He assassinated Japan’s most successful politician ever. But now, he seems to have won over public opinion. What happened? — Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/spectaclesmedia Sources and Attributions: https://www.spectacles.news/mini-doc-japan/ — On July 8, 2022, in Nara, Japan, Shinzo Abe was shot twice with a homemade shotgun by Tetsuya Yamagami. Despite Abe’s towering status in Japanese politics — a former prime minister, and Japan’s longest serving ever — Yamagami declared his motive personal rather than political — a grudge against the Unification Church. The catch? Abe wasn’t even a member. And yet, the public seems to have been convinced by Yamagami. Featuring mass weddings, Richard Nixon, Donald Trump, the bizarre theology of Sun-Myung Moon, his cultists the Moonies, and so much more, this is the story of the Unification Church, and it has a lot to teach us about how to balance the separation of church and state. Spectacles is a love letter to democracy, its values, its caretakers, and its ideas. Around the world, individual rights and representative government are facing unprecedented attacks from the forces of reaction and revisionism. But despite liberal democracy’s real shortcomings and today’s all-too-fashionable cynicism, we remain committed to its preservation and improvement. Join us as we explore just what liberal democracy is, how it comes about, and how it can best be maintained in a changing world. — 00:00 INTRO 01:43 I. SO, ABOUT THIS CULT 03:58 II. WHY MOONIES MATTER 05:51 III. WHERE IT WENT WRONG 08:35 IV. CHURCH AND STATE