The Benefits Of Japanese Soft Power
Or how my xenocentrism toward Japanese culture has primed me against the worst excesses against anti-Asian sentiment on the far left.
Xenocentrism can be thought of as a preference for things outside of ones culture. Xenophobia by contrast can be thought of as fearing those outside your culture. Usually extreme leftism things of both of these as racism, despite the fact that Authoritarian Leftism, in its purest form, has simply replaced Systemic Racism with Cosmic Racism, that is, fearing cultures and beings outside of ones specific frame of reference. In the case of aliens, this goes beyond racism in the human sense, and more phobia of things not within one’s species.
In past, what you’ll notice is that leftists are usually the ones that innovate by writing essays debunking what they call conspiracy theories, or even paranormal subject matter. Interestingly Japanese society seems like prone to those kind of things, and in the past has been more open about Ufology than western society. Interesting. Especially in light of what I know about how to me Billy Meier’s circles seems to have a lot of signs being closer to authoritarian leftism, rather than fascism.
When I was growing up on UFO lore, I would always primarily consume anything I could find about Japanese culture, and found myself enthralled by a culture that I found less alienating than the one I personally loved in. So to me the Billy Meier experience was strange anyway. Some have speculated that Japanese soft power manifests in infiltrating other countries with their own pop culture, and subtly giving us their preferences.
But I honestly think society is much stranger. I’ve coming to feel like despite my disillusionment with manga itself Japanese soft power actually has some benefits to it. I found myself less likely to accept blanket statements about Japanese, even though I am not personally Japanese. When Leftists would talk about how their society is becoming increasingly ultra capitalist, I was the one that would question things like “but aren’t there Japanese anarchists?”.
I’m finding more and more that Authoritarian Leftists ( as suppose to Anarchists and Libertarians ) are more likely to exhibit displays of Cosmic Racism, which is just another form of Xenophobia as far as I’m concerned. And with the Japanese society generally more open about UFOs, I’m beginning to wonder if my immersion in Japanese pop culture has primed me to not accept things like systemic racism, that simply don’t scale as well as theories about Cosmic Racism.