Mehdi AOUICHAOUI メディ

The tendency of some Japanese right-wing racists to defer to the United States while directing cheap racist hostility toward non-white people, as if they themselves belonged to a supposedly “superior race,” can be understood through Ibn Khaldun’s analysis of how the defeated come to imitate and idealize their victors. Yet even these Japanese racists are not entirely unaware of this contradiction. Deep down they must know that this is nothing more than a pathetic imitation. The tragedy for us Japanese is that over the past 80 years we have failed to develop an intellectual vision that would allow us to break free from this condition. “The vanquished always want to imitate the victor in his distinctive characteristics, his dress, his occupation, and all his other conditions and customs. The reason for this is that the soul always sees perfection in the person who is superior to it and to whom it is subservient. It considers him perfect, either because it is impressed by the respect it has for him, or because it erroneously assumes that its own subservience to him is not due to the nature of defeat but to the perfection of the victor.” Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah