The tragedy of Ryo Aoki, Coeur d'Alene, and Right Wing Intersectionality
Agitators never think they'll be agitated against until they're dead
MAJOR YAKUZA: LIKE A DRAGON SPOILERS
ALSO WARNING FOR DISTURBING IMAGERY, WE GET DARK HERE, THANKFULLY THE HYPOTHETICALS NOTED HERE HAVE NOT HAPPENED AS OF YET
If you haven’t played Yakuza: Like a Dragon, I’m about to spoil the finale. I highly recommend it - it’s a very good game with an absolutely perfect ending, and I’d happily allow for you to play the game rather than listen to me praise its storytelling. Spoilers start after the image below and will persist throughout the remainder of the article.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon, at its core, is a standoff between two former comrades in the Arakawa crime family: protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, a former yakuza bodyguard who has to rebuild his life after being used as the fall guy for a crime, and Ryo Aoki, a young politician who uses tactics and force to enrage the populace and consolidate power behind the scenes. Aoki’s main targets for his ire include marginalized groups, sex workers, and other “forgotten about” members of Japanese society - he turns them into a common enemy for the Japanese populace in order to “purify” Japan. Aoki’s rhetorical impact is most seen through the evolution of Souta Kume, a young activist who transforms from a mostly harmless activist into a ferocious, conservative politician in his own right. Kume is one of Aoki’s most willing and malleable pawns in his quest to deconstruct the governing mafias surrounding Japan.
While Aoki is mainly able to maintain the facade of being a centrist publicly, behind-the-scenes, Kume’s beloved Bleach Japan organization is turned into a front for murder, strife, and propaganda against the citizens of Yokohama and Tokyo alike. Aoki’s charade goes on for a long time until he’s exposed publicly at the end of the game by Ichiban. This results in Ichiban chasing Aoki to a train station locker, the place where he was left as a baby. Ichiban gives Aoki a chance to redeem himself, and in the ensuing moments, it seems as if Aoki is about to take him up on that bargain.
And then the game ends.
Oh wait.
No it doesn’t. This happens.
Kume, the underling who Aoki had been grooming for the entire game, is not going to let his former leader absolve himself so easily. He sees Aoki’s willingness to turn away from his sinister path as a sign of weakness, a deviation from the only correct solution which is to purge Japan of everyone who acts on impure desires. Kume, fully radicalized, murders his groomer in cold blood. In the worldview that Aoki endorsed, he himself did not live up to the stated standards. He was killed for the cause.
Before this ending happened, I rated Yakuza: Like a Dragon as a solid 7 out of 10 game. The ending ensured that it would be a title I’d remember for a long time and hold up as an example of smart, sensitive, fantastic writing and plot progression.
I thought about the game again when I heard about 31 members of Patriot Front, a terrorist organization, arrested while marching on Coeur de Alene, Idaho’s Pride at the Park event.
Coeur d’Alene is the largest city in Northern Idaho, and this was the first time in two years that the Idaho Pride Alliance chose to host Pride in the Park - CoVid had put a damper on the previous attempts. The event, which was free to attend for all citizens, seemed like a fairly innocuous initiative centered on promoting inclusivity and supporting local businesses. Prayer was on the schedule, along with live music, sidewalk chalk art and performances by local drag artists.
While, thankfully, there was no violent action successfully committed at the event, that was not for lack of trying. Along with the Patriot Front example noted above, the Atomwaffen (a terroristic Neo-Nazi organization currently consolidating power in the Mountain West) and other white supremacists attempted to penetrate the event and engage with participants as well. There is evidence that agitators drove from as far as Texas, Washington State, and New Mexico to impose their will on some innocent Idahoans having a picnic. They did not mince words, either: they attended this event to cause physical harm to the participants.
At some point, it becomes incumbent to all of us to realize that, in cases like this, these terrorists are telling us exactly their intention, and we should treat these declarations as acts of war against the marginalized. It also means we need to hold those agitating responsible for the words they say and the militants they, clearly, are able to trigger and control.
The likes of Chaya Raichik, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and more are bringing attention to drag queen story hours with either the implicit or explicit intention to execute stochastic terrorism upon the subjects of those events. Raichik, specifically, is at the forefront of this particular initiative. And, thus far, this strategy is proving fruitful in terms of terrorizing innocent people trying to enjoy an afternoon off.
There are two ways to read the intention behind agitators like Raichik. One is that she is actually stupid and honestly doesn’t think her Tweets and posts on social media are resulting in anything outside of enhanced awareness of these purported “immoral” events. I do not believe this to be the case - but this was the defense levied by Raichik when reporter Taylor Lorenz investigated her and her family a month ago.
The more obvious way to read the intention behind Raichik’s posts is that she is deliberately signaling to her 1 million-plus follower audience to disrupt events such as Pride in the Park. Raichik doesn’t care who sees the message or who gets called to action - she just wants the people at the event to disperse. This has resulted in her aligning with groups like Patriot Front, whether purposefully or not, as they are the muscle who enact her edicts. This Orthodox Jewish woman commands the Atomwaffen.
The term “intersectionality” is repellant to the right, but regardless of the way you call it, it is fascinating to see neo-Nazis and white supremacists aligning with each other against a common enemy - the LGBTQ+ community. This is right wing intersectionality: conservative Christians, Orthodox Jews, and white supremacists coming together to terrorize the marginalized and their allies. It’s exactly like what Ryo Aoki did in Yakuza: Like a Dragon; he made strange bedfellows with radical conservative groups and enflamed them with apoplectic and antagonistic rhetoric due to their common enemy.
For the short term, the small battalion Raichik has raised is aligned with her. However, the question must be asked - does she really think that, long-term, these White supremacists even see her as human?
We’ve seen multiple anti-Semitic attacks come from the right wing, with the most deadly murders stemming from right wing white supremacists in locations such as Pittsburgh and Poway. This is an opinion shared by a large majority of American Jews - 91%, per the AJC, say that the extreme political right constitutes a major anti-Semitic threat. Left wing anti-Jewish sentiment, while definitely something that must be dealt with, has not metastasized into the consistent output of physical violence that is seen on the right. That is an undeniable fact.
In Jewish liturgy, there is an ongoing enemy that goes by the name Amalek. While in the Bible, Amalek was a physical group, historical evidence shows that this group was wiped out during Hezekkiah’s reign as king, and Biblical scholars have expanded the definition of Amalek to encompass general evil, and that it is the job of the Jews to fight and extinguish Amalek wherever they can.
In America, Amalek are right-wing white supremacists, end of story. For Jewish people to be aiding and abetting those right-wing white supremacists, and perhaps even turning them into attack dogs against marginalized groups, it is not only anti-Semitic and incredibly disappointing, but also shortsighted. These groups may be intersectional for the time being, but what happens when the Jews are scapegoated yet again?
Will those right wing White Supremacist attackers such as the Patriot Front and the 3 Percenters be able to turn the other cheek and say “this time, the Jews AREN’T to blame?”
It hasn’t happened in the past. I doubt it will happen now. And, if that’s the case, Shapiro and Raichik could end up having their stories end similar to Aoki’s; on the other side of an attack from the strange bedfellows they once commanded.