Mildly spicy historical hot take:
Japanese aggression and other crimes during the first half of the 20th Century were based in Japan’s attempt to become the white people of Asia.
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Aw shit. They won the war after all.
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GWB’s bestie:
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Thread.
The protesters I know in Portland were involved in one way or another in support of Standing Rock.
Hm. Not how I’ve understood their motiviations? I’d suggest this book, which directly addresses how the Japanese were positioning themselves… it was less as white people and more as positioning themselves as the leaders of the non-white world in defense of it. They were still a violent, oppressive, and racist empire, but I don’t think being white was their goal?
I do see that @Cynical reading has given them a different take on the issue… I do think the book I’m referring to illustrates how they were specifically using the language of antiracism in their discourses on race, so it’s an interesting contradiction. They certainly saw themselves as the “natural” leaders of Asia and embraced racial hierarchy but their language also suggests that they saw themselves on par with white powers, but as leaders of the nonwhite world in an attempt to protect it from European imperialism. I’d argue that the racial caste system was always flexible and contested.
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Thanks for the book recommendation.
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It depends a lot on how you’re defining whiteness.
The basic gist of my perspective is that the Japanese saw what the white European powers were doing to the world, and decided that the only way to avoid falling victim to it was to emulate what they were doing.
And, because they were viewing it from outside of whiteness’s sanitised self-image, they saw what they needed to emulate as (1) industrialise, and (2) slaughter and plunder the fuck out of as much territory as possible, in order to build sufficient strength to deal with the empires on equal terms.
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