In July of 1944, the Battle of Saipan was drawing to a close with the imminent Japanese defeat becoming increasingly obvious to both the Imperial Japanese military and the civilian Japanese population of the island. As US forces drew near, hundreds of panicked Japanese civilians committed suicide by jumping off the cliffs near the northern tip of Saipan. To the US Marines present at the time, the sight of this was mystifying. They watched in horror as mothers and their children leapt to their deaths rather than be captured and subjected to the nightmares that the conquering soldiers might inflict upon them. One mother who had thrown her own child over the cliffs to “save him” from the supposed torments to come, would later mourn her decision after a US soldier stopped her from jumping and escorted her to an aid station where she was cared for, much to both her shock and subsequent shame.
Why the civilian suicides? History has spoken often and loudly of the “kamikaze” spirit of Japanese soldiers, sailors and pilots who would rather die than suffer the shame of defeat. In some instances, this resolve has been even revered for its show of total commitment. The civilian suicides off the cliffs above Marpi Point Field, however, were a shocking mystery until historians pieced together how much they had been influenced by Japanese propaganda regarding the “bloodthirsty” and amoral “barbarians” the US soldiers supposedly were. Japanese propaganda had convinced these civilian mothers and fathers they would be tortured and their children likely eaten by the advancing US forces. In light of this, their actions, albeit shocking, make a little more sense. They simply were gripped with that much fear.
Fear is powerful motivator that can supersede many other cognitive faculties. It’s like an “airborne virus” that can sweep across a landscape and produce unimaginable behaviors among people seemingly reasonable and lucid the rest of the time. Fear is not an entirely unproductive emotion. There are many self-preserving benefits to reacting with caution or alarm to actual dangers. Fear of perceived dangers, however, can often produce behaviors far worse in their outcome than what was, in reality, lurking to pounce (i.e. the suicide cliffs vs the US forces aid station). The art and science is in distinguishing actual dangers from seemingly scary aberrations.
While people are fully capable of conjuring unreasonable fears on their own, a little propaganda to help it along certainly can be effective. Messaging from authority figures, especially in the case of the Japanese where the Emperor cult creates a culture of absolute authority, is where propaganda gets the best results. Propaganda effectiveness varies across cultures depending on the relationship of the populace to the power structures. In Imperial Japan, it would have been a strong connection, as well as in Nazi Germany. In the Allied west, propaganda still existed and was effective, but not used with the same destructive ends. No nation is exempt from the use of propaganda though. As much as the West would like to declare itself exempt, we’re not. It just falls to us to be vigilant about its nature, messaging and the ends that it promotes.
COVID has revealed that much of the western world has, in its luxurious complacency, abandoned the ability to navigate the difference between actual dangers and alarming “jump scares.” In our avarice and luxury (not evils in an of themselves) we so lowered the bar of acceptable risk, that anything less than immortality became an existential threat. As result, fear of a virus with an originally extremely low mortality rate, that weakens with each new variant, still is able to incite fear and indefensible behaviors among the fearful. As I travel the streets of my town, I still see many individuals wearing a mask outside far and away from the nearest structure or any other people. While my first instinct is to declare them morons, there’s also a side of me that retains some compassion for them. They are truly gripped with fear.
It is also out of what compassion I have for them that I’m angered at the purveyors of propaganda. There are many. In the US, there are both official and unofficial sources of this since we do not have an officially “State-run” media; and the coordination of some media outlets with the apparatus of the State makes me wonder how “unofficial” they actually are. Sources published in substack.com or in scientific journals concerning masks and “vaccine” effectiveness reveal that the ones screaming “follow the science” have, themselves, abandoned science altogether. The State utility of this anti-science messaging keeps alive the legacy of Trofim Lysenko. Nevertheless, the propaganda is rampant concerning COVID-19 and its subsequent variants, producing citizens moved with fear into behaviors that they cannot even stop to self-evaluate. Fearful of horrific unknowns, they step off the cliff like terrified “lemmings” wearing a comforting talisman to their face, hoping to be protected from the unseen dangers in their air as they plummet to the watery rocks below. It is out of hatred for these outcomes, and the destruction it rains upon the beloved uninformed, that the appropriate response is…
No quarter. No compromise. No civil dialogue. The propagandists have preyed upon the civility of the skeptical citizenry to advance messages promoting the downfall of our neighbors, friends and family. No more. We must make those uncomfortable who are otherwise willing to jump off the cliff because “Hirohito wills it.” Eventually, one discovers it is not loving to be silent and “polite” to those approaching the cliff. Indeed the propaganda may say that the dangers are horrifying and primordial, but many areas of western society (such as Florida and other states) have revealed the “US aid station” just away from the battle lines. The “dangers” are not real, at least not nearly to the degree you’ve been told. Resistance is loving…and we must must love our neighbor as ourselves in this time.
