This last year has witnessed the rise of the wide-spread racist “Net Far Right” (Net Kyoku) that has coordinated attacks on “foreigners” in Japan. As reported in the New York Times (8/28/10), they organize mostly through the internet in order to conceal their identity, are “loudly anti-foreign” and direct their attack on Korean and Chinese residents, Christian organizations, and even those who dress in Halloween costumes.
Much like the U.S. Tea Party’s racist attacks against immigrant labor from the Global South, the “Net” blame foreigners for the financial crisis that has lingered in Japan for over ten years, for the rise in crime and homelessness in Western Japan, and for the decline in pro-Japanese sentiment, particularly by young Japanese. The similarity between the Tea Party and the “Net” is clear in another respect: they are both convenient devices used by the ruling class for creating dissonance among workers from various cultural backgrounds who should be united in fighting the real enemy, the capitalist bosses.
Apologists at the New York Times (NYT) suggest that the “Net” are distinct from other far-right groups, citing that the established right-wing (Uyoku) make themselves visible on a regular basis in Tokyo and other major cities around Japan. The “Net” racists, though, are equally sinister and cowardly in their attacks on Korean and Chinese immigrant groups, many of whom have been in Japan since they were brought as slave labor during World War II and have not been granted citizenship.
NYT apologists also fail to point out that ultranationalist groups hijacked the expanding working-class and peasant movements in the 1920’s and 30’s, leading to the rise of Japanese fascism which used racism and sexism to legitimize the rapes and slaughter of workers in most of East Asia, such as the genocides in Nanking and Korea.
Deep-rooted ultra-nationalism and racism has continued to govern the censorship of history books, which discount the genocides committed by Japan in China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. The grossest example of this is the recent film ‘The Truth about Nanking,’ directed by the ultranationalist and fascist Satoru Mizushima and backed by the outspoken fascist and racist Mayor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, which alleges that the Nanking Massacre was created as propaganda that intended to demean the image of Japan in the world.
Racist ultranationalists are closely linked to ruling-class parties, such as the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which ruled Japan almost continuously from its founding in 1955 to 2009. Figures like the wartime profiteer Yoshio Kodama, who helped found the LDP, and the right-wing Nihimura Shingo; who has ties to the current ruling Democratic Party of Japan; and fascists like Mayor Ishihara, who has openly called for violence against foreigners in the past, are examples of how the ultra-right and ruling-class parties are linked.
The inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and China for the control of the world’s recourses, including the struggle to dominate the East China Sea, is part of the larger framework for how the “Net” and other racist groups can be utilized by ruling elites to increase nationalist sentiment, particularly as Japan is right in the middle of the U.S.-China dogfight. As the New York Times has been reporting since the spring of this year, China has expanded its naval power “from as far as the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Malacca” in order to “secure Chinese interests” which include oil from the Middle East.
The resource-rich South and East China Seas, in which Chinese engineers discovered natural gas reserves off the coast of the disputed Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, has also sparked recent political trouble between Japan and China. The U.S. is expanding its influence in the region through the continued colonization of Okinawa, which is host to one of the largest U.S. military instillations in the world.
The struggle against ultra-nationalism by students and teachers in recent years over the censoring of textbooks and the inclusion of the fascist national anthem (Kimigayo) needs to be extended to oppose racist groups like the “Net” and other Uyoku who terrorize immigrant and foreign populations and who are manipulated by capitalist bosses. The time has come to forget reformists like the Japanese Communist Party and other movements who offer false promises of a “peaceful transition to socialism,” and build an internationalist communist movement led by the PLP in Japan and East Asia to smash racism and nationalism and create a world built on human need, not profit! J