
Charlie Chaplin Was Almost Assassinated in Japan to Start a War - TheSpine
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/that-time-charlie-chaplin-almost-got-assassinated-in-japan-7ded992e0a01
======
Jolter
I can’t get over a writing quirk of this author. Is there a word for this
inconsistent use of tense?

“When Chaplin asked what happened, Ken would say his father had been
assassinated. He’d travel with the Prime Minister’s son to the palace and see
the blood-stained floors.”

Unless I’m mistaken, this is considered poor style in English, isn’t it? Was -
would be

“Chaplin didn’t understand Japanese, but knew they were in danger. He’d
immediately put his acting skills into play.”

~~~
jml7c5
I think it's just confused word use. The author seems to treat 'would' as a
"past tense operator". In programming terms, the author appears to be under
the impression that past_tense("action") -> "would action". The correct
function is past_tense("action") -> "actioned". (Or whatever weird conjugation
"action" has.)

The tense this article's passages (mostly) use is "future-in-the-past" tense,
where the verb 'will' becomes 'would'. It is used when one transports the
reader to a specific _moment_ in time, looking omnisciently into the future.
For example, these sentences (in present/present/future, respectively):

"It is 1845. John Johnson wakes up. His wife will bake a cake in celebration."

become (in past/past/future-in-the-past, respectively):

"It was 1845. John Johnson woke up. His wife would bake a cake in
celebration."

If we transport the sentences you quoted from past->present and future-in-the-
past->future, they become: "Chaplin asks what happened. Ken will say his
father has been assassinated. He will travel with [...]". The second sentence
becomes: "Chaplin doesn't understand Japanese, but he knows he is in danger.
He will immediately put his acting skills into play." These are grammatically
correct, but I believe there are a few cases where the author gets it wrong.
In general, there are so many tense changes (and changes in the 'specific
moment' as described earlier) that it is probably unreasonable to consider the
whole document grammatically correct even if one could break the document into
isolated pieces of correctness.

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dhosek
It's interesting to note how little I know about pre-WWII Japan. Here's the
naval treaty mentioned in passing in the article.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty)

My history classes spent a lot of time on what led to Hitler and Mussolini but
absolutely nothing on what led to the Japanese membership in the Axis.

~~~
claudeganon
Prewar Japan was among the most intellectually vibrant, politically diverse,
and artistically challenging cultures of the 20th century. This book is a
great portrait of the period:

[https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674021297](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674021297)

The primary problem with why the country devolved into fascism is that
democracy was never really expanded, allowing wealthy, right wing cadres to
capture exclusive control of state power and outlaw political inclusion of
their opponents (several left wing parties were made illegal following
universal male enfranchisement in the late 1920s). But there was actually
widespread internal opposition to the Japanese imperial project, well into the
1930s, until fascists used violence, imprisonment, and intimidation of its
leadership to stop it.

~~~
ideals
This sounds harrowingly similar to current US trajectory

~~~
Stupulous
I think you may be overreacting to the current state of affairs. We have a
right-wing Senate, a left-wing House, a rather balanced (slightly right)
Supreme Court, and a right-wing Executive. 5 years ago we had a left-wing
Senate, right-wing House, balanced (I think slightly left) Supreme Court, and
left-wing Executive.

Obviously vote, but I think it's a pretty sure win for the left in the
Executive here in a few months. Outlook is pretty good for the left in
congress. I find it hard to foresee right-wing fascism taking control and
illegalizing the left in the near future.

Of course we should always be concerned about fascism because it has
devastating and existential consequences. But I don't see cause for alarmism
now, and every false alarm weakens the call to action when it is needed. For
now it seems like voting works.

~~~
valuearb
The Whitehouse, the Senate and the House of Representatives are nearly a lock
to be controlled by the Democratic part at year end.

Trump always had a tough uphill battle to ever be re-elected (worse poll
numbers in modern history) but the Coronavirus has made reelection nearly
impossible.

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TMWNN
Stalin wanted to assassinate John Wayne because of his anti-
Communism.([https://web.archive.org/web/20080602054832/http://www.telegr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080602054832/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=%2Farts%2F2004%2F06%2F04%2Fbfstalin04.xml&page=5))

~~~
mc32
That would have been too heavy handed.

Yuri Bezmenov has an interview where he explains the more subtle way the USSR
would weaken the US (after Stalin’s time)

Yuri was right. All along the US thought it was projecting soft power via
Hollywood movies, and it did and does but there are other dimensions to the
whole thing, and given our system of governance there is no way to avoid
getting to where we are.

In the USSR and China today, it’s not up to factions to make up or derive what
ones principles are, what the mores are, who the authorities are. There is no
equivocation, it always comes from the state.

Teachers, professors, etc., anyone questioning certain tenets would get nudges
or more aggressive tactics to cease those lines of thinking.

~~~
herbstein
Yuri Bezmenov was also a nobody who instantly became a darling of the American
far-right. The interview you're referring to is by the Alex Jones-like
conspiracy nut G. Edward Griffin. Bezmenov became "famous" by reinforcing
every far-right fear of "communist indoctrination" in American society.

I would love to know how you think this has manifested in American society.
The interview you're talking about is from 1984, and he's warning how these
effects will start manifesting in the next 10-15-20 years. He, in fact,
defected in early 1970. Let's be generous and say the changes would come after
roughly 25 years. Where is the sweeping ideological and policy changes that in
the mid-90s made the US so much more subversive and/or communist? I see little
to no evidence of this.

In fact, the Bezmenov interview is carted out by all people trying to explain
a change in the political landscape. Current-day liberals (in the American
sense) use the (context-less) interview to claim it's indicative of current
Russian measures. At the same time Republicans use it to prove that there's a
"both sides", and that issues like trans rights and the internment camps are
simply subversive claims by a foreign power.

Both of these narratives try to show that the "us" isn't inherently flawed,
but that we're deliberately pushed in a "subversive" direction by an evil,
all-powerful force. It's a comforting truth, in a way. You maintain the
positive self-image while gaining a common enemy. Sure, you're mad at the
other side for falling for the lie. But ultimately the common enemy is _even
worse_.

Edit: Changed the second paragraph to reflect the year he defected

~~~
nwienert
There’s a ton of evidence that our education system, universities, popular
media and more has been building up an ideology based on a
postmodern/poststructuralist theory that has culminated in what you see today
as woke/cancel culture, Antifa, etc. You may not agree with these theories, I
certainly am less of a conspiracy theorist about them than some (to me they
seem guided by good intention more than cabals of boogeymen), but the case has
been made by many especially as of late, and yes, were clear by the mid-90s.
To cite a more popular recent academic to bring it up, Jordan Peterson talks
about this extensively including citing trends going back to the French
philosophers in the 50s.

So I’m not even standing by the evidence as being true, but to say you “see
none” would be more of a personal oversight than the historical truth, as many
modern and well followed people do.

~~~
throwanem
Yeah, I mean, we're a decade at this point past even Moldbug's historiography,
and it's not as if he contributed any ideas that were both new and worth
having; mostly he just reformulated and to some extent synthesized some very
_old_ ideas in a fashion that might find a 21st-century audience, which it
more or less did.

Stating the existence of such historiographies doesn't do anything to make the
case for their veracity. People here in 2020 have better reasons for doubting
them than simply not knowing they exist.

~~~
nwienert
You’re doing a lot of hand waving. That’s not convincing.

An idea that’s been around consistently, supported by a group of people for a
long period of time and continually being cited with many concrete examples
needs refutation more than “people have better reasons to doubt them”. Again,
I’m just replying to the ridiculous original hand wave of “I don’t see it at
all”.

Sorry, you may disagree. But you’d have to address years and years of pretty
rigorous thought that’s been put into these problems. You won’t convince
anyone with appeals to authority or whatever fallacy it is to wave away things
based on nothing but “2020” (thought terminating cliche, I guess).

~~~
throwanem
Claiming I'm hand-waving when I ask you to substantiate your hand-wave is a
hell of a flex.

You made the claim. You want to support it, okay: _support_ it. Or if you'd
rather not, that's fine too, but it doesn't get to stand unchallenged either
way.

~~~
nwienert
I responded to herbstein's "I see little to no evidence of this" with a
popular modern intellectual (Jordan Peterson) who has cited a ton of stuff
around this. If you are too lazy to look that up, fine. You even cited
another, Moldberg (not my first or hundredth choice), then hand wave
something-something 2020.

The only thing I refute is that there is some consensus that there definitely
doesn't exist communist/communist-lite ideological trends within our country
dating back decades, it _most definitely isn 't the consensus_ as Fox News
would happily tell you many times a week.

I'm not defending it even, I think some of it is true, some not. But... I
_already_ refuted the points I came to refute. It's not open and shut, and
there exist many who see that narrative being true.

If you want to get into the details, sure, we _could_ do that. But Peterson
and other right wing thinkers (Thomas Sowell comes to mind) spent a lifetime
researching this and distilling it into a series of lectures and books, I'd
prefer not to have to re-hash that. That you don't see that it even exists is
a sign you either aren't familiar with that literature, or you are just
unwilling to ackowledge it.

I'm not here to prove it right, just to prove definitely that there _exists
many_ counterarguments to you/herbstein, to which you seemed unwilling to
admit.

\--

Edit: If you want some example, we have plenty in Silicon Valley. Companies
almost all promote ham-fisted affirmative action hiring policies, any speech
against those policies will result in firing, public tarring, and a general
ban from the industry. This Equality of Outcome policy is the dominant
ideology, enforced in an authoritarian way.

~~~
throwanem
Odd that you should take the time to reply to me and not to the person who
actually took the time to counter your argument in detail and with references.
Why is that?

~~~
nwienert
Oh thanks I missed it, will do.

