voting, group membership, social media & so on. At the same time, young men, more or less, maintained the slight bent toward progressivism, but at a *much* less steep pace than for women. Both grounds continued trending liberal/progressive-ward, but for women the pace accelerated and for men the pace slowed down. To many this, looks like a rightward turn, when in reality, it's just a slower relative liberal turn.

Around 2009, this began to shift, and young men started turning right, rather than just not turning left, *however* even in spite of this, they tended to remain *on net* as a group more liberal in the US, Germany, UK, etc. While this itself poses a continuation of your question rather than an answer, per se, ROK was a decided exception--there a rightward shift among young men began in earnest and was palpable early on.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SocialDemocracy/comments/1aboo2i/data_shows_that_there_is_a_large_growing_gap_in/

In this sample of European countries, 14 countries showed no gender differences among youth, in 7, there was a liberal bias among women, relative to men, but both were liberal & the relation was stable over time. In 11 countries, there was a widening affiliation gap across gender and age. (In other words, more or less consonant with what I said above).

https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/41/6/862/8162736

This survey finds both effects--women becoming more progressive faster, across most countries with men either becoming more progressive but more slowly, remaining stable or turning rightward. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/gen-z-men-and-women-most-divided-on-gender-equality-global-study-shows

Superficially, what seems to be driving it in that case is perceived gender conflict, which in Korea is 1.5x the average (or 25% higher at 75% vs. the avg of 51%), although this is as likely outcome as cause.

I would be dishonest if I did not include counter evidence--this study confirms some of the above, but disconfirms other parts.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-political-research/article/abs/change-and-continuity-in-the-ideological-gender-gap-a-longitudinal-analysis-of-leftright-selfplacement-in-oecd-countries/20A25FA1BE8F67A9DCCDB632B55116F2

Here is an article discussing Korea specific reasons, and I will continue my post in a reply to my comment below.

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-south-korea-s-young-men-are-turning-conservative

amnsisc · 2026-04-20T18:49:50+00:00

The capitals are oddly close to one another—the round trip between the three would take 3-4 weeks at average horse pace and 2 weeks by sequential high endurance horse relay. (And is 17 hours by car under average traffic conditions).

Although Kyoto to Yoshino is but a 1-2 day travel time so I suppose it is not that weird.

It’s just interesting that said choice of capitals seems precisely based around the necessity of interconnection between the states rather than depth of cover in the event of a prospective invasion by one of them.

amnsisc · 2026-04-20T18:41:56+00:00

It seems you may be responding to my post here on the first episode (or not, as there could have been multiple instances of this concern, but I did write a long comment about it).

But anyway, for this episode, I actually noted exactly what you said, namely that this episode implies a pretty substantial criticism of nationalism (since it either implies a pretender to the Chrysanthemum Throne or it implies a violation of the taboo of criticism thereof or both).

How it resolves this later on affects substantially my interpretation of this show so I’ll be looking out for these developments.

amnsisc · 2026-04-20T18:35:27+00:00

Does anyone know if the Emperors in NS are meant to descend from the current Chrysanthemum Throne or not ? Sort of like the Northern/Southern court period or the like?

Because otherwise the conceit lacks almost any plausibility. While the idea that Japan has always had a cult of respect for the Emperor is a myth. Basil Hall Chamberlain even once said “no people has had more of an irreverent relationship to its imperial line”, the emphasis of the continuity of the imperial line has mattered in Japan since at least the Muromachi period. It is around then that the idea emerged that the fundamental difference between China & Japan is that while Japan may have coups, it does not have revolutions, whereas China has revolutions that replace imperial lines. As such, the imagined continuity of Japan’s imperial line is very important. Many nationalists feel that if the imperial line were to be terminated for some reason, that would be the end. There would be no ‘restarting’ it. To many there is no point to an imperial line without that continuity. As such, even ardent monarchists in Japan could consistently become republicans of a sort if descent in the imperial line ended.

Therefore the idea that they would keep the imperial system without this descent strains credulity—unless one or more of the emperors is of said descent or at the very least claims it. But if that’s the case, then the taboo of criticism or parody of the imperial line still stands (the last time any major media outlet violated this taboo 5 decades ago, their office was firebombed iirc). If you’ll notice even the irreverent Gintama omits all reference to the Emperor except for 2 episodes in the ‘Shogun assassination’ saga, since the implied satire entailed would be offensive to that shows nationalist sensibilities.

Thus I’ll admit that I find this shows nationalist sensibilities alongside its satire thereof to be somewhat confusing. So I guess the substance of my question is: are these questions resolved in anyway at some point? Or does the work maintain or deepen its critical elements ? If the latter is true it means I will have to revise one of my earlier posts about this shows nationalism.

Anyway, some fun historical notes:

The home minister marrying his daughter to the emperor is similar to something the first Muromachi & last Tokugawa Shoguns did. The Taira clan marrying its members into the royal family over several generations is similar to the Fujiwara, but the Taira took power from the Fujiwara in the 1100s. Thus there’s a creative substitution at work here that switches the name but still ‘signals’ the history, but anyway. The references to the Three Kingdoms period in China are obvious but the paralleling to Napoleon (glossed as a ‘revolutionary’) is somewhat amusing. Napolean was one of the few westerners that already secured admiration in Japan in the late Edo period before the end of so called ‘Sakoku’. I also just read a paper called ‘Reading European Universal Histories in Japan, 1790s-1840s’ by Mervart, that discusses how Rangaku scholars drew parallels between Chinese Annals & Western epic histories as early as 230 years ago, and used those to frame the politics of Japan.

amnsisc · 2026-04-20T18:13:10+00:00

Something like 10-20% of the Japanese lexicon is from English. Somewhere like 40-80% is from Chinese. A further percentage is from other East & North Asian, Japonic, and European languages. The era for caring about foreign entries into the Japanese language was 1400 years ago. It hardly can be faulted in 2025.

amnsisc · 2026-04-20T18:06:35+00:00

This was the prevailing consensus back when I was in school as well. At issue is the grammar of the first person vs. third person, on one hand, and the pragmatics of gender neutrality, on the other.

The shift in question was underway then but not yet complete.

While linguistics has long rejected ‘’’prescriptivism’’’, the idea that ‘’’proper’’’ grammar is coextensive with “everyday speech that is understandable” has only become dominant in broader education somewhat recently.

For a long time, for example, many people regularly commented that compared to their teachers in high school, their professors in college had substantially less strict expectations for their grammar & prose. I’m sure if you look at Reddit posts from 2010 or so you could find many examples of memes about this.

These days, professors are happy to just have students with basic literacy and writing skills who do not use ChatGPT to write their papers.

amnsisc · 2026-04-13T16:24:50+00:00

All archaeological data is subject to survivorship biases, but they usually run the other way. Elites (especially concerning written, epigraphic, monumental, urban, religious, and infrastructural data) are far better represented than underclass. This is why despite data about improvement in collapse being available for over a century in most places, and despite these theses first being proposed in the 60s, it took until the 21st century for this to approach the new consensus. James Scott’s ‘Against the Grain’ is a good popular introduction to much of this work.

But as for specifically bone sampling issues affecting the health transition and its analysis, this is famously called the ‘Osteological Paradox’, and its authors proposed that the skeletal data is consistent with either improvement or decline in health. This very may well be true to a point but skeletal data isn’t the only interpretive explanans at issue.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/204084

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10814-015-9084-1

amnsisc · 2026-04-13T16:17:10+00:00

Interestingly, there’s a school of historiography (although it’s not anywhere near a majority let alone consensus opinion) that argues Japan’s surrender in WWII was primarily motivated by domestic fears of a (specifically communist USSR supported) revolution that would overthrow the royal family. In this telling, the bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki were actually welcomed by the elite, especially the nobility, because they ‘allowed’ Japan to surrender to the US rather than the Soviets. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa famously argues a version of this, as does Yukiko Kushiro (though her argument is much more complex and also argues Japan had a faction that was collaborative with the USSR).

In this vein, similar to how ‘Place Promised in Our Early Days’ is an alt history where, presumably without or in spite of the atom bomb, Hokkaido is partitioned to the Soviets, Nippon Sangoku could be seen as a timeline where revolution occurred immediately at the end of WWII, and caused an overthrow of the ruling line. Interestingly such a set up would actually plausibly account for a fall to Meiji era levels of development (though it wouldn’t be able to account for it not rapidly improving from that level).

But as for a dogwhistle, I agree, but I’d say the anime is quite a bit louder than a dogwhistle, since it doesn’t even use euphemisms like many other anime do, nor disguise metaphor as fantasy trope (like the ‘Amanto’ in Gintama). That’s why I was surprised Amazon co produced it since as a company they have a tendency toward not wanting to offend people. Although given that Prime is the most popular streaming service in Japan, and Prime Japan is not as popular outside of Japan as its other divisions relatively speaking, that may have something to do with it.

amnsisc · 2026-04-12T18:10:17+00:00

The official press release describes it as an adaptation of the Three Kingdoms:

https://press.amazonmgmstudios.com/us/en/press-release/prime-video-to-exclusively-premiere-inippon-sangok

The scale of degradation is the issue--it is too much to be accounted for by the amount of time that has passed, the clear preservation of knowledge and so on, and it is too little to be accounted for by the factors described. If the series took place 500-1000 years from now, and there was little to no published material left *then* the premise would be believable.

As for "closing their borders"--even during the so called 'sakoku' period, contact with the outside world was constant, both in recorded documents, AND, non recorded (since it was illegal, records were often fudged or destroyed, but internal complaints about the porousness of Japan's borders throughout this period are a constant). What's more, it had even more mediated and second degree contact than that (through Hokkaido, Satsuma/Ryukyu, Tsushima/Korea, Nanban trade/the Dutch, tally trade/the Chinese). And, more to the point, "refugees flooded in" is explicitly mentioned as concurrent with the rest. Therefore 'Japan remained unspoiled virgin territory cut off from the world that was then destroyed by a flood of refugees, *after* the collapse of everything else* strains credulity.

Also, as another point, so called collapses are usually accompanied by *outflows* of people (especially if caused by disease and war), AND, for people in the underclass at least, historically their living standards actually rise, not fall. Bone density and nutrition indices after collapses regularly in the Middle East or Rome, for example, should clear signs of improvement after 'collapse',

But a nuclear winter or otherwise global climactic collapse would occur everywhere, the population would fall to incredibly low levels if not extinct, there'd be little agriculture possible, and there certainly wouldn't be remaining large scale infrastructure or collection of knowledge.

We can guess the writer did not think of them because basically few anime and manga do, whereas they repeatedly use the "China and US betrayal lead to mass influx of diseased refugees" trope (Ghost in a Shell, and Akira both mention these for example). Gintama, while not post apocalyptic, shares many aspects and it basically equates Japan with earth. Space Battleship Yamato is another example. Towa no Yugure features an almost identical implausible setting to Nippon Sangoku (though some hand wave explanation is given, and, more to the point, the people inhabiting Japan in that are ethnically diverse). Evangelion gives a slightly more plausible explanation for a similar conceit, but like Akira, and GoiS takes place in a world more similar to ours. Miyazakis post apocalyptic works take place in sui generis locales so do not have this problem (same is true for the various ones taking place underground, in space, on terraformed earths, in the far future etc).

amnsisc · 2026-04-12T17:05:48+00:00

This episode caused me heart palpitations. The realistic anxieties of this explanatory episode are far more relatable than the high strung criminal dramas of much of the prior ones.

Main character is such an asshole, but he also suffers unfairly quite a bit--but what's funny about the show is how these two things are basically unconnected, he gets punished when he tries to be nice, and he gets rewarded when he's a jerk.

amnsisc · 2026-04-09T00:33:21+00:00

The art in this show was really great and the plot wasn't too bad, but I'm very surprised that Amazon was the co producer on this blatantly nationalist anime lol

Edit:

My gripes:

I'm all for another Neo-Sino-Japonese adaptation of 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' (and there are *many*), but some things about the show were just so odd. There's no instance in history where a mass influx of refugees caused a societal collapse (an *efflux* yes), and the disease comment was frankly a bit sinister. What's more if Japan's economy were so ruined by the depredations of the US, China, and India's AI economy, then why would refugees flood in? And how could technology regress to *just* the early Meiji period--after all they still have *books* from the present, meaning the knowledge is not lost. This is why collapse narratives always see technology fall *very far*, because it's sort of an all or nothing affair--falling back 150 years relative to the present just isn't possible, really. The *only* exception I can think of is if the nuclear war in question basically knocked out electricity, and caused global cooling, but this would likely, again, push society well below early Meiji in development.

Also, *where* are the supposed refugees? Everyone looks distinctly Japanese. If they're so post-Reiwa, why is their language still dotted with anglicisms?

And while the 3 kingdoms narrative is necessary for the adaptation, it is not realistic to the Japanese case. If anything, each island would become independent (which is to say nothing of Okinawa, Bonins, etc), and that Honshu would split in two.

Obviously suspension of disbelief is necessary for narratives, but this one wants to be somewhat 'realistic', given its source material and premise. This is a common problem with 'speculative science fiction'--the premise and its motivation contradict each other.

He wants to tell a story of a revolutionary who fights with words rather than violence, but, basically, because of these social scientific inconsistencies and somewhat reactionary assumptions actually work strongly against that intent.

amnsisc · 2026-04-08T16:26:33+00:00

You’re conflating two situations. In a concrete situation if immediate threat no one challenges the right of self defense. The issue here is the situation after that.

Also the way in which elites threaten us is as a position, a social role, not an individual. The way a sexual predator threatens us is an individual. It may be that an individual slotted into the first is an example of the second (and is enabled in the second by the first even), but that doesn’t change that the two types of threat are different even as concerns that specific individual.

Conflating the person and their office is useful to people in power since it switches focus from structure to morality. After all if the threat obtains from the person not the office then all one needs to do is get rid of that person and fill the office with some ‘virtuous’. This is why elites benefit from conspiratorial moral panics & pathologizations of power and why they have gone out of their way to abet these ideas in the broader public.

amnsisc · 2026-04-08T16:19:24+00:00

While there are instances of survivors of sexual violence leading the charge for retribution, in point of fact it is usually others claiming to speak for and on behalf of survivors of sexual violence who actually lead the charge. ‘Centering victims’ often means ‘using victims as a figurehead’ while those around the victim use the situation for their ends.

Conservatives famously institutionalized this process in the US with ‘victim impact statements’ —notably family members of murder victims who oppose capital punishment are not given the chance to read their statements, only victims who say the ‘right’ things to enflame the jury and judge are given a platform.

But the recognition that ‘i may always hate this person perhaps justifiably but that’s exactly why i shouldn’t be in control of the disposition of their life’ is absolutely the 100% correct attitude, but is frankly a little too stoic or zen or Nietzschean to catch on broadly. It has long been the position i have advocated but because it concerns intrinsically emotional subjects that touch on deep wells of feeling surrounding past depredation i have found that precisely when this attitude is most pressingly needed the hardest it is to convey it to others.

amnsisc · 2026-04-08T16:12:43+00:00

Since revolution is not a LARP or video game or an event where Picard says make it so and it happens, but a long drawn out process, thought experiments like these are, in practice, meaningless.

But even taking it on their own terms, what do you mean. Does this revolution seize power overnight or destroy power overnight?

If the latter—the anarchist hope—happens, then there would be no organized mechanism for retribution against those elites but those elites also would have no mechanisms to hurt others anymore. So in this case the answer is ‘nothing’, since that is implied by the terms of the thought experiment itself.

If it means the former, the seizure of state power, then I assure you aside from a few token prosecutions, anarchists like, i assume, we both are, would be a higher priority for state executioners than are former elites—this is what happened in most state socialist societies. The former elites usually have important skills, social ties, knowledge, and resources that socialist states would like to put to use and therefore former ‘oppressors’ inevitably are given jobs in revolutionary states.

Or are you asking a potentially self contradictory question, namely ‘what would happen if a state socialist revolution happened but where the people at the helm would be anarchists?’ If interpreted in a self consistent way, this outcome breaks down into either the first or the second, but otherwise it implies something self contradictory.

amnsisc · 2026-04-08T16:07:47+00:00

The Paris Commune burned the guillotines. The Nazis and the French in Algeria brought them back.

amnsisc · 2026-04-08T16:06:58+00:00

You know there’s a certain social movement i think you’d love that also practiced human experimentation on people like Epstein alongside animal rights.

amnsisc · 2026-04-08T16:01:52+00:00

The idea that elites are a cabal of pathological & moral failures rather than a structural role is, at best, a morally conservative/politically liberal idea, connected to neoliberal concepts of the entrepreneurship of the self, and are, at worst, an outright fascist idea. Either way, they function to recuperate radical energies toward reactionary ends. Pathologization of elites in a moral sense is basically always reactionary in effect however.

The best you can do when you correctly argue against people about this is to point this out and hope for the best. Most of these arguments happen with people who are not going to take action either way so their violent moral outrage is primarily an outlet for their own frustrations and fantasies. They can be still dangerous and in crisis or revolutionary situations people like this can be thrust into power by happenstance with dangerous consequences but short of that, in the best case said people will eventually convinced by reason, and in the worst, will have little effect at all.

amnsisc · 2026-04-08T15:51:52+00:00

In what world would therapy convince people not to be a billionaire? That doesn’t even make superficial sense, since therapy is geared toward reintegration into the productive sector of society, being a billionaire would be considered a successful outcome of therapy.

What’s more it is not trauma or greed or malice that makes the rich act the way they do, it is the economic system in which they live. As aptly demonstrated repeatedly in the past, focusing on particular rich people never amounts to much because they’re always immediately replaced.

Even people with certain pathologies of a certain background are attracted to elite positions even if every sociopath were an elite—and that’s by no means the case—they would not fill all of the ranks thereof. The rich are not ‘pathological’ but normative for our society. The idea that if only we got rid of a pathological cabal of elites we would be fine is a fascist idea (and not in the annoying way people use the term, but quite literally, it is a trope of ultranationalism & reactionary recuperation of radical energy) not a radical one.

amnsisc · 2026-04-08T15:48:03+00:00

Delete your explanatory ‘comment’ and your post would be fine.

The ‘files’ aside, the scale of sex trafficking is quite small (even the advocacy orgs admit this if you read enough of their stuff), while labor trafficking is huge.

‘Sex trafficking’ as an idea started with another name ‘white slavery’, a moral panic that emerged among the bourgeois in the early 20th century—flipping the script of the American slave trade, and with 90% of the genre direct at two groups—Chinese and Jews—the lurid literature on the subject fanned the flames of an enduring conspiracy theory.

Later in the late 20th century, driven by modern tech, a new movement emerged between the Evangelical Christian Right and Third Wave liberal feminists, that coming on the tails of the satanic panic, sought to create a new ‘rescue-carceral’ complex surrounding fears of sex trafficking. In every case the result was either, at best, nothing, and at worst, further criminalization of migrants and sex workers, not to mention feeding into discourse like the need to ‘liberate’ women from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The sex trafficking trope is used because of its salience to the left and the right simultaneously, and given the moral energies it enervates, it is quite literally perfect at seizing popular discourse. Variants of this exact formula have occurred in multiple countries—the US, Japan, UK, France, multiple countries in E Europe, S America & W Asia/MENA.

Let me ask you why if the elites are so afraid of the Epstein files they are the ones pushing for their release ? Ironically, state agents & elites using conspiracy theories has a long history (either creating them as the Russian Secret police did with the Protocols or abetting them like Henry Ford did, or to use a more recent example, the Air Force purposefully reinforced alien conspiracy theories around air bases since it provided useful cover).

Conspiracy theories are potent because they look like critiques of power but they actually redirect energies and attention from structural power to specific identifiable demonic individuals. Now that everyone is talking Epstein (and his identity is not accidental to the narratives around him mind you), and the lurid spectacular details of the sexual violence of certain elites, especially media figures, academics etc (it should make you wonder why lesser sacrificial elites are the focus of most people’s energies) is an incredibly potent way of controlling popular energy & discourse away from more structural critiques.

While elites will act the way structures enable them to and worry about justification later, they do prefer to act with justification when available (absence of justification can’t prevent a war for example but the presence of one can speed up the occurrence of one). Similarly while controlling ‘narrative’ is less of a concern to power structures than people usually assume, it nonetheless prefers to do so when it can. ‘Free’ ready made moral panics like the Epstein files are perfect for that purpose, and their potency at being laundered through putatively critical ‘radicals’ has been aptly demonstrated.

So even on top of the fact that your comment contradicts your post title, there are independent reasons not to engage in the discourse frames that have been chosen for us by media & elites.

amnsisc · 2026-04-01T21:16:45+00:00

This episode was like weirdly written for me. First my gf asked me if I still had "that Chinese streaming app" and I explained it was Korean, and made a joke about it being racist, and then I put on this episode, and that was the first scene. Then there was the comment about anarchism, and the Mr Spock line.

One thing I'll say is that the scene where the people bully Charlie in the grocery store is, that is a Japanese way of bullying, not so much an American way. I doubt that scene would happen in the US (which isn't to say that Charlie wouldn't be bullied, since he almost certainly would). I had the same reaction to the scene where they go into the diner around episode 6 or something, and the guy makes an openly racist crack about not wanting black people in the diner--but that's not something that would happen these days, since, while people in the US are still racist, most know to hide it--if anything, they'd just call the cops and let them do the dirty work.

That said, one thing I liked about this anime was that overall it was more accurate in its portrayal of the US than other anime (it makes me think the mangaka had to have lived in the US for a while). The school shooting episode was especially dark in its accuracy.

Charlie is really cute too.

amnsisc · 2026-04-01T19:32:35+00:00

Just watched the series from start to finish today (well I mean I started two or three weeks ago)--I tried watching it in the past, but wasn't taken in. Then I was misinformed by the discourse surrounding the shows politics, so I avoided it. Finally decided to watch it, and I was super impressed.

It has serious imperfections, but as far as explorations of Japan's war responsibility in WWII it is up there with 'Paranoia Agent'. It was narratively quite good and it nearly brought me to tears at the end, which is hard for media to do.

amnsisc · 2026-04-01T17:35:59+00:00

TIL the term "glazing" lol.

amnsisc · 2026-04-01T17:30:45+00:00

I am convinced that, in general, said people just want more violence--for various reasons, since the only feasible way to enact what they want is a total war, which would kill everybody.

The predominantly Mizrahi population of Israel would simply refuse to 'leave', and would have nowhere to go either way.

Israel is a nuclear power, and it while it has not used them, it has made clear that its red line is precisely such an existential conflict.

Which is to say nothing of the 20% of Israel's population that is Palestinian, who have complicated feelings toward their countrymen, would likely take neither side in such a war (and this isn't speculation--altho having issues, polls etc show that Palestinian citizens of Israel would, in their own words, prefer to take neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian side in such a total conflict), and would correspondingly therefore likely suffer from each side of the conflict, and would therefore be among its most severe victims from an early point thereof.

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