Last Friday a man shot and killed Shinzo Abe, a former Japanese prime minister, while he was giving a speech at a political rally. Police managed to arrest the shooter at the same location, who was identified as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami. The event has shocked the Asian country and the entire world due to the cruelty of the act. However, there is another person who without eating or drinking it has been involved in the incident.
He is Hideo Kojima.
The error. After the murder occurred, the front pages of hundreds of international media were filled with photos, testimonies and reactions to the event. Unfortunately, not all the information that went viral was real. On 4Chan, a user posted an image of Hideo Kojima, the video game designer, linking him to Abe’s killer. Another user responded to the post with three additional images of Kojima showing the creator of metalgear Y Death Stranding wearing a Soviet cap and posing with an image of Che Guevara.
The images were shared on social networks… and everything exploded.
The consequences. Fate (and perhaps bad faith) saw those images retweeted by far-right French politician Damien Rieu, who is associated with the Génération Identitaire movement (an Islamophobic, white nationalist organization), along with the false claim that Kojima was the murderer, saying it was proof that “the extreme left kills”. The uproar intensified when those images were later picked up by Greek and Iranian media outlets that mistakenly used them in their coverage of the assassination.
will take legal action. Hideo Kojima’s video game studio is over issuing a statement after such false posts were circulated. In a tweet, Kojima Productions explains that it “strongly condemns the spread of fake news and rumors that convey misinformation” and “will consider taking legal action in some cases.” Kojima himself has not commented on anything so far.
#KojimaProductions strongly condemns the spread of fake news and rumors that convey false information. We do not tolerate such libel and will consider taking legal action in some cases. pic.twitter.com/fDi0FR9kB0
— KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (Eng) (@KojiPro2015_EN) July 9, 2022
The actual killer. The one who ended Shinzo Abe’s life was actually Tetsuya Yamagami, who has confessed his actions to the police and ended up admitting that he wanted Abe dead because he was disappointed and upset with him. The investigation has revealed that he served in the Special Forces of the Navy, specifically the Self-Defense Forces, in charge of defending the archipelago, for three years, until 2005.
The controversy. What has happened is an example of how the wrongdoing of a troll it can snowball big enough to defame an innocent person. In fact, some outlets argue that the original 4Chan post is also a reference to the racist act of saying “all Asian people look the same,” and the incident demonstrates how quickly fake news In Internet.