Wrestlers say the stupidest things

[Merzbow]

How long was she wearing this shite?

[Hannibal Scorch]

3 hours ago, Merzbow said:

How long was she wearing this shite?

It was for (NOT AS IT TURNS OUT) this show in 2009

Yeah...

Edited March 17, 2025 by Hannibal Scorch
Pickled Onion Monster Munch

[The King Of Swing]

Fucking hell. 

[TheScarlettChad]

Japan doesn't care about Germany's role in WW2, So this is completely normal for them to do it.

Edited March 17, 2025 by TheScarlettChad

[BomberPat]

29 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

It was for this show in 2009

It wasn't, Kana/Asuka has never worked for NJPW. They are two independent usages of Nazi imagery in Japanese wrestling. 

From what I understand, they don't really teach what Nazism was about in Japan, so to use that kind of imagery is just a shorthand for "villains".

[Merzbow]

It means they'd have to teach about their own atrocities which they don't do, but to be fair we don't teach about our own over here either. Bengal Famine? Not our fault, etc.

[Carbomb]

Also, unlike the Germans, the Japanese as a nation have never been forced to truly face up to what they did during WWII. Japanese history lessons in school are absolute dogshit; I know so many Japanese who described them as just complete borefests consisting of teachers reading out chronologies at them from textbooks, with almost no discussion of causes, influences, repercussions, etc. It's considered almost a stereotype to see students sleeping in class, which the teacher does nothing about. With no grounding in history, there's no chance of them really understanding politics.

The population of the average Japanese seems to be split into four groups: the first two are two variations of the far right - the first are the Japanese supremacists, who claim everything Japan did leading up to and during the war was right, and the second are the denialists, who claim that Japan did nothing wrong, and that it's all a plot by the West and the Chinese and Koreans to shame Japan. Then there's the third group, who, sadly, seem to be the smallest, which is those who know what Japan did, are sorry for it, and believe the country needs to make up for it. 

Then, last off, is the biggest group, which is the ignorant, who have some vague idea that Japan did some bad stuff during the war, but that it can't have been all that bad - and they map that onto Germany as their allies. To them, Hitler is a Napoleon-like or Genghis Khan-like figure, in that he was a major military leader who led campaigns of conquest - but there's almost no discussion of the actual evil he did. They don't really know about the Holocaust or appreciate what it entailed. Hell, they don't even acknowledge the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese army, so no chance they'll learn about that.

@Merzbow is bang on, though. The most significant political thing this country ever did was the British empire, but how many of us ever learned about the Raj, the Opium Wars, the rape of Africa, the East India Company, the Amritsar Massacre, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Ireland, the numerous partitions of various countries, or the Bengal Famine?

It's almost as if they don't really want us to know about our history, or we might make different political choices otherwise.

EDIT: Of course, we get shitheads like Farage trying to lie about the slave trade through distortion, about how we abolished it and "crusaded against it at a cost to this country" (completely glossing over the economic and political motivations) and the media happily goes along with it.

Edited March 17, 2025 by Carbomb

[Chili]

So Triple H will be a fan then.

[Hannibal Scorch]

Thank you for the correction @BomberPat, I saw a tweet about it last night and didn't check the details.

[JLM]

I was also taught in school that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were regrettable but necessary, with very little representation of any dissenting voices to that idea. 

[Carbomb]

2 minutes ago, JLM said:

I was also taught in school that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were regrettable but necessary, with very little representation of any dissenting voices to that idea. 

A lot of that is rooted in racism as well, pushing the narrative that all Japanese people were like samurai who'd rather fight to the death (even the women and kids) than give in.

[mim731]

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

The most significant political thing this country ever did was the British empire, but how many of us ever learned about the Raj, the Opium Wars, the rape of Africa, the East India Company, the Amritsar Massacre, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Ireland, the numerous partitions of various countries, or the Bengal Famine?

It's almost as if they don't really want us to know about our history, or we might make different political choices otherwise.

Not to go all off-topic, but this is something that came as quite a surprise to me when I went to University, the amount of people who had no idea about any of the ills of the British Empire.

We learned about a fair chunk of this in GCSE History, and I had assumed everyone had, but it turns out going to a very mixed, multicultural school in North London meant the very left-leaning History department were able to teach quite a bit of this within the curriculum. Of course, I also hadn't realised that there was an element of choice in what was taught from the curriculum either. 

[LaGoosh]

Yeah but why learn about any of that stuff in school when we can just be bored fucking senseless about Queen Elizabeth I over and over?

[HarmonicGenerator]

15 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Yeah but why learn about any of that stuff in school when we can just be bored fucking senseless about Queen Elizabeth I over and over?

You could actually do both, as the origins of British colonisation in North America, some fairly decent examples of other cultures in Britain (or at least around London), Ireland* and the beginnings of global ambition could all link back to Elizabeth and her reign. There are ways of working in these issues that still affect us now through the prism of super famous individuals / monarchs, and that’s what the history curriculum says you’re meant to do, rather than just dates and Armadas and not getting married**.
 

*Irish issues with England obviously don’t just date back to Elizabeth, it goes back centuries further, but there’s a fair chunk of story within the late 16th century.

**all of which I still find interesting but aren’t necessarily the most relevant thing, though even then you’ve got good gender dynamics to explore with Elizabeth, a long reigning woman determined not to cede authority to a man through marriage, using femininity when required and discarding it to present a more masculine image when it’s more beneficial. But that’s a whole other question.

Edited March 17, 2025 by HarmonicGenerator
The Tudors never called themselves Tudors

[NeverYield]

8 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

Take it you're not watching AEW at the moment then? In a genuine surprise to literally everyone he's turned into a brilliant heel character and great promo over the past 3 months.

Haven't seen anything beyond a few clips on YouTube, and little snippets of the last PPV, I will take a look.