This chapter opens with a reflection on what true artists do: cast light on hidden truths that power tries to conceal. The author argues that Masayuki Takayama is not only the most important journalist of the postwar era but also a genuine artist in this sense, unlike fashionable writers who merely recycle the lies of outlets like the Asahi Shimbun. The main body introduces an essay from Takayama’s 2022 book Japanese People, Awake! See Through the Lies of Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, and the Asahi Shimbun. It retraces how a street vendor’s self-immolation in Tunisia triggered the “Arab Spring,” how Google, social media, and U.S. media amplified the unrest, and how U.S. weapons covertly flowed to anti-government forces via Benghazi. Takayama links this to Hillary Clinton’s State Department and a broader pattern of Democratic Party–driven regime change in the Middle East. Finally, he interprets President Trump’s drone strike on Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani as an attempt to clean up the long-term consequences of Democratic interference, while exposing the Asahi’s Middle East coverage as unthinking “translation” of U.S. liberal media narratives.

A single self-immolation topples a regime… behind the “Arab Spring” stood Hillary… the elimination of Soleimani was an act of conscience.
October 23, 2023.

The following is taken from Masayuki Takayama’s book, published on September 1, 2022 under the title “Japanese People, Awake! See Through the Lies of Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, and the Asahi Shimbun.”
This essay as well proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.

Some time ago, an elderly female professor from the Monaco Royal Ballet School, who is held in deep respect by prima ballerinas all over the world, visited Japan.
What follows are her words about the significance of the artist’s existence.
“Artists are important because they are the only ones capable of casting light on hidden, concealed truths and expressing them.”
There is surely no one who would object to her words.

Masayuki Takayama is not only the one and only journalist in the postwar world; it is no exaggeration at all to say that he is also the one and only artist of the postwar world.
By contrast, Ōe—though I do not wish to speak ill of the dead.
Murakami and the others who call themselves “writers,” and many who imagine themselves to be “artists,” are in fact people unworthy of that name.
The reason is that far from casting light on hidden, concealed truths and expressing them, they have merely expressed the lies manufactured by the Asahi Shimbun and the like.
People of their sort surely exist not only in Japan but in countries all over the world.
In other words, true artists exist only in extremely small numbers.

This essay too splendidly proves the correctness of my assertion that, in today’s world, the person most deserving of the Nobel Prize in Literature is none other than Masayuki Takayama.
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for people all over the world.
Aside from the headlines, all emphases in the text are mine.

Asahi Shimbun’s Middle East articles are more the work of “translation clerks” than correspondents.
When interference comes from the U.S. Democratic Party it is praised as democratization, but when Trump acts they heap abuse on him.

A regime toppled by a single self-immolation.
Once, the Islamic world of the Middle East was shaken to its core.
The first country to be destabilized was Tunisia.

Its history is ancient.
The Numidian kingdom, which created the pretext that led to the final phase of the Punic Wars and the destruction of Carthage, was its predecessor state.
Because of that, Tunisia has ancient Roman amphitheaters, Islamic mosques, and high-end resorts looking out over the Mediterranean, and has prospered as a European summer retreat.

Its politics were stable.
Ben Ali pursued secular rule, easing Islamic restrictions.
Women were freed from the chador, and in restaurants it was normal to drink wine.
Aside from a somewhat high unemployment rate, it seemed in every way a country far removed from political turmoil, but in December 2010 a young man’s self-immolation in a southern town became the trigger for an unimaginable upheaval.

According to reports at the time, a young street vendor without a permit for his stall at the morning market was stopped by officials and had his vegetables confiscated.
When he protested, he was beaten to a pulp by a female police officer.
In Xi Jinping’s China that would be an everyday occurrence, but what was slightly different here was that the young man resorted to self-immolation in protest, the footage was uploaded to social media, and protest demonstrations broke out at once.

Police attempting to suppress the crowds drew their guns and opened fire, causing deaths, and those scenes were again uploaded.
With each passing day the disturbance grew in a bizarre fashion.
As in Hong Kong, the regime tried to crush the protests with force and impose press controls.
But at that point Google stepped in to help spread the information.

U.S. media also reported on the events, internationalizing the turmoil.
Roughly two weeks after the self-immolation, demonstrations swirled in the capital Tunis as well, and citizens turned into rioters attacked banks and government offices, completely destroying public order.
Only twenty-eight days after the self-immolation, the regime collapsed, and Ben Ali, who had ruled the country for twenty-three years, fled into exile in Saudi Arabia.

American newspapers reported that “the long-ruling dictatorship that controlled the people has been toppled” and that “the people have seen the flowering of a democratization movement.”
What is called the “Arab Spring” began here, then went on to rock the seemingly more solid Egypt, toppling the Mubarak regime, and jumped even further to the Gaddafi regime in Libya.

Behind the “Arab Spring” stood Hillary.
Gaddafi had once orchestrated the bombing of a Pan Am aircraft.
He was called the “Mad Dog of the Desert.”
At the same time, however, he abolished outdated Islamic customs and was passionate about women’s education.

As for one such outdated custom, the practice of having up to four wives, he required that from the second wife onward the husband obtain the first wife’s consent, effectively abolishing this evil custom.
Even so, an anti-Gaddafi movement broke out, and the rebels fought government forces with weapons even more up-to-date than the regime’s.

Social media heaped abuse upon Gaddafi, and U.S. media likewise chanted in unison that the mad dog of the desert had to be brought down.
NATO, too, cooperated in democratizing Libya, flying more than 5,000 sorties in its air campaign.
It all looked very much like a war of retaliation for the Pan Am bombing.

Seven months after the start of the anti-Gaddafi movement, on October 20, 2011, Gaddafi was killed in the depths of the desert.
American papers celebrated the success of the Libyan people’s democratization movement in toppling a dictator.

One reason the “Arab Spring” achieved one “success” after another was the dissemination of information via social media.
Even when regimes tried to cut off information, Google and Facebook transmitted it by other routes.
International broadcasters like CNN took an even greater interest in trumpeting this “democratization.”

What remained a mystery was why the anti-government organizations possessed weapons and ground armaments superior to those of the regimes.
The Benghazi incident, which occurred one year after Gaddafi’s death, shed light on that mystery.

It began when Islamic extremists torched the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.
Why was the U.S. ambassador there in the first place?
“Because he was engaged in sending weapons from Benghazi to anti-government organizations in Syria, where the next democratization movement had begun.” (Sōki Watanabe, The Collapse of the U.S. Democratic Party).

In other words, behind the whole chain of “Arab Spring” events stood the United States.
The operation was directed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who used her private email for this purpose, and the Benghazi incident brought these facts to light.

The elimination of Soleimani was an act of conscience.
The intent of these operations was to remove, from among Middle Eastern leaders, those individuals deemed troublesome.
Gaddafi and Assad were the targets, and the rest were collateral damage.

Social media was used to spark riots and spread anti-government movements.
U.S. media lent its support, and the necessary weapons were sent in.
In fact, weapons shipped toward Syria were seized in Lebanon.

Trump detested this dirty interference in other countries by the Democratic Party and tried to pull the United States back to its original Monroe Doctrine of non-intervention.
The Asahi Shimbun criticizes Trump as “inward-looking,” but that is merely a direct translation of what U.S. media, which had been in league with Hillary and the Democrats, was saying.

Recently, the Asahi harshly criticized Trump for his tweet to Iranian citizens calling for the overthrow of the Islamic regime, in which he said, “We stand with you, who have suffered for so long,” dismissing it as “a message that incites demonstrations” (according to correspondent Watanabe Oka).
When the Democratic Party interferes, they praise it as democratization, but when Trump acts they heap abuse on him.
Rather than “correspondent,” Watanabe ought to be called a “translation clerk.”

The United States, in fact, has a past instance from forty years ago in which it toppled Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi—who was trying to unite the Middle East and stand up to the Western majors—with the same “Arab Spring” style tactics, thereby bringing about Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution.

They succeeded in ousting the Shah, but the revolutionary regime that followed ruled through a terror far more cruel than that of North Korea.
People were whipped simply for drinking alcohol or eating prosciutto, and adultery or prostitution were punished by public executions.

The body that carried out such outrages openly in the name of Allah was the Revolutionary Guards.
Even the Islamic clerics were unable to rein them in.

In the past they stormed the U.S. Embassy, arrested the Japanese ambassador, and, more recently, when Prime Minister Abe visited Iran and met with the Supreme Leader, they blew up a Japanese tanker.
And this time they shot down a civilian airliner.

Trump had the conscience to reap the harvest of the seeds sown by the Democratic Party.
By eliminating Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, he showed that there exists someone capable of putting a brake on them.
He also conveyed to citizens that, although this mad religious regime has lasted forty years, it is not eternal.
That is the meaning of his tweet.
I would like the correspondents to think a little and then write, instead of merely translating.

(From the February 2020 issue.)