TOKYO – The Unification Church has published a protest against Japanese public broadcaster NHK, demanding that it stop airing and apologize for a program dealing with the religious group’s recruitment methods.
TOKYO – The Unification Church has published a protest against Japanese public broadcaster NHK, demanding that it stop airing and apologize for a program dealing with the religious group’s recruitment methods.
Background context: the Unification Church (popularly called “Moonies”) are the group which Abe Shinzo was assasinated for being associated with. The incident led to what could be described as a public “outing” of the Unification Church and its ties to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – you read that correctly; public opinion turned against the assasinated former PM and remains firmly with the assassin.
Anti Unification Church sentiment has continued to grow to the point where their status as a tax-exempt religious organization is being challenged and the NHK is airing exposés. I’d say that the situation is comparable to the American anti-Scientology backlash, except on a bigger political scale and under a more compressed timeline.
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A big reason for why people turned against the Unification Church wasn’t just because of the ties uncovered with politicians, it was because the news reported a LOT on the guy’s background and how the Unification Church had pretty much completely ruined his life by the way they suckered in his mom, which led to his brother attempting suicide because of their financial problems stemming from her giving so much money to them. The press almost accidentally turned the guy sympathetic, and public sentiment almost immediately turned against the Unification Church - suddenly there were all these articles and TV programs about people who had been financially taken advantage of by the Unification Church, and reporters started digging into the connection to politicians.
Had the guy shot his original target - he wanted to shoot someone high up in the Moonies at first and had tested out his gun by shooting at the Moonies’ headquarters at night, he ironically might not have been so successful in bringing the Unification Church down in Japan. Abe was killed because of opportunity (Abe coming down to Nara close to where the guy lived for the day), and since it didn’t initially make sense why someone who hated the Unification Church would kill Abe, who seemed unrelated other than his grandfather having allowed them in, there likely wouldn’t have been any digging into their connection to political figures.
Quite possibly the most effective political assassination of all time. The doohickey stays winning.