Published August 27th, 2006 by Future Atlas
Japan — trend: right-wing nationalism
Writing in the WP, Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation warns of a “campaign of right-wing intimidation of public figures that is squelching free speech and threatening to roll back civil society.”
Emboldened by the recent rise in nationalism, an increasingly militant group of extreme right-wing activists who yearn for a return to 1930s-style militarism, emperor-worship and “thought control” have begun to move into more mainstream circles — and to attack those who don’t see things their way.
This raises two sets of questions:
- Is something about this new, given that Japan has had a sometimes-violent rightist fringe for half a century? Is the more-nationalist climate such that now it means something different?
- Can Japan really swing in the direction the far right desires? Is it a liberal democratic nation well-integrated into the international system, or is this is a veneer that could fall away in the event of a true crisis?