himejirocks

I have some young Japanese on my facebook that simple don't think the Japanese portrayed in recent films could actually do such things. I find it frustrating that they can dismiss any arguments I put forth with a simple, "How do you know what happened?! You were not there!"

As someone who was "there", what would you say to someone who claims monstrosities didn't happen? Thank you for your time doing this AMA.

It may weaken, but it will never disappear. Sad as that is, this is why I think so.

In 1994 a cult called Aum Shinrikyo made a bunch of Sarin gas and started killing people in Japan.

You can read the wiki at your leisure but let me tell you, they were hated in Japan as much as any group you can think of in the U.S. And not only hated but thought of as total wack jobs.

You can not imagine the bad press they got. It seemed like every day crazy new videos of their beliefs or actions surfaced. Miscavige is tame compared to the shit Asahara had his followers do. Sure, all the normal cult stuff (sex with multiple young women, weird hymns to the prophet, extreme punishments, etc..) was there. But then you have them paying money to drink his bath water (and other body liquids...shudder..), or keeping his female followers' pubic hair in labeled vials, putting people in microwaves to kill them... crazy stuff, all being made public.

So they started killing people outside their group, got raided, people got arrested, their spokesman got murdered on live television by a right-wing nationalist, and of course the leader got the death sentence in the end in a very public trial that showed how craycray he was.

But after all that..

They are still in business. Let that sink in. Deathcult with terrorist attacks under their belt and full public access to all their insanity seen by the whole world, still has believers. And recent news reports say they are growing in numbers again.

So any time time I see someone say this or that church will fail, I am sadly pessimistic. What strange animals we are.