1/Alright, gather round, friends, and let me tell you the story of 1930s Japan, and how it's a cautionary tale for 2020s

2/Everyone knows that Japan became militarist, fascist, and (even more) expansionist in the 30s.

But what few people know is that this followed 6 years of coup attempts by EVEN MORE militarist/fascist/expansionist lunatics.

So let's review that history.
3/The first coup attempt was the March Incident in 1931.

Basically, some right-wing army officers planned to stage a riot to provoke martial law, and install a military dictator.

It failed when they couldn't get enough people to riot.
4/The coup plotters weren't really punished, so they just tried again a few months later. Some of their co-conspirators ratted them out and they failed again.

But AGAIN THEY WEREN'T PUNISHED! People defended them, saying they were simply too patriotic. 🤡
5/These coup plotters wanted the following:

1. A military dictator
2. Aggressive military action against Japan's rivals (i.e. every other country)
3. Increased colonial expansionism
4. Some mumbo-jumbo about cultural purity and economic egalitarianism
6/Anyway, a year later, some different coup plotters tried again. This time their plan involved lots of assassinations. They successfully assassinated the Prime Minister, but failed to kill the visiting Charlie Chaplin (which they hoped would provoke a war with the U.S.
7/But despite killing Japan's elected leader, the coup plotters received only light punishment!!

There was an outpouring of popular support on their behalf. They thus received only a short stint in jail...which of course encouraged further coup attempts.
8/Anyway then there was another coup attempt a couple years later that never got off the ground, but of course no one was punished.
9/But finally, in 1936, the big one came.

A large number of junior army officers, with troops to back them, and sympathies from some generals, launched a huge insurrection aimed at assassinating senior politicians and seizing control of government buildings.
10/Some generals sympathized with the insurrectionists, but the Emperor and a critical mass of loyalists opposed them. Eventually they were arrested.

This time -- FINALLY -- the government meted out harsh punishments, executing 17 of the plotters and imprisoning others.
11/But now here's the thing. The Japanese government went on to do pretty much exactly what the coup plotters wanted!

They put the military in charge of the country! They tried to colonize all of Asia! And they started a war with the U.S.!

Oops.
12/So what can we learn from Japan's failures in the 1930s?

Fortunately, the coup attempt of 1/6/2020 didn't come from within the military. Nor does Trump support or fascism in general come from the military. So that's one positive difference.
13/Another positive difference is that the U.S. does not currently have a tradition of "government by assassination", as Japan did then. In the 60s we did, but assassinations are thankfully rare now.
14/BUT, there are some disturbing similarities between 1930s Japan's crazies and the right-wingers who stormed the Capitol on 1/6.
15/The first big lesson from the failures of 1930s Japan is:

PUNISH THE PLOTTERS HARSHLY THE FIRST TIME.

Don't wait for the coup attempts to escalate! Don't call the coup plotters "patriots"! Don't let them off with a slap on the wrist!
16/The second big lesson is:

DON'T GIVE IN TO THE COUP PLOTTERS' IDEOLOGY.

Japan basically became what the rightists wanted. We musn't do that.
17/Remember, a slap on the wrist will just encourage the same assholes to be bolder the next time.

The first of Japan's many coups was even less impressive than what we saw on 1/6!

Because it wasn't punished, it encouraged more and more.
18/We're a more stable country than 1930s Japan, with better institutions.

But if we give coup plotters a slap on the wrist, and call them "patriots", we too will go down the path of chaos and fascism.

(end)

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More from We need 3 million vaccinations a day 🐇

When Republicans started to believe in racial bloc voting - when they stopped believing that nonwhite people could ever be persuaded to vote Republican - they started to see immigration as an invasion.

This explains why immigration is now at the center of partisan conflict.


Of course, the belief in ethnic bloc voting becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When a slight Dem tilt among Hispanics and Asians caused the GOP to turn against them, Hispanics and Asians shifted more toward the Dems. Etc. etc. A self-reinforcing cycle.

Bush's 2006 amnesty attempt, and the 2013 intra-GOP fight over immigration reform, were two moments when the GOP could have turned back to the approach of Reagan, and courted Hispanics and Asians.

But they decided against this, and...here we are.

What will disrupt this bad equilibrium, and save American politics from being an eternal race war?

Either:
A) More white voters will grow disgusted with the GOP approach and defect, or
B) The GOP will find some non-immigration-related issues to attract more Hispanics and Asians.

As long as both parties see elections in terms of racial bloc voting - where the only way to win is to increase turnout among your own racial blocs or suppress turnout by the other party's racial blocs - American politics will not improve, and the country will decline.

(end)
1/I'm thinking about the end of Apu in the context of the national debates on immigration and diversity.


2/Apu's presence in Springfield represented a basic reality of America in the late 20th and early 21st century: the presence of nonwhite immigrants.

3/As Tomas Jimenez writes in "The Other Side of Assimilation", for my generation, immigrants from India, China, Mexico, and many other countries aren't strange or foreign. On the contrary, they're a

4/But that America I grew up with is fundamentally ephemeral. The kids of immigrants don't retain their parents' culture. They merge into the local culture (and, as Jimenez documents, the local culture changes to reflect their influence).

5/Simpsons character don't change. But real people, and real communities, do. So a character who once represented the diversity that immigrants brought to American towns now represents a stereotype of Indian-Americans as "permanent foreigners".

More from History

Folks who don't know history just tweet whatever they want.

On Feb 1935, Bose attacked the Nazis as he was angry as Indians were described as Sub-Humans in Mein Kampf. The British arrested Bose in April 1936, because he insulted the Nazis.

#Thread


The West at this point had a soft spot for the Nazis. France, Great Britain, Netherlands, Poland all gave the Nazi Salute during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Even during the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939), the Western powers observed neutrality as the Fascists rose in Spain.


In 1937, Hitler told British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax that one of his fav movies was ‘The Lives of a Bengal Lancer’. Why?

‘The Lives of a Bengal Lancer’ depicted a handful of "superior race" Brits holding sway over an entire Indian subcontinent (Sub-Humans).

"Shoot Gandhi. If necessary, shoot more Congress Leaders (Nehru & Bose)."

- Hitler to Lord Halifax, Britain's Foreign Secretary

This statement by Hitler in 1937 angered many pro-Leftist leaders of the INC including Bose.

Bose reached London in Jan 1938, and he met many leaders of the British Labour Party including Attlee.

1938 & 1939 were two huge years for the Indian National Congress. As i always say, the 10-year phase from 1938 - 1948 shaped modern India and it began in 1938 Haripura session.

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