r/technology Jul 21 '25

Social Media YouTube wipes out thousands of propaganda channels linked to China, Russia, others

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/21/youtube-channels-propaganda-china-russia.html
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u/Gon-no-suke Jul 21 '25

The Japanese election finished two days ago. Youtube-fuelled right-wing party went from one to 14 seats...

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u/ghoonrhed Jul 22 '25

How the hell does Japan even manage to spin up an anti-immigration party? It's not like they're a pro-immigration country.

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u/Gon-no-suke Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

It's a multipronged approach, based on conflating social issues concerning the following groups:

  • Obnoxious tourists
  • Non-residents buying up property
  • A group of about 2000 Kurds, some of which have a unclear status of residence, who due to being concentrated into one area draw attention to themselves
  • Japanese citizens with foreign heritage historically discriminated against (mostly Chinese and Koreans)

These groups have being "non-Japanese" in common. So although the party in question is anti-immigration, it's probably more correct to classify them as being "anti-foreigner", aka xenophobic.

Their tag line during this election was "Japanese first!".

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u/Temp_dreaming Jul 22 '25

Which is ironic because the Ainu were there first,  but of course the Japan first party doesn't care about them