A Reader's Self-Projection: The Political Justifications for Uchiha Itachi and Konoha
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Whilst the justifications for the state and state-actors are unintentional mistakes on the canon's part, its readers are hardly that innocent. Kishimoto was hemmed in by the constraints of the genre, editorial demands, and market needs. Itachi simply took a lot of the manga down with him. It's hard to endure his character.
Yet in the western sphere, no matter how narratively parodical Itachi's actions, he was always lauded. He was elevated because the western public liked him—quite a lot. The reader-demand in the competitive market like Shōnen can be any manga's undoing. That's another reason why Naruto ended the way it did, even though Kishimoto had little conviction to end it in that manner.
Itachi's blind worship has a lot to do with the public's perception of soldiers, imperialism, and status quo (basically their general views on state, ideological markers, and morality). Many a time, when they're defending Itachi on the western social-media sites, the comments read like CIA talking points. This love for Itachi is neither accidental nor unintentional: our bias defines how we interpret the context as our perception dictates it; hence, there's no meaning inside any event unless meaning isn't attached to it as Stuart Hall states. Many don't practice any detachment to view the context with a neutral stance. Itachi's interpretation is a byproduct of this hyper-projection.
It's a broader cultural issue, or more importantly, a post-modernist hyper-capitalism issue. Western socio-cultural mores are obsessed with "decency" and "appearance", nothing substantial beyond that, that when a state actor like Obama paints a large group of people in the Middle East as angry, dangerous, and violent and jokes about how good he is at killing them (Obama's exact words in his new autobiography), they brush it all aside and continue to worship him as long as he's on "our side" and able to deliver a nice speech here and there. "The Cult of Personality" is a cultivated aspect of public sphere.
"Niceties" are seen as the bedrock of Western moral system, not duplicity, nor an anomaly in the social system. You can see this in the Itachi's genocide apologia and aggression against Sasuke's character all the time: Itachi was respectful; Sasuke wasn't nice; the former was loyal and the latter was a "meanie" to his comrades; etc. And whilst this realistically abandons all rational contextual complexities as to why Sasuke was the way he was, it does lay bare the anti-intellectual train of thought that's more centred on the sort of "feelings" the readers take inward and project outward rather than the meaning the canonical events associated with the characters and narrative (Mark Fisher talks about that at length in Capitalist Realism, a book that everyone should read).
That's another reason why market leans towards the narratives that are easily received by the public; anything that confronts is just not lucrative and brings out a mob of aggressive twitter-aficionados who've got one too many bones to pick with the creators. As I said: feelings take precedence over basic contextual realities, and Capitalism by its very nature carves out a path of least resistance for the people (who already favour it) for most profit.
This is the line of logic that justifies the USA playing "world police" and any of its allusions in the narratives receive the same adoration (it isn't a surprise that Konoha is modeled after Mossad, as stated by Kishimoto, CIA's doppelganger). The idea of "stability through bloodshed" is verbatim what any warmongering fascist would use to justify state-sponsored aggression; however, it isn't seen in this light; no, it's considered to be a "burden" a "righteous state-body" has to bear through its extensions (soldiers) to maintain peace at the cost of some lives. A trolley problem, basically, only that it's global now.
It's also the epitome of "politics as a game" thinking. When people say that, they expose their politics to have no moral basis; it's just "my guy over the other guy". That's why you'd often see words like "rooting for so and so character". They root for their team. They actually don't care about anyone or anything beyond that team. The western narratives or the ones the westerners immensely favour and write on in their incredibly self-righteous, trashy, and cheap "fix-it" Fan-Fictions follow the same ghastly pattern for this very reason. After all, you're a product of your environment; you don't exist, thrive, and react in a vacuum; nothing reflects your socio-cultural surrounds more than you and your thought. You are your culture—you are your society.
You'd even see the reasoning that politicians have to take a tougher stance on "terrorism" (western readers' favourite word when their happy stupidity in regard to its complex history is beyond their grasp) as people believe that not doing so would result in their chosen state-actor or others in his party to lose office. (You'd see this argument often reflected in the flimsy statements that the Uchiha shouldn't take over and that these morally bankrupt military-parasites that let corruption thrive are beloved by their people, so ousting them is the morally repugnant action, not letting them continue on their reign of terror.) The war crimes are the political response to that calculus. So you'd always see the idea of state-engineered "conflicts" as a necessity for social, economic, and/or nationalistic facets of "winning" and not being in the "losing" team. It's also about being in the system, not a change in the direction of the system. Whomever takes the system wins!
Politics really is just a fucking sport to many people; they'd hand-wave or deflect anything that makes their side (and, by extension, themselves) look "bad". Niceties, remember? That's another reason why "euphemistic" language is so popular in modern discourse: tough decisions as opposed to state-engineered mass-slaughter and/or genocide; collateral damage as opposed to senseless, wanton, and callous violence; fight for freedom as opposed to a calculated foreign-policy that's built on a forever chugging war-machinery to generate profits; unfortunate incidents as opposed to brutal aggressions against a subjugated population; nameless people caught in the cross-fire as opposed to victims created through endless wars with no end in sight; so on and so forth. None of this is accidental; no, it's a deliberate manufacturing of a tone in the "history-making" rhetoric that favours the violent, senseless, and evil methodology of imperialism that affords west the very lifestyles they enjoy. (It's not surprising that Syrian-oil fields and grain are being pillaged by the American Forces as we speak; the cheap food prices, by comparison to the rest of the third-world, 24/7 Air-Conditioning, and consumable and disposable products don't work without any of this.)
The whole "terrorist" rhetoric is a funny one, I gotta say. It's the core contradiction of American (Western) Liberalism as, to uphold their way of life (in their mind), the American Empire (or the Western Hegemon) must be allowed to churn the bodies of "terrorists" through its gears to oil the machine, and, if innocents get caught in that, it's a "necessary evil" because this is how the world works to them. A game! A lot of it is working backwards, as well: they start with the opinion that the Democrats (or their side) are good, and then they have to work backwards to justify it, even though there's no way you can actually believe that when you look at all the independent journalism on this, unless your measure of "good" is "less bad than the Republicans or that other guy over there in that right-wing party". Isn't Itachi defended the exact same way? You'd be hard-pressed to locate a single argument in his favour and one levelled against Sasuke (heck, any state-actor-type or rebel character) that isn't a direct imitation of this process.
You'd see all of this word-for-word, disgorged like cesspool from a gutter-pipe, from anyone that dislikes Sasuke and the Uchiha (especially Fugaku because "how dare he go against the state?!") and likes Itachi and his ilk: the "western moral principle" of "worthy victims" versus the "unworthy victims" is what the entire western political discourse is at its heart; it's its true nexus. Whatever the state deems to not be a necessity becomes worthy of sympathy; but, when it's included in the philosophy of the lesser evils, greater goods, and a lot of trollies and problems, the victims are unworthy, their lives, expendable. Look no further than the Iraq invasion that was carried out on grounds of Saddam's supposed "tortures" that made the victims of his aggression worthy; but, after "freedom" was disseminated upon the "rude" populace, every victim that was martyred at the altar of Western Ideology was just unworthy! It just happens as that's how wars are fought and blood-shed is but an inevitable state of affairs, but retaliations from the said "unworthy victims" drags the discourse back to the domain of the moral. (I won't even touch upon the phenomenon of Pink-Washing as it's another debate altogether, though it's an integral part of western thought, as well.)
That's why suggesting anything unsavoury on minority groups doesn't receive any censure on the western-populace dominated social-media platforms, because Americans (or people from other prominent Western states) empower politicians and systems that butcher groups under the guise of "national security"—just like how they empower law enforcement to kill black youth under the guise of "law and order" or "war on drug", just like how they brutalise Hispanics under the guise of "border security". It's endless conflicts, endless profits, endless unworthy victims; but, to them, that's how the world works, and, as that's how the world works, it's how it's meant to be interpreted in a fictitious setting, as well; and without any confrontational and/or consequential elements from any sphere of life that ought to challenge the public's perception, it'd be that way for a long time—or not that long as climate change would kill most in the coming decade.
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