January 25, 2024 • 33 mins
Andrew tells Garrison about what happened to the Japanese Red Army.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Zone Media, Welcome to could happened Here? I'm Andrew Sage
of the True Channel Andrewism and one of the last
times I was on here. I was discussed in political
cults generally drawn from the work of Dennis Tourist and
Tim Worforth in their book On the Edge Political Cults
Left and Right. We learned about the roller coaster emotional ride,
(00:24):
the individual's experience during cult recruitment, where their feelings and
ideas are manipulated and they are drawn into an exclusive
and isolating group. We explored the common techniques used by
political cults, including creating rigid belief systems, immunity to falsification, authoritarianism,
arbitrary leadership, deification of leaders, intense activism, and the use
(00:44):
of loaded language. We also had to the contradictory positions
often held by members of political cults, so as advocating
for liberty while supporting totalitarianism, believe in equality alongside late leaders,
accumulating privileges, promoting sexual morality while exploit in members, and
demanding free speech rights while suppressed and dissent within the group.
(01:04):
And we also examined Robert Lifton's eight conditions that indicate
the presence of ideological totalism within cults, which include miliu control,
mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, the cult of confession,
the sacred science loading, the language, doctrine of a person,
and the dispensive existence. If you want the details on
all of that, you can check out the first episode
(01:26):
in Political Cult Series, or you could pick up the
book on political cults yourself. As I said, on the
Edge Political Cults Left and Right by Dennis Teurish and
Tim Allforth. I also had an episode where I spoke
about the Trotskyist turned right wing cult of Lyndon Laroche,
which was primarily based in USA but today joined by Garrison.
(01:47):
I want to take a look at the deadly cult
that arose from the Japanese student movement the United Red Army.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Very exciting stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
In my research for this.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Episode, I looked at Dead Bodies and Living God by
Yoshikuni Igarashi, the Japanese Women's Liberation Movement in the United
Red Army by set Sushiyamatsu, and Hijackers, Bombers and bank
Robbers by Patricia g.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Steinhoff.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
So let's get into it, and to do so, we're
going to need some historical context, not necessarily as in
depth as digging into the evolution of post war Japan,
which is such a deep and complex period in history
that it really deserves and has given special attention by
historians that I have not the knowledge to buster. We do, however,
need to take a look more specifically at what the
(02:32):
conditions were like in the country in the late sixties
and early seventies. After the war, Japan was transitioned into
something of a liberal democracy.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
With all of that entails.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
You know, the US rolled in and occupied Japan and
forced all these changes and reforms, and so by the
late sixties and seventies you have post war children who
were now adults and had gone through and witnessed these
systems through his hand. They saw the limits of democracy
and capitalism. Japanese society was firmly under the thumb of
the US as well, which created its own grievances amongst population.
(03:07):
The Japanese government had become a key supporter of US
imperialism in the Cold War era. Both the Korean War
and the Vietnam War were facilitated through the US's military
bases in Japan, and the Japanese left did not like that.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
At all.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Naturally, in response, the state would crush them, as states
are apt to do. When the Japanese were taken to
the streets and solidarity, the state increased their surveillance, repression,
and incarceration. Some on the Japanese left would come to
see Japan as a police state with US back in,
but that wasn't the left's only a see with Japanese society.
(03:44):
Japan's economic success postwar thanks to the US, had brought
the establishment of a mass consumer society that gave the population,
even in rural areas and among poor factory workers, greater
access to information and consumer goods, and that ended up
posing an issue for the left in Japan because many
of the organizations were struggling to adjust to the shift.
(04:06):
Times to court Yoshikuni Igarashi directly, the new left critique
of post war society had long been too rigid to
address the rapidly changing social conditions of Japan. Each person
was complicit with the political and economic mechanisms that produced
social injustice insofar as he or she took advantage of them.
(04:27):
It was simply impossible to undo the effects of the system.
When many in society cherished their newly found agency as consumers.
So the left in Japan was fixated on this very
romanticized image of the rugged workers and not really engaging
with what the workers themselves thought about and wanted to
see transformed in their circumstances. Like, yeah, it's understandable that workers,
(04:50):
despite being exploited, would also cling to some of the
comforts they've gained even under those poor circumstances, and these
left organizations weren't adequately in caging with that. They were
engagement with the fact that, yeah, this poor factory workers,
poor and suffering, but they also appreciate the fact that
they have access to all these new technologies and all
(05:13):
this new entertainment media and all that stuff. They were
still stuck in this very late nineteenth and early twentieth
century sort of understanding. Yeah, so they were kind of
ideologically stuck and disconnected. They had this one vision of
the struggle and it wasn't really being updated with the
changing times. So it's no surprise really what we'll resulved
(05:33):
from this late sixties status.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
First, I think we should stop I understanding the various
associations of Seki Gun, which is the Red Army. There
were three major related groups under the label of Psekiguon
that shared a very particular vision to quote putsisher g
sign off. One, we have the original group led by
Shiamin Takaya, which began as the pseki guner of a
(06:00):
student organization in nineteen sixty eight and dropped the her designation,
becoming psaka Gun sometime after it became independent in mid
nineteen sixty nine. Nice two, you had a remnant of
the original Psykagoon which in nineteen seventy one joined with
another group to become Rengo seki Gun United Red Army,
(06:20):
and remember that because of the focus of today, and
they became under the leadership of the Seka Gun head
Mori Sunyo. And then three lastly, he had a group
that developed in Lebanon beginning in nineteen seventy one under
the leadership of Okidaira Takeshi and psaki Gun member Chigenaugu
Fusako and formally broke with Rango Sekukun. And this group
(06:45):
formally broke with Ngo Zeka Gun the United Red Army
in nineteen seventy two. They were called the Japanese Red Army.
So you have the Red Army faction Psychic gun Her,
which dropped the her designation and became Psaki gun And
you had a remnant from the original psychogo In which
joined with another group to become Rango psycgo in the
United Red Army.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
And then you had a group.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
That broke away from the United Red Army and became
the Japanese Red Army. Very classic Marxist Leninist party split
in practices. So in the early days Sekiguna, the parent
Revolutionary all of the later two groups beckoned Japan's brightest students,
the children of many elites. And when I say elites,
(07:28):
I mean these youths would have been regular degular academics, doctors, bureaucrats,
and corporate careerists if not for them joining this organization.
Having passed their entrance exams, immersed in the anti mainstream
culture of the universities at the time, they seize that
freedom to create organizations against mainstream Japanese society.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
The Red Army.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Psakigunna had split from its parent group, a national student
organization called the Communist League, informally bunned over a quote
unresolvable policy dispute. Itself had come out to The first
major factional split in nineteen fifty eight in the postwar
Japanese national student organization known as Zenger Couldn't, which was
formed by folks who had been expelled from or left
(08:11):
the Japanese Communist Party. So, just to bring out to speed,
there you have the Japanese Communist Party, and then some
people who were expelled from that party created their own
organization known as Anger Couldn't, and then that zenger Kuren
organization split.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Do you know what else could benefit from a split?
Right now? It's this episode with this ad break and
we're back.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
One of the splits that came out of that was
the Communist League, which we be came known as the Bund,
and the Bund had a split within it that bothed
the Red Army, and the Red Army had.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Its own splits, yes, as so as all these groups
love to.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Do, yes, lots of split it And according to segin Off,
Bund actually had a really remarkable history of internal factional splits.
In fact, even for its own cohort is quite exceptional.
That generated over fifty separate groups. In addition to Psychicguna,
which had become Psychicgoon, Droppin'd ha as I said. After
(09:24):
it became independent from BUND in nineteen sixty nine, again nice.
And then after the split, Psechicgoon immediately copied the already
outdated Communist party setup that BUND had initially inherited from
its own parent organization. I mean everything from the central
Committee to the Politbreu, to the secretariat to the former
representation from regional and local units, though a lot of
(09:47):
these structures mainly existed on paper according to former members.
So what was Psechigoon doing well? The members were already
experienced in orchestrating mass activities typical of the era's student movement.
They excel in producing and disseminating political publications, organizing meetings,
(10:09):
and coordinating street demonstrations. But eventually they realize this stuff
just isn't working. They need something bolder. The group aimed
for innovative action rather than organizational innovation, adopted the Red
Army moncle and aligned themselves as soldiers within a loosely
structured central committee. And despite being a legal entity in
(10:32):
post war Japan, Sekigoon quickly found itself at art of
the state due to its provocative intentions and actions. The
group openly declared its intention to incasion legal activities no
can upsect whatsoever, triggering intense police surveillance and a confrontational
relationship from the outset. Their journey transitions swiftly from public
(10:54):
legal events to clandestine and unlawful activities such as weapon making,
high packings, bombings, weapons theft, and bank robberies. And with
that unfailiar territory came many mistakes and much really.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
In so they went from having meetings and making the
zines to doing other stuff. Is what I is, is
what I take it for. Translated to a modern politically
active audience.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
They went from doing like peaceful protests, you know, peaceful marches,
sit ins that sort of thing too, like bank.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Robberies, embombents. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And on top of that, they really had the they
had the inflated sense of self to grandiously label their
attempted uprisings as the Tokyo War, the Osaka.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
War, sure, sure Kyoto war.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I mean their actions in a sense, it is some
urban guerrilla warfare that they might have been engaging in.
With some of these actions very glad to sign, very
direct and violence and stuff. And there was a stee response.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
A lot of a lot of like more of these
like extremely violent militant insurrectory type can kind of get
that inflated sense of what they're doing. And even though
I don't think ted Kay is an insurrectionist, but still
it's it kind of It's it's like, did he think
that blowing someone's fingers off every five years was going
(12:27):
to trigger the collapse of industrial civilization? And you're like, maybe,
maybe not, but that doesn't seem like a really great plan. Yeah,
if you're just taking someone's fingers off, yet you think
you're like the only one who's standing in the way
between industrial society and uh and the future of a
(12:47):
desolate Earth. But I don't know, it's it's it is
a complicated things sometimes. Yeah, yeah, it's always hard to
gauge the successfulness of your own actions.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Indeed, indeed, but I mean in this case, I think
we can gauge the success because well, first of all,
their actions all eventually led to police raids, arrested in indictments. Sure,
And also we could measure success based on the achievement
of particular goals, and all of their attempted uprisings were
made with the aim of global revolution.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Based on Trotsky's ideas.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Okay, Yeah, So they were trying to build an army
that would not only lead in revolution in Japan but
also eid in revolutionary activities worldwide. So some of their
members even sought support and training from groups like the
Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine huh yeah. And eventually
they tried to organize guerrilla training with intent to attack
(13:43):
the Prime Minister's residents, but a police raid foiled their
plans and arrested fifty three of their members, which led
to the core of the organization Zekurgun to go underground.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And then while they were.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Underground, their style of organization had to evolve. Initially they
resemble the sort of cumbersome bureaucracy of a communist party,
but eventually they reinvented themselves to become similar rather to
the Japanese managerial styles of the time period. In short,
(14:15):
because I'm really trying to get to the juicy bits
of what was happening. The communication hurdles so they faced
due to that underground police surveillance led to a sophisticated
telephone network managed by Lea's wives and girlfriends. Organizational decision
making went from ecalitan debates to hierarchical orders, and after
any activities they engage in evaluations so like quarterly reports
(14:39):
and like a corporate office, to refine their approach for
next time.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
So given all that.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
History and context, what happens next relation shouldn't be all
too surprising. In December nineteen seventy one, the few remaining
not arrested or dead members of Psychagoon's underground Army joined
forces with another group in a similar situation called Kakome
Saha or Revolutionary Left, to form the United Red Army
aka Rango Sekigun, which established themselves in a remote cabin
(15:06):
in the Japanese Alps in the dead of winter in
Guma Prefecture, and tried to work out the ideological and
organizational differences that came from uniting the two organizations.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
The new group was led by the Red.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Army faction leader Sunyo Muri and second in command by
Hiroko Nagata, the leader of the Revolutionary Left.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
And quick quick digression. It's actually a big deal.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Nagata was a woman, and that was sort of a
win in a sense, I mean a win, not in
a broader sense, probably not a win considering what happens next,
but a win in the sense that at the time
there was a big issue with the Japanese New Left
and its patriarchal nature, where women typically only had any
(15:54):
kind of say or authority in relation to their male partners.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
So it was kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
To see Nagata get elevated to a position where she
didn't have to be connected to a male figure in
the movement in order to have any kind of say
or any kind of political sway. Of course, what she
did with that say, what she did with that political
sway was not all too hot, but yeah, I digress.
(16:25):
Under the direction of Mari and Girl Bossnagata, about twenty
five United Red Army members underwent revolutionary training to prepare
for armed struggle against the state. At this point, though,
you have to wonder what exactly they were hoping to achieve.
They weren't even connected any Legismo workers struggles in the country.
(16:47):
They weren't organizing their communities. They has created these revolutionary
cells where they would hold film to their rigid political
aims and refuse to engage in reality. To quote Yoshikuni
Igarashi directly, from the earliest days of the New Left,
confrontations with the police were endowed with performative value. By
(17:07):
taking the beatens of police batons on their heads and
being sprayed with tear gas, Raleigh participants presented themselves both
as victims of the state repressive power and as agents
of resistance against it. However, by the early nineteen seventies,
it became obvious that their performances were not enough to
break through the satuscope. It was also apparent that popular
support for the movements had aoracious limit and was starting
(17:29):
to wane. As new left organizations began to see the
futility of trying to build widespread support, the acts of
violence lost their performative aspect. Rather than presenting themselves as
both victims and agents of resistance as they had done before,
many organizations, including the Red Army and the Revolutionary Left,
began to escalate their violence. The activists engaged in this
(17:50):
increasingly brutal struggle became a sort of self appointed revolutionary elite,
a group that demanded of its members a stepped up
bodily commitment in the form of an ever intensifying regimen
of physical training and corporeal deprivation, and a willingness to
die for the cause. The United Red Army's revolutionary struggles
(18:10):
at the mountain bases demonstrated the process through which violence
came to dominate the lives of its members. At another
point in the general article, he says that while the
paradegmatics shift caused by Japan's high growth economy demanded a
new theory and practice of political engagement, United Red Army
members merely wished to undo the effects of economic development,
(18:31):
literally seeking to establish a critical purchase outside of the
existing system. Aspiring to transform themselves into a revolutionary elite.
They physically distanced themselves in mountain bases while vole rising
violence as a means to achieve alternative political conditions. Their
two stage strategy of exiting and then striking back of
the system, however, proved completely inadequate. At one point, early on,
(18:56):
two members in this mountain cabin in the Japanese Alps
decided that they want it's a piece out of the
United Red Army, probably go back to live in a
normal life. So in retaliation, Nagata organize the assassination with
the help of United Red Army members.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yeah, like, how dare you leave?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Uh? Yeah, I mean this whole Red Army saga is
is a really great example of how an extremely militant
leftist force really really does mirror so many, so many
cult dynamics. And like I I the stakes are high.
I get it. Like you have a lot of like
(19:35):
intense shared experiences with people, it can produce a whole
bunch of emotional, volatile reactions. I'm sure what they all
went through. I can, I can barely even begin to
understand with with my like with my background and more
like a like anarchist instructionary action. But yeah, you know,
(19:57):
it's the whole, the whole hitman's squad for whenever members
like age out in their late twenties, this is certainly
an interesting move.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Indeed, and if that wasn't bad enough, it gets worse.
So clearly, the fact that people want to leave means
that the character of their members are not good enough.
So the United Red Army wanted to improve the character
of its members, so under Maury and Nagata's directives, they
(20:30):
underwent a purge through a process of collective and individual
self criticism.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
It's always self criticism.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Of these people, so before long, self criticism became this
sort of high stakes test of each member's revolutionary commitment
call into question everything from their engagement and romantic relationships
to their appreciation of material possessions. Any such attachments were
seen as evidence that these members were not committed enough
(20:58):
to the cause. In fact, they were the worst thing
you could possibly be, a counter revolutionary and then things
got worse. So just to clarify, and this is according
to prititioner G. Stegnoff, who studied the organizational structure.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Of these groups.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
When the United Eatonomy came together, they engaged in standard
consensus decision making procedures, which is how they came into
agreement that the members needed to be tough fund into
revolutionaries capable of fighting the police. But despite engagement and consensus,
from time to time, the organization was very strictly vertical.
The central committee had a separate room from everyone else
(21:36):
in the cabin and the internet conditions made it easier
to stand out if you weren't cooperating with directives. To
quote one section of the article, when the top leaders
introduced violence in order to speed up the transformation of
the weakest members, no one was able to confront leadership
to stop it. Those who disagreed tended to use traditional
Japanese methods of indirection expressed in opposition by silence and withdrawal,
(22:00):
and given the purpose of the group's activity and the
expectation of full participation that is built into the ground
rules of consensus decision making, silence and withdrawal were interpreted
as unrevolutionary weakness, and participating in violence against others were
soon defined as evidence of one's own sincere commitment to
become a better revolutionary. Those who failed to participate energetically
(22:23):
in the violence against others became the next victims of
the pooch.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah that that all makes perfect sense to me.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Actually, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
When they deemed somebody to be a counter revolutionary, the
others would be ordered to punish them through beatens, torture,
and exposure to the elements without food or shelter. As
you can imagine, people died. So when the first victims died,
leaders said that they had died of defeatism because they
couldn't overcome their own weakness. Six weeks later, in February
(23:00):
nineteen seventy two, twelve of the twenty five members We're
Dead One sign off points out that ironically, in between
bouts of the POGE, the United Read Army members were
able to break into groups and carry out tasks like
building a new cabin, planning the next attack, and bury
in the bodies of the dead comrades. Yeah, so imagine
(23:20):
that you're like jump in between these pooge sessions and
like building a cabin with your buds.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
You know, honestly, I don't doubt it. Like I this
all does make a sort of weird sense to me.
Like I've seen I've seen radical groups kind of fall
apart in not ways that lead to like mass purging
as in like murder, but I've seen groups fall apart
in similar ways to this. You'll have like a smaller
insular click who tries storming really active and like keep
(23:49):
going and doing stuff while also spending all their extra
time towards continually purifying their member base. Because once you
once you start that like pureification and process, like you
can't stop. You have to keep the spotlight on someone else,
so then it's not on you, Like you have to
be proactive in constantly purifying the member group or else
(24:12):
someone's gonna set their target on you, like it has.
I can I can totally see how this would have
this would have gone down, And I think smaller versions
of this still remain to be a massive problem among
radical organization structures, even structures that claim to be horizontal,
they still have like an insular a click of like
(24:34):
the people who are like the cool group, who's going
to replicate a lot of these same things, And how
even though it's not technically vertical in practice, they still
are able to do a lot of these same like
top down and overriding decision making processes.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah, it's it's uh.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
And this is really what sort of motivated me to
start to talk about political cults a bit more. I
mean that and reading the book, looking at this case
and reading the book, because I really.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
I want people to recognize it. It's not like.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
This strange, out of this world thing that can never
take place in your personal life. Like it's very easy
for any political organization to become a cult. There's no
ideology that's immune to that. And so through these case
studies and through the breakdown to the various components and
(25:34):
elements of cult cults and cult behavior, cult tactics, I
want people to be able to recognize the signs. Because
what I really hate the most, and this is why
I focus mostly on left wing cults, not as much
right wing cults. Is to see people who had so
much potential to contribute meaningfully to like revolutionary change, and
(25:56):
then they just get all their energies redirected in self
criticism sessions and purification rituals and probably strain lopin.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Let's take an ad break here and we'll be right
back to continue talking about the body count of the
Red Army. Okay, we are back.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
So twelve bodies dead and buried.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
But on the upside, they have a new cabin so true,
come on, you know, it's it's a small price to pay.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
So eventually the leaders Maury and the Gata left, which
gave each of the United Red Army members a chance
to escape before they too succumbed to the fate of death.
So I find really interesting is that all of them
wanted to leave, but they didn't financing themselves to leave
until after the leadership left.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
They were all too scared of each other.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, and so they once they took that opportunity to
escape before they two died, And of course the police
were hot on all of their tales. Maria and Nagata
got arrested, and eventually there were only five members left
and they were armed to the teeth. They ended up
hiding in a mountain lodge and managed to capture a hostage,
(27:31):
which was the wife of the owner of the mountain lodge,
and Setsu Shigamatsu describes very succinctly what came next quote.
Between nineteenth and twenty eighth of February, these five remaining
members of the United Red Army held off over fifteen
hundred riot police at the lodge, which was called Asama Sansu,
(27:52):
and this arm standoff and hostage taken incident became an
unprecedented television spectacle. Television news coverage of the incident began
in nineteenth February with hundreds of media staff on site
to work the story. On the twenty eighth of February,
continuous live televised news coverage lasted for ten hours and
forty minutes. This constituted an unprecedented broadcasting event in Japan.
(28:17):
This constituted an unprecedented broadcasting event in Japan's media history
that has never been surpassed in terms of its duration
and ratings. At the climax the police operation in twenty February,
with eighty nine point seven percent view of ratings. According
to the National Broadcasting Corporation, almost the entire country was
watching the same thing on TV. The United Right Armi's
(28:40):
form of small scale insurgency against the state was thus
rendered hyper visible, and this drew unprecedented attention to this
due left sect. So after the remaining members were captured,
between the interrogations, media interviews and autobiographies, the whole of
Japan and the world got to hear what really went
on immediately out.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
For the hostage situation.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Despite their rather fringe style, the United Rate Army actually
had some public sympathy until the truth of how bad
things were came to light. They even made a movie
about it. The news of the purge practically devastated not
only the broader Sekagoon organization, but also transformed the course
of the radical left in Japan and beyond. Remember, they
(29:25):
did have a branch in Lebanon, which thankfully did not
make the same Persian mistakes. Still, though many in Japan
lost hope in revolution as a result of the publicity
of those actions. Political activism had already been on a
decline in the late sixties and early seventies, but the
shock of the purge was like a nail in the coffin.
(29:49):
A lot of people literally distanced themselves from their own
leftist movements because of how staggering that news was. The
Purge literally purged leftism as a major force in Japanese society.
And it's only recently with writers like Go Hih sight too,
that Marxism must start to gain some attention again.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And this is like around what this is like the
are we in the sixties seventies?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, yeah, all listen to this took place in the
The Purge took place between December nineteen seventy one and
February nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Really really the last dying breath of the militant trotsky Ites,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Indeed, indeed, if we look at the techniques used by
political cults, rigid belief systems, check you know, immunity to falsification,
check authoritarianism, check arbitrary leadership, check deification of leaders, most
likely out I didn't seeing the evidence of that, specifically,
(30:56):
I wouldn't be surprised. Intense activism, check us off fluted language.
I'm sure, yeah, I bet you see basically all of
those tactics employed in this organization, and you just see
the result of it, and I think it's stories ideas
that need to be no one sort of such mystiques
(31:19):
can be avoided in the future. So yeah, that's the
story of the United Red Army. This has been it
could happen here.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
It certainly could happen. No, I think it is a
It is a really good example. Now it doesn't map
on one to one because I don't think many many
people are are doing exactly what the Red Army did
in terms of their their style of militant struggle. But
there's there's there's smaller scale versions, and there's still the
(31:52):
kind of insular group dynamics, whether that's like just an
affinity group, whether that's like a larger collective. I think
there's a lot of a lot of lesson is to
learn from the Red Army, And it'd be wrong just
to dismiss this whole example as being a little bit
too far fetched or just like two different because it is.
(32:13):
It is a really tragic story, and I feel like
people could learn learn more from this than what they
initially think.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Indeed, I agree, So don't go out there and start
to unite your Red Army folks.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
To try and avoid that if you want to build
a cavin, you can do it without burying twelve of
your friends anyway. Thank you, Thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Andrew the problem.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Where can the fine listeners find you on the internet?
Speaker 1 (32:49):
YouTube dot com slash andrewism and nowhere else. Oh I
guess also Patreon dot com slash saint true. But other
than that, I can't be found on the tonight.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
I don't make exist, good for you, good for you,
just like the Red Army who doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Zone Media, Welcome to could happened Here? I'm Andrew Sage
of the True Channel Andrewism and one of the last
times I was on here. I was discussed in political
cults generally drawn from the work of Dennis Tourist and
Tim Worforth in their book On the Edge Political Cults
Left and Right. We learned about the roller coaster emotional ride,
(00:24):
the individual's experience during cult recruitment, where their feelings and
ideas are manipulated and they are drawn into an exclusive
and isolating group. We explored the common techniques used by
political cults, including creating rigid belief systems, immunity to falsification, authoritarianism,
arbitrary leadership, deification of leaders, intense activism, and the use
(00:44):
of loaded language. We also had to the contradictory positions
often held by members of political cults, so as advocating
for liberty while supporting totalitarianism, believe in equality alongside late leaders,
accumulating privileges, promoting sexual morality while exploit in members, and
demanding free speech rights while suppressed and dissent within the group.
(01:04):
And we also examined Robert Lifton's eight conditions that indicate
the presence of ideological totalism within cults, which include miliu control,
mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, the cult of confession,
the sacred science loading, the language, doctrine of a person,
and the dispensive existence. If you want the details on
all of that, you can check out the first episode
(01:26):
in Political Cult Series, or you could pick up the
book on political cults yourself. As I said, on the
Edge Political Cults Left and Right by Dennis Teurish and
Tim Allforth. I also had an episode where I spoke
about the Trotskyist turned right wing cult of Lyndon Laroche,
which was primarily based in USA but today joined by Garrison.
(01:47):
I want to take a look at the deadly cult
that arose from the Japanese student movement the United Red Army.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Very exciting stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
In my research for this.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Episode, I looked at Dead Bodies and Living God by
Yoshikuni Igarashi, the Japanese Women's Liberation Movement in the United
Red Army by set Sushiyamatsu, and Hijackers, Bombers and bank
Robbers by Patricia g.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Steinhoff.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
So let's get into it, and to do so, we're
going to need some historical context, not necessarily as in
depth as digging into the evolution of post war Japan,
which is such a deep and complex period in history
that it really deserves and has given special attention by
historians that I have not the knowledge to buster. We do, however,
need to take a look more specifically at what the
(02:32):
conditions were like in the country in the late sixties
and early seventies. After the war, Japan was transitioned into
something of a liberal democracy.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
With all of that entails.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
You know, the US rolled in and occupied Japan and
forced all these changes and reforms, and so by the
late sixties and seventies you have post war children who
were now adults and had gone through and witnessed these
systems through his hand. They saw the limits of democracy
and capitalism. Japanese society was firmly under the thumb of
the US as well, which created its own grievances amongst population.
(03:07):
The Japanese government had become a key supporter of US
imperialism in the Cold War era. Both the Korean War
and the Vietnam War were facilitated through the US's military
bases in Japan, and the Japanese left did not like that.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
At all.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Naturally, in response, the state would crush them, as states
are apt to do. When the Japanese were taken to
the streets and solidarity, the state increased their surveillance, repression,
and incarceration. Some on the Japanese left would come to
see Japan as a police state with US back in,
but that wasn't the left's only a see with Japanese society.
(03:44):
Japan's economic success postwar thanks to the US, had brought
the establishment of a mass consumer society that gave the population,
even in rural areas and among poor factory workers, greater
access to information and consumer goods, and that ended up
posing an issue for the left in Japan because many
of the organizations were struggling to adjust to the shift.
(04:06):
Times to court Yoshikuni Igarashi directly, the new left critique
of post war society had long been too rigid to
address the rapidly changing social conditions of Japan. Each person
was complicit with the political and economic mechanisms that produced
social injustice insofar as he or she took advantage of them.
(04:27):
It was simply impossible to undo the effects of the system.
When many in society cherished their newly found agency as consumers.
So the left in Japan was fixated on this very
romanticized image of the rugged workers and not really engaging
with what the workers themselves thought about and wanted to
see transformed in their circumstances. Like, yeah, it's understandable that workers,
(04:50):
despite being exploited, would also cling to some of the
comforts they've gained even under those poor circumstances, and these
left organizations weren't adequately in caging with that. They were
engagement with the fact that, yeah, this poor factory workers,
poor and suffering, but they also appreciate the fact that
they have access to all these new technologies and all
(05:13):
this new entertainment media and all that stuff. They were
still stuck in this very late nineteenth and early twentieth
century sort of understanding. Yeah, so they were kind of
ideologically stuck and disconnected. They had this one vision of
the struggle and it wasn't really being updated with the
changing times. So it's no surprise really what we'll resulved
(05:33):
from this late sixties status.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
First, I think we should stop I understanding the various
associations of Seki Gun, which is the Red Army. There
were three major related groups under the label of Psekiguon
that shared a very particular vision to quote putsisher g
sign off. One, we have the original group led by
Shiamin Takaya, which began as the pseki guner of a
(06:00):
student organization in nineteen sixty eight and dropped the her designation,
becoming psaka Gun sometime after it became independent in mid
nineteen sixty nine. Nice two, you had a remnant of
the original Psykagoon which in nineteen seventy one joined with
another group to become Rengo seki Gun United Red Army,
(06:20):
and remember that because of the focus of today, and
they became under the leadership of the Seka Gun head
Mori Sunyo. And then three lastly, he had a group
that developed in Lebanon beginning in nineteen seventy one under
the leadership of Okidaira Takeshi and psaki Gun member Chigenaugu
Fusako and formally broke with Rango Sekukun. And this group
(06:45):
formally broke with Ngo Zeka Gun the United Red Army
in nineteen seventy two. They were called the Japanese Red Army.
So you have the Red Army faction Psychic gun Her,
which dropped the her designation and became Psaki gun And
you had a remnant from the original psychogo In which
joined with another group to become Rango psycgo in the
United Red Army.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
And then you had a group.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
That broke away from the United Red Army and became
the Japanese Red Army. Very classic Marxist Leninist party split
in practices. So in the early days Sekiguna, the parent
Revolutionary all of the later two groups beckoned Japan's brightest students,
the children of many elites. And when I say elites,
(07:28):
I mean these youths would have been regular degular academics, doctors, bureaucrats,
and corporate careerists if not for them joining this organization.
Having passed their entrance exams, immersed in the anti mainstream
culture of the universities at the time, they seize that
freedom to create organizations against mainstream Japanese society.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
The Red Army.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Psakigunna had split from its parent group, a national student
organization called the Communist League, informally bunned over a quote
unresolvable policy dispute. Itself had come out to The first
major factional split in nineteen fifty eight in the postwar
Japanese national student organization known as Zenger Couldn't, which was
formed by folks who had been expelled from or left
(08:11):
the Japanese Communist Party. So, just to bring out to speed,
there you have the Japanese Communist Party, and then some
people who were expelled from that party created their own
organization known as Anger Couldn't, and then that zenger Kuren
organization split.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Do you know what else could benefit from a split?
Right now? It's this episode with this ad break and
we're back.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
One of the splits that came out of that was
the Communist League, which we be came known as the Bund,
and the Bund had a split within it that bothed
the Red Army, and the Red Army had.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Its own splits, yes, as so as all these groups
love to.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Do, yes, lots of split it And according to segin Off,
Bund actually had a really remarkable history of internal factional splits.
In fact, even for its own cohort is quite exceptional.
That generated over fifty separate groups. In addition to Psychicguna,
which had become Psychicgoon, Droppin'd ha as I said. After
(09:24):
it became independent from BUND in nineteen sixty nine, again nice.
And then after the split, Psechicgoon immediately copied the already
outdated Communist party setup that BUND had initially inherited from
its own parent organization. I mean everything from the central
Committee to the Politbreu, to the secretariat to the former
representation from regional and local units, though a lot of
(09:47):
these structures mainly existed on paper according to former members.
So what was Psechigoon doing well? The members were already
experienced in orchestrating mass activities typical of the era's student movement.
They excel in producing and disseminating political publications, organizing meetings,
(10:09):
and coordinating street demonstrations. But eventually they realize this stuff
just isn't working. They need something bolder. The group aimed
for innovative action rather than organizational innovation, adopted the Red
Army moncle and aligned themselves as soldiers within a loosely
structured central committee. And despite being a legal entity in
(10:32):
post war Japan, Sekigoon quickly found itself at art of
the state due to its provocative intentions and actions. The
group openly declared its intention to incasion legal activities no
can upsect whatsoever, triggering intense police surveillance and a confrontational
relationship from the outset. Their journey transitions swiftly from public
(10:54):
legal events to clandestine and unlawful activities such as weapon making,
high packings, bombings, weapons theft, and bank robberies. And with
that unfailiar territory came many mistakes and much really.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
In so they went from having meetings and making the
zines to doing other stuff. Is what I is, is
what I take it for. Translated to a modern politically
active audience.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
They went from doing like peaceful protests, you know, peaceful marches,
sit ins that sort of thing too, like bank.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Robberies, embombents. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And on top of that, they really had the they
had the inflated sense of self to grandiously label their
attempted uprisings as the Tokyo War, the Osaka.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
War, sure, sure Kyoto war.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I mean their actions in a sense, it is some
urban guerrilla warfare that they might have been engaging in.
With some of these actions very glad to sign, very
direct and violence and stuff. And there was a stee response.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
A lot of a lot of like more of these
like extremely violent militant insurrectory type can kind of get
that inflated sense of what they're doing. And even though
I don't think ted Kay is an insurrectionist, but still
it's it kind of It's it's like, did he think
that blowing someone's fingers off every five years was going
(12:27):
to trigger the collapse of industrial civilization? And you're like, maybe,
maybe not, but that doesn't seem like a really great plan. Yeah,
if you're just taking someone's fingers off, yet you think
you're like the only one who's standing in the way
between industrial society and uh and the future of a
(12:47):
desolate Earth. But I don't know, it's it's it is
a complicated things sometimes. Yeah, yeah, it's always hard to
gauge the successfulness of your own actions.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Indeed, indeed, but I mean in this case, I think
we can gauge the success because well, first of all,
their actions all eventually led to police raids, arrested in indictments. Sure,
And also we could measure success based on the achievement
of particular goals, and all of their attempted uprisings were
made with the aim of global revolution.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Based on Trotsky's ideas.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Okay, Yeah, So they were trying to build an army
that would not only lead in revolution in Japan but
also eid in revolutionary activities worldwide. So some of their
members even sought support and training from groups like the
Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine huh yeah. And eventually
they tried to organize guerrilla training with intent to attack
(13:43):
the Prime Minister's residents, but a police raid foiled their
plans and arrested fifty three of their members, which led
to the core of the organization Zekurgun to go underground.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And then while they were.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Underground, their style of organization had to evolve. Initially they
resemble the sort of cumbersome bureaucracy of a communist party,
but eventually they reinvented themselves to become similar rather to
the Japanese managerial styles of the time period. In short,
(14:15):
because I'm really trying to get to the juicy bits
of what was happening. The communication hurdles so they faced
due to that underground police surveillance led to a sophisticated
telephone network managed by Lea's wives and girlfriends. Organizational decision
making went from ecalitan debates to hierarchical orders, and after
any activities they engage in evaluations so like quarterly reports
(14:39):
and like a corporate office, to refine their approach for
next time.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
So given all that.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
History and context, what happens next relation shouldn't be all
too surprising. In December nineteen seventy one, the few remaining
not arrested or dead members of Psychagoon's underground Army joined
forces with another group in a similar situation called Kakome
Saha or Revolutionary Left, to form the United Red Army
aka Rango Sekigun, which established themselves in a remote cabin
(15:06):
in the Japanese Alps in the dead of winter in
Guma Prefecture, and tried to work out the ideological and
organizational differences that came from uniting the two organizations.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
The new group was led by the Red.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Army faction leader Sunyo Muri and second in command by
Hiroko Nagata, the leader of the Revolutionary Left.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
And quick quick digression. It's actually a big deal.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Nagata was a woman, and that was sort of a
win in a sense, I mean a win, not in
a broader sense, probably not a win considering what happens next,
but a win in the sense that at the time
there was a big issue with the Japanese New Left
and its patriarchal nature, where women typically only had any
(15:54):
kind of say or authority in relation to their male partners.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
So it was kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
To see Nagata get elevated to a position where she
didn't have to be connected to a male figure in
the movement in order to have any kind of say
or any kind of political sway. Of course, what she
did with that say, what she did with that political
sway was not all too hot, but yeah, I digress.
(16:25):
Under the direction of Mari and Girl Bossnagata, about twenty
five United Red Army members underwent revolutionary training to prepare
for armed struggle against the state. At this point, though,
you have to wonder what exactly they were hoping to achieve.
They weren't even connected any Legismo workers struggles in the country.
(16:47):
They weren't organizing their communities. They has created these revolutionary
cells where they would hold film to their rigid political
aims and refuse to engage in reality. To quote Yoshikuni
Igarashi directly, from the earliest days of the New Left,
confrontations with the police were endowed with performative value. By
(17:07):
taking the beatens of police batons on their heads and
being sprayed with tear gas, Raleigh participants presented themselves both
as victims of the state repressive power and as agents
of resistance against it. However, by the early nineteen seventies,
it became obvious that their performances were not enough to
break through the satuscope. It was also apparent that popular
support for the movements had aoracious limit and was starting
(17:29):
to wane. As new left organizations began to see the
futility of trying to build widespread support, the acts of
violence lost their performative aspect. Rather than presenting themselves as
both victims and agents of resistance as they had done before,
many organizations, including the Red Army and the Revolutionary Left,
began to escalate their violence. The activists engaged in this
(17:50):
increasingly brutal struggle became a sort of self appointed revolutionary elite,
a group that demanded of its members a stepped up
bodily commitment in the form of an ever intensifying regimen
of physical training and corporeal deprivation, and a willingness to
die for the cause. The United Red Army's revolutionary struggles
(18:10):
at the mountain bases demonstrated the process through which violence
came to dominate the lives of its members. At another
point in the general article, he says that while the
paradegmatics shift caused by Japan's high growth economy demanded a
new theory and practice of political engagement, United Red Army
members merely wished to undo the effects of economic development,
(18:31):
literally seeking to establish a critical purchase outside of the
existing system. Aspiring to transform themselves into a revolutionary elite.
They physically distanced themselves in mountain bases while vole rising
violence as a means to achieve alternative political conditions. Their
two stage strategy of exiting and then striking back of
the system, however, proved completely inadequate. At one point, early on,
(18:56):
two members in this mountain cabin in the Japanese Alps
decided that they want it's a piece out of the
United Red Army, probably go back to live in a
normal life. So in retaliation, Nagata organize the assassination with
the help of United Red Army members.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yeah, like, how dare you leave?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Uh? Yeah, I mean this whole Red Army saga is
is a really great example of how an extremely militant
leftist force really really does mirror so many, so many
cult dynamics. And like I I the stakes are high.
I get it. Like you have a lot of like
(19:35):
intense shared experiences with people, it can produce a whole
bunch of emotional, volatile reactions. I'm sure what they all
went through. I can, I can barely even begin to
understand with with my like with my background and more
like a like anarchist instructionary action. But yeah, you know,
(19:57):
it's the whole, the whole hitman's squad for whenever members
like age out in their late twenties, this is certainly
an interesting move.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Indeed, and if that wasn't bad enough, it gets worse.
So clearly, the fact that people want to leave means
that the character of their members are not good enough.
So the United Red Army wanted to improve the character
of its members, so under Maury and Nagata's directives, they
(20:30):
underwent a purge through a process of collective and individual
self criticism.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
It's always self criticism.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Of these people, so before long, self criticism became this
sort of high stakes test of each member's revolutionary commitment
call into question everything from their engagement and romantic relationships
to their appreciation of material possessions. Any such attachments were
seen as evidence that these members were not committed enough
(20:58):
to the cause. In fact, they were the worst thing
you could possibly be, a counter revolutionary and then things
got worse. So just to clarify, and this is according
to prititioner G. Stegnoff, who studied the organizational structure.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Of these groups.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
When the United Eatonomy came together, they engaged in standard
consensus decision making procedures, which is how they came into
agreement that the members needed to be tough fund into
revolutionaries capable of fighting the police. But despite engagement and consensus,
from time to time, the organization was very strictly vertical.
The central committee had a separate room from everyone else
(21:36):
in the cabin and the internet conditions made it easier
to stand out if you weren't cooperating with directives. To
quote one section of the article, when the top leaders
introduced violence in order to speed up the transformation of
the weakest members, no one was able to confront leadership
to stop it. Those who disagreed tended to use traditional
Japanese methods of indirection expressed in opposition by silence and withdrawal,
(22:00):
and given the purpose of the group's activity and the
expectation of full participation that is built into the ground
rules of consensus decision making, silence and withdrawal were interpreted
as unrevolutionary weakness, and participating in violence against others were
soon defined as evidence of one's own sincere commitment to
become a better revolutionary. Those who failed to participate energetically
(22:23):
in the violence against others became the next victims of
the pooch.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah that that all makes perfect sense to me.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Actually, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
When they deemed somebody to be a counter revolutionary, the
others would be ordered to punish them through beatens, torture,
and exposure to the elements without food or shelter. As
you can imagine, people died. So when the first victims died,
leaders said that they had died of defeatism because they
couldn't overcome their own weakness. Six weeks later, in February
(23:00):
nineteen seventy two, twelve of the twenty five members We're
Dead One sign off points out that ironically, in between
bouts of the POGE, the United Read Army members were
able to break into groups and carry out tasks like
building a new cabin, planning the next attack, and bury
in the bodies of the dead comrades. Yeah, so imagine
(23:20):
that you're like jump in between these pooge sessions and
like building a cabin with your buds.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
You know, honestly, I don't doubt it. Like I this
all does make a sort of weird sense to me.
Like I've seen I've seen radical groups kind of fall
apart in not ways that lead to like mass purging
as in like murder, but I've seen groups fall apart
in similar ways to this. You'll have like a smaller
insular click who tries storming really active and like keep
(23:49):
going and doing stuff while also spending all their extra
time towards continually purifying their member base. Because once you
once you start that like pureification and process, like you
can't stop. You have to keep the spotlight on someone else,
so then it's not on you, Like you have to
be proactive in constantly purifying the member group or else
(24:12):
someone's gonna set their target on you, like it has.
I can I can totally see how this would have
this would have gone down, And I think smaller versions
of this still remain to be a massive problem among
radical organization structures, even structures that claim to be horizontal,
they still have like an insular a click of like
(24:34):
the people who are like the cool group, who's going
to replicate a lot of these same things, And how
even though it's not technically vertical in practice, they still
are able to do a lot of these same like
top down and overriding decision making processes.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah, it's it's uh.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
And this is really what sort of motivated me to
start to talk about political cults a bit more. I
mean that and reading the book, looking at this case
and reading the book, because I really.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
I want people to recognize it. It's not like.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
This strange, out of this world thing that can never
take place in your personal life. Like it's very easy
for any political organization to become a cult. There's no
ideology that's immune to that. And so through these case
studies and through the breakdown to the various components and
(25:34):
elements of cult cults and cult behavior, cult tactics, I
want people to be able to recognize the signs. Because
what I really hate the most, and this is why
I focus mostly on left wing cults, not as much
right wing cults. Is to see people who had so
much potential to contribute meaningfully to like revolutionary change, and
(25:56):
then they just get all their energies redirected in self
criticism sessions and purification rituals and probably strain lopin.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Let's take an ad break here and we'll be right
back to continue talking about the body count of the
Red Army. Okay, we are back.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
So twelve bodies dead and buried.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
But on the upside, they have a new cabin so true,
come on, you know, it's it's a small price to pay.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
So eventually the leaders Maury and the Gata left, which
gave each of the United Red Army members a chance
to escape before they too succumbed to the fate of death.
So I find really interesting is that all of them
wanted to leave, but they didn't financing themselves to leave
until after the leadership left.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
They were all too scared of each other.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, and so they once they took that opportunity to
escape before they two died, And of course the police
were hot on all of their tales. Maria and Nagata
got arrested, and eventually there were only five members left
and they were armed to the teeth. They ended up
hiding in a mountain lodge and managed to capture a hostage,
(27:31):
which was the wife of the owner of the mountain lodge,
and Setsu Shigamatsu describes very succinctly what came next quote.
Between nineteenth and twenty eighth of February, these five remaining
members of the United Red Army held off over fifteen
hundred riot police at the lodge, which was called Asama Sansu,
(27:52):
and this arm standoff and hostage taken incident became an
unprecedented television spectacle. Television news coverage of the incident began
in nineteenth February with hundreds of media staff on site
to work the story. On the twenty eighth of February,
continuous live televised news coverage lasted for ten hours and
forty minutes. This constituted an unprecedented broadcasting event in Japan.
(28:17):
This constituted an unprecedented broadcasting event in Japan's media history
that has never been surpassed in terms of its duration
and ratings. At the climax the police operation in twenty February,
with eighty nine point seven percent view of ratings. According
to the National Broadcasting Corporation, almost the entire country was
watching the same thing on TV. The United Right Armi's
(28:40):
form of small scale insurgency against the state was thus
rendered hyper visible, and this drew unprecedented attention to this
due left sect. So after the remaining members were captured,
between the interrogations, media interviews and autobiographies, the whole of
Japan and the world got to hear what really went
on immediately out.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
For the hostage situation.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Despite their rather fringe style, the United Rate Army actually
had some public sympathy until the truth of how bad
things were came to light. They even made a movie
about it. The news of the purge practically devastated not
only the broader Sekagoon organization, but also transformed the course
of the radical left in Japan and beyond. Remember, they
(29:25):
did have a branch in Lebanon, which thankfully did not
make the same Persian mistakes. Still, though many in Japan
lost hope in revolution as a result of the publicity
of those actions. Political activism had already been on a
decline in the late sixties and early seventies, but the
shock of the purge was like a nail in the coffin.
(29:49):
A lot of people literally distanced themselves from their own
leftist movements because of how staggering that news was. The
Purge literally purged leftism as a major force in Japanese society.
And it's only recently with writers like Go Hih sight too,
that Marxism must start to gain some attention again.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And this is like around what this is like the
are we in the sixties seventies?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, yeah, all listen to this took place in the
The Purge took place between December nineteen seventy one and
February nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Really really the last dying breath of the militant trotsky Ites,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Indeed, indeed, if we look at the techniques used by
political cults, rigid belief systems, check you know, immunity to falsification,
check authoritarianism, check arbitrary leadership, check deification of leaders, most
likely out I didn't seeing the evidence of that, specifically,
(30:56):
I wouldn't be surprised. Intense activism, check us off fluted language.
I'm sure, yeah, I bet you see basically all of
those tactics employed in this organization, and you just see
the result of it, and I think it's stories ideas
that need to be no one sort of such mystiques
(31:19):
can be avoided in the future. So yeah, that's the
story of the United Red Army. This has been it
could happen here.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
It certainly could happen. No, I think it is a
It is a really good example. Now it doesn't map
on one to one because I don't think many many
people are are doing exactly what the Red Army did
in terms of their their style of militant struggle. But
there's there's there's smaller scale versions, and there's still the
(31:52):
kind of insular group dynamics, whether that's like just an
affinity group, whether that's like a larger collective. I think
there's a lot of a lot of lesson is to
learn from the Red Army, And it'd be wrong just
to dismiss this whole example as being a little bit
too far fetched or just like two different because it is.
(32:13):
It is a really tragic story, and I feel like
people could learn learn more from this than what they
initially think.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Indeed, I agree, So don't go out there and start
to unite your Red Army folks.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
To try and avoid that if you want to build
a cavin, you can do it without burying twelve of
your friends anyway. Thank you, Thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Andrew the problem.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Where can the fine listeners find you on the internet?
Speaker 1 (32:49):
YouTube dot com slash andrewism and nowhere else. Oh I
guess also Patreon dot com slash saint true. But other
than that, I can't be found on the tonight.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
I don't make exist, good for you, good for you,
just like the Red Army who doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at
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Robert Evans
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