re: #286 HappyWarrior

It’s not that I don’t agree with the spirit of why hate speech laws need to exist. I just think finding a definition at this time what construes hate is tough. Let’s face it. Our mainstream right is much more kooky than the mainstream European or even Japanese right.

I disagree. From the same piece linked:

Back to Japan for a second, because Trump is not alone here. Before the hate speech law, Japan’s politicians and authorities had in fact advocated every single thing Trump did, but against Japan’s international residents. To wit:

Then-Kanazawa Gov. Shigefumi Matsuzawa saying “All foreigners are sneaky thieves” in November 2003; likewise former Miyazaki Diet member Takami Eto in July 2003 calling foreigners “murderers and thieves” who were turning Kabukicho into a “lawless zone.”

Then-Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara’s famous “Sangokujin speech” of April 2000 calling for a roundup of heinous foreign criminals before they riot during natural disasters.

Election posters in 2011 and 2013 proposing to “put Japanese first before foreigners,” “oppose immigrants” and “expel the barbarians.”

Tokyo police tracking of Muslim communities for terrorist links, revealed in 2010.

Applying a “nationality clause” to bar foreigners from infiltrating administrative positions in Japan’s bureaucracy.

And if you consider the ocean a wall, Ibaraki police posters saying, “Stop foreigners at the shore and protect our country” in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

The difference is that Japan’s institutionalized racism is tacit and embedded, not something the herd or hoi polloi say out loud in street rallies. It doesn’t play well at the United Nations or before Olympic committees. Hence, like so many of Japan’s equal-rights laws, the hate speech measure was passed to avoid international embarrassment.