The Website of Carlos Whitlock Porter

LETTER NO. 44

JAPANESE AMERICAN:
[ON THE CHINESE, KOREANS AND HARA KIRI]:

What do you know about Koreans? I seem to be having a very hard time understanding their mentality. The [small] amount of study done on them is surprising considering that they're supposed to be one of the major races of East Asia. There's almost nothing about them in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. To me, they're just a bunch of morbid gooks bordering on insanity. It's unbelievable how obsessed they are with Japan.

I don't know if you heard, but there's a dispute going on now over a bunch of uninhabited islands in the Sea of Japan, the Takeshima islands, that are so small that none of my World Atlases even cover them. I have no problem with the Koreans protesting about it, but some of the things they do just sickens me. I don't know why, but they have this strong tendency to cut themselves. Everybody in Korea is doing it, an assemblyman from Seoul was just arrested today for attempting to cut himself in some government building in Japan. I just can't understand how such a person of high stature would be willing to fly to Japan just to cut himself over a bunch of midget islands. Do you?

ME:

No. But from the point of view of a Westerner the same thing could be said about the Japanese. I don't understand hara-kiri. Suicide, yes, but not hara-kiri. Not jumping into volcanoes, etc..
Seppukku [hara kiri] is logical if you believe that the “ki” [life-spirit, energy or soul] is centred in the “hara” [belly], you dig, but really, one might try to make it a bit less painful... Anybody knows you die quicker if you stab yourself in the jugular vein or carotid artery.

Same with the volcano. Why not jump off a cliff? Why do you need a volcano? It's a fascination with self-punishment. As for Korea...

[BACKGROUND: The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, which this person mentions, points out that the Korean peninsula is a “dagger pointed at the heart of Japan”: any country that dominates Korea will dominate the Sea of Japan and constitute a direct threat to Japan. After fighting two wars to guarantee the independence of Korea [the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05], the Japanese chose to make the country a protectorate. Judging from the 1911 EB, Korea at that time must have been one of the most corrupt and backward countries on earth. The Japanese charted the coasts, built lighthouses, railways, roads, schools, clinics, telegraph lines, reformed the currency, civil service and court system, eliminated corruption and modernized the whole country. There is no question but that they were much better off under the Japanese, but all they can do is express an obsessive hatred for the Japs, as this person very correctly says; yet the only concrete grievance I’ve ever heard about is that the Japs put up street signs in Japanese (presumably both languages)! What did they expect? Korean and Japanese are completely different languages. Koreans really are “obsessed” with the Japanese, while the Japs hardly even think of Korea. To me, this looks like an obvious inferiority complex.
In any case, the traditionally intense Korean hatred of Japan dates back to the end of the 16th century, when Japan invaded Korea to expel an army of Chinese, which had already conquered the country. The 1910 annexation was carried out peacefully, by agreement with the Korean government, which was apparently attempting to escape increasing Chinese domination. The Koreans have walked a tightrope for thousands of years. This is not the fault of Japan; it is the fault of geography. -C.P.]

... Koreans are sadistic. Just look at some of the hapkido [Korean jiu-jitsu] videos on youtube. They're the only martial artists who really seem to hurt their students. I'd hate to see what their joints look like at age 40. One of my wife’s relatives was captured by the Japs and he said the Japanese weren’t too bad, but they had some other Oriental race with them who were terrible. Who could it have been but Koreans?

[Big new story: anti-Japanese riots in China involving 5-10,000 people]

China is a big country and let's face it, it's far away, so 5-10,000 people riot in China because they hate Japan, and it's a big deal? While they cover up worldwide peace demonstrations involving millions of people?

By the way, I keep hearing stories derived from Chinese propaganda, one minute it's human vivisection, next it's Japanese germ warfare. The chinks remind me of the Jews, in fact they used to be called "the Jews of the Orient". I'm sick of all their caterwauling…

JAPANESE AMERICAN:
[GENERAL DECADENCE]:

…There are some major issues with Japan today. I haven't personally encountered any of it because I don't hang around in those areas, but I've heard stories. The way some of them dress in public and act on TV is very unusual, weird. Just to prove how lost Japanese society is, rap is the craze there. Not Japanese rap, but American rap straight from the hood. I can understand pop, but rap? I asked a kid once if he understood anything they were saying in the music and he told me it didn't matter. Crime rates are going up, suicide rates are going up, everything's falling apart. My mom once told me you didn't have to lock your house in Japan because the whole country was safe. Now that's just an illusion.

I agree with you on seppuku [hara kiri], nobody I ask even knows why the ancient samurais did it. I'm curious to know as to who invented the practice and when…

ME:

It's a religious problem, Gustav Le Bon in THE PSCYHOLOGY OF CROWDS says that civilizations are born when they have a dream, no matter what it is, and are destroyed when they lose the dream. In the Orient, it was Shintoism and Buddhism. I'm a traditionalist.

JAPANESE AMERICAN:

What a shit hole we're burying ourselves in. Society is completely worthless. I don't understand it at all, why are they doing this? Is it to destroy our sense of community? … And for what? I'm sick of all this. All of this “American Dream” crap to justify millions of illegals. It's crap. One thing I don't understand still is why fascism was erroneous. It seems to have been very efficient, especially compared to that of countries today…

ME:

…It occurs to me that the industrialized nations are treating their own populations like the slave populations in South America. It was cheaper to import adult slaves than to feed and clothe their children until they were old enough to work. The life expectancy of a slave in Brazil or Cuba was 9 years (because of disease, due to the climate, not because they were worked to death) after which they just imported more. The American South was the only exception. It's the same mentality, cheap labour, a quick buck, even if the slaves are well-treated (as they were in the South). These countries were perfectly correct in saying that the prosperity of their economies depended on slave labour (indeed much of the economy of the world, indirectly, since manufactured goods of all kinds were traded to Africans in return for slaves). So today we import adult immigrants (slaves) because it's less trouble than doing our own work and having our own children. It's the implosion of the industrialized, urbanized way of life, and even worse, plus all the factors that destroyed Rome. It's destroyed every civilization in history (see WHY CIVILIZATIONS SELF-DESTRUCT, THE MARCH OF THE TITANS, etc). There is also an article in the 1928 Encyclopaedia Britannica about this: when people reach a certain standard of living they quit having children and are destroyed by their lower classes, slaves, or barbarian invaders. At least the Germanic tribes were white. I've never believed in progress, it's a delusion. Which is more important, your race, or your economy?

It all reminds me of the Japanese soldier that spent 28 years in the jungles of the Pacific after the war and then saw Japanese girls in miniskirts and drinking Coca Cola and said, "They can't be Japanese". It's the fault of the Americans. Of course, numbers of people aren't important if the quality stays the same, but that won't happen. It's the capitalistic mentality of short-term profit and expediency, pleasure, the antithesis of traditionalist Japan, or indeed of almost all past world societies. No society has ever had such values. Somebody told me, "We won't have to worry about that, our children will". It's not normal. It's unprecedented. To me, the only alternative is National Socialism, but for that you'd need a total human regeneration, like a religious conversion, the lion lying down with the lamb. The Jews will run the world into the ground first.

If the Americans hadn't sided with China and destroyed Japan, they wouldn't have needed to limit their population, and wouldn't have gotten into the habit of aborting all their children, etc. 2/3 of all children were aborted, even 35-40 years ago, or something, even when I was a child, millions a year.

There's a site about Japan, I'll try to find it for you. The country has gone insane.

JAPANESE AMERICAN:
[ON "COMFORT WOMEN"]

I'm not sure how to answer your question about the “comfort women” [Korean women allegedly forced into prostitution by and for the Japanese army]. Lots of countries used them, France did during WW1. I believe Italy had something similar too from reading Hemmingway's A Farewell to Arms - one of the characters always visited the whore house. I also read that there were such programs in Vietnam. They're basically military prostitutes, and it’s not only Koreans, there were plenty of Japanese too. Some girls claimed they were kidnapped and forced into the program by the Japanese government. I can't give you any books to read since they're all in Japanese, but basically there's no proof that the government ever did such a thing. All the stories brought to the Japanese Supreme Court have been proven false, with the Korean admitting she was lying and was pressured by her family or whatever to do so. It's possible that some women were forced into prostitution by disorderly soldiers, but those are just stray events. Not one story has been proven. You and I could probably make up stories that we were forced into the comfort women thing, and the Korean press would pick it up and publish it as fact immediately.

ME:

Thanks, I'm glad to know that. It's very interesting to know that these stories have gone before the Supreme Court of Japan…

JAPANESE AMERICAN:
[ON REPUBLICS]

… That’s a very good point you bring up; how republics degenerate into democracies and then to mob rule and dictatorship…

ME:

Republics are based on a limited franchise, but there is constant pressure to extend the franchise. This has happened in all republics in history. All the original Founding Fathers felt this way about republics, so did the Confederates. Particularly John C Calhoun (OK he died in 1850, but same difference). No reputable government ever believed in universal suffrage because it means mob rule, which means dictatorship, i.e., Clinton or Bush.

They did away with the Emperor (personified by Caesar Augustus, who possessed actually rather limited powers) in favour of a Republic and this degenerated into democracy and mob rule. There is only one form of government, and that is authority, preferably somewhat limited authority, but authority. I think this means hereditary monarchy, but that is lost and gone forever, oh my darling Clementine. In Japan obviously the Mikado was best, Shintoism and Buddhism and all that.

JAPANESE AMERICAN:

…Dictatorships are more honest, you're absolutely correct about that. I hate all this deceit, it makes me sick. It's degrading; completely screws the human mind over…
But I think your article is completely right, democracy today is horseshit. The government is using it against us and the people don't even know it.

ME:

I don't wish to imply that dictatorship is ipso facto better; I merely mean that there is not much difference, and that dictatorship is more honest. Most traditional dictators (Batista, Santa Anna, etc.) are like Clinton or Bush, mediocre crooks, with the few rare men of ability (Franco, Salazar). Porfirio Díaz of Mexico was a mixture: a man of great ability who became corrupt later (if the allegations are true; in exchange for modernizing the country, he made extensive land grants to foreign corporations, and these land grants became extremely valuable, while the Catholic Church owned 25% of the rest of the land). But in an emergency, the person of obvious ability will be given more and power until it is too late -- if it becomes obvious that he doesn't have as much ability as people thought he had. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. There are very few men of integrity and ability in any system. That is the problem. There have been hundreds of imitations of the American Constitution, but the men of ability and integrity (like the Founding Fathers) were lacking.

To me, democracy is an ideology, like Communism or Christianity. In the Greek city states, it always failed. It was a completely discredited form of government until recently. Even the Founding Fathers never spoke of democracy; they were aristocrats and spoke of a republic. But republics degenerate into democracies, and then into mob rule and dictatorship. Most of them hated democracy and were all disillusioned by 1820 or so, those that were still alive. The Roman Empire went through all these stages as well. Democracy has also always been associated with communism (small c) because of the leveling instinct, everybody is the "same", or supposedly, so in the end, logically, they should all have the same possessions, income and social position.

Whatever form of government is traditional and organic, in my opinion, is best for any people. There's no universal rule as far as I can tell.

JAPANESE AMERICAN:
[ON TERRORISM AND THE FINE ART OF BOMB MAKING]

…I love how you describe terrorism, couldn't agree with you anymore. .. I'm not really sure what a “dirty bomb” is. Does such a thing really exist?...

ME:

A dirty bomb is an atomic bomb which releases larger than normal amounts of radiation. OK, so where do you get the plutonium? I once read a website about how to make bombs, and let me tell you something, if anybody ever tries to bomb you, you better hope he got his info off the Internet because anybody who does is probably 1000 times more dangerous to himself than anybody else. It was THE ANARCHIST'S COOKBOOK, easily available in book form.

[Note: the fine art of bomb making off the Internet is an oft-touted excuse for the censorship of this medium. As we shall soon see, there is no such danger.
Cela n'existe pas, monsieur.]

Anyway in a book you start at the beginning, and at the beginning -- maybe page 3 -- it says this stuff should only be made by experienced chemists with full laboratory equipment, proper ventilation, etc. etc., all sorts of safety warnings, so you click on a link at random and start on page 80 and blow yourself up!

For example, you put the cork back in the bottle, BOOM! You forgot to notice that on page 5 or so it told you to clean all surfaces, because the slightest residue can cause an explosion. Also it says never make more than a gram of the stuff (enough to blow up a Coke machine), so you decide to make potassium permanganate in your kitchen without ventilation, without gloves, without clean surfaces, without a respirator and without a protective apron, by boiling about half a pound of salt substitute which you bought in a dietary store. BOOM!

The only bombers you really have to worry about are the ones working for the government. Most bombers are experienced or professional chemists working in teams with professional electronics technicians (for example, TV repairmen). Of course these people don't need the Internet. So how the hell is a street thug like Padilla [Chicago gang leader tortured by the US government for years, destroying his mind, for allegedly planning to manufacture a "dirty bomb] going to make an atomic bomb?

Most bombers blow themselves up because the detonators and timers are defective because they are old, stolen, bought on the black market and/or constructed by amateurs. That's the reason for suicide bombing: no need for a detonator or timer. Most explosive mixtures are so sensitive that just putting the cork back in a small bottle can kill you. I suspect the Palestinians use mostly dynamite, which is very stable, with a friction trip-wire detonator. No timer.

… The whole story about Padilla makes me laugh. Why not accuse him of sending all those anthrax letters a few years back? Padilla is undoubtedly a criminal, but how the hell is he going to make an atomic bomb, dirty or clean? Crack, maybe, but hell, any whiz-kid physics student can make an atomic bomb, in theory, the problem is getting the plutonium and then detonating the device before you die of radíation sickness. So really...

…America has never been threatened by a foreign enemy since the War of 1812 (when the British burnt Washington). All our enemies are of our own creation: Japan, Communism, etc. now the goddamn Moslems. How the hell can Moslems do us any harm unless they are allowed to immigrate in large numbers? In Algeria, you could be walking down the street, and presto! An Arab cuts your throat from behind and disappears into the crowd, it only takes them a second. Remember they've all been slaughtering animals since they were kids, they know how. They don't need dirty bombs and hijacked planes. If these people are a problem, we have only ourselves to blame…

And where terrorism is concerned, hell, a kid can wreck a train. Can you imagine thousands of kids tossing rocks on cars from bridges, etc. etc.? It doesn't take much to disrupt modern civilization, so why invite them over by the billions and then antagonize them? I haven't heard of one serious crime committed in the United States by an Arab, in Europe, everywhere else, yes, gang rapes, car theft, shoplifting, etc. drug dealing, but terrorism? No. OK, a few cases in France, one or two in Spain. They don’t even rob banks. So terrorism?...

Plus all you need to do is rent an apartment next to an airport with a high-powered rifle or other weapon equipped with incendíary bullets, and you can kill 200 people just like that, while the plane is getting ready to take off or has just landed. Nobody needs to hijack a plane. Also, when the hell did the Arabs ever have the A-bomb? All they've got is home made junk, made from our artillery shells. The USSR exploded an atomic bomb in 1949 and we never did a goddamn thing. We continued to trade with them, gave them foreign aid, 80 billion bucks in loans.

Americans are nuts. I get stuff from Human Events, conservatives, they support Bush, they've got to suffer a lot before they see any sense at all. Know what's red, white and blue and three feet tall? It's an American with all the bullshit kicked out of him…

…When the Jews run America into the ground completely, then maybe people will see some sense. But I don't think so. The only thing you can hope for is a dictator with ability. Essentially, there's no difference politically between the USA and the People's Republic of the Congo.

JAPANESE AMERICAN:
[ON FASCISM]:

I see what you mean now when you say all dictators follow the same policies on centralization, industrialization, protectionism; whereas Mussolini used the state to achieve these means, Hitler used the race. So how does one support fascism but reject communism at the same time if both are founded on similar ideas? Where do you think one should place the limit on the power of the state?

ME:

Frankly, on necessity; depends on the circumstances. Desperate ills call for desperate remedies.
Hitler I think was the most coherent and the most realistic of all modern statesmen. The two extremes are the Confederacy and National Socialism. They have many things in common, but I think really they were opposites. Hitler said there is no freedom to sin against the race and hence posterity. That was his standard. The power of the state was a means to an end.
Also, you can choose between similar systems of ideas if one is better than the other, more intelligent, better planned, more realistic. To me National Socialism was the ultimate in realism, but people don't understand it… Communism of course was not realistic at all and its leaders were incompetent at everything except plotting.

JAPANESE AMERICAN:
[ON THE CONFEDERACY]

Definitely to some extent Lincoln was a dictator; suspending habeas corpus, dictating Congress, expanding national power, etc. But he's an amateur compared to Stalin and Mao. In some aspects I sympathize with the South because of their similarities with Japan. Both had very committed soldiers, allegations over POW abuses, traditional cultures, absolute occupations, military tribunals, incinerated cities, etc. Also both were provoked economically by the Union into war, both were fighting for their national sovereignty, and had exaggerated tales of atrocities…

ME:
I appreciate your comments on the Confederacy more than I can tell you. Coming from a Japanese-American this means more than I can say. I think the Confederates were among the only Americans who ever had a real sense of honour and decency. I always thought of them as samurai, knights of war, myself...

I don't believe that everybody should be the same or that different countries should imitate each other. There is room for the ethnic identity of every racial and national group, but only with a reasonable degree of independence (politically and geographically) and mutual respect.

CONCLUSION

I do not believe in unilateral masochism on one side and unilateral victimization on the other, but I think we should recognize the truth about past events by studying revisionist history instead of wartime propaganda; we should look inside ourselves and admit that our enemies are not the only ones who have done wrong. I believe this is in accordance with the tenants of all the world's religions. This is the importance of revisionism.

We don't need to pay reparations in money to the descendants of people who died centuries ago, but we should examine history with a bit of objectivity and humility. This cannot be done without an objective study of history. For example, we do not need the Japanese to "apologize" for attacking Pearl Harbor or China, but we need to understand why they did so.

I also believe that reparations and forgiveness do not boil down to simply handing over taxpayer's cash, or the cash of a few tax-free foundations or corporations in search of tax write-offs and PR. I recommend the book THE FORCED WAR for a study as to Hitler's methods; in reality he was the greatest conciliator who ever lived; a man who truly "turned the other cheek", even in wartime, until he was forced to fight back. A politician seeks to satisfy his followers; a statesman seeks to satisfy his enemies, so that he can reach an agreement with them. This is what Hitler attempted to do. Everything else is propaganda. I believe that the Japanese attempted to do the same thing, with both China and the US. They fought because they had to.

… After building up Communism for 80 years and handing over all the colonial empires to them, creating chaos everywhere, particularly Africa and China, after allowing the Communists to steal and develop the atomic bomb for 50 years, all this talk about Irak is simply ridiculous.

I think America should withdraw from Irak, and apologize and pay reparations to Irak, Germany Japan and all the other countries it has harmed. It should heed the advice of George Washington and the final address of President Eisenhower. It should leave the rest of the world alone. The US has never been threatened by any foreign enemy not of its own creation (I mean Communism) and the only justified wars it ever fought were the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. I think the Confederates were justified in attempting to leave the Union. It should heed its own principles hypocritically made up and announced retroactively at Nuremberg. They are probably impossible to apply but the US made up these rules, so the US should either try or shut up...

[September-October 2004]

MADE IN RUSSIA - THE HOLOCO$T

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