21/01/17 14:39:56.32 0.net
What drives ‘J-Anon’, QAnon's Japanese counterpart?
URLﾘﾝｸ(globalvoices.org)
Highly-organized pro-Trump demonstrations have been taking place in some of Japan's largest cities as a part of a thriving “J-Anon” (QAnon in Japan) movement.
In a series of tweets, Jeffrey Hall, a scholar specializing in right-wing politics who teaches at Waseda University, documented a relatively large pro-Trump “stop the steal” rally on January 6 in Tokyo, hours before Trump supporters on the other side of the planet violently stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C.
Waseda University's Jeffrey Hall, who filmed the large, well-organized pro-Trump marches in Tokyo on January 6, also identified the participation of fringe religious groups, including Sanctuary Church (also known as World Peace and Unification Sanctuary),
Falun Gong and Happy Science (幸福の科学), the latter a religious organization, often referred to as a cult, with its own political party in Japan.
Falun Gong, an international religious movement that is banned and persecuted in Mainland China,
operates Epoch Times, an anti-communist and increasingly pro-Trump newspaper. Falun Gong has participated in or helped organized other pro-Trump rallies around the world, including Taiwan.