That's an interesting observation and I think it comes down to immigration policy. I haven't actually looked into it but I've heard that Japan basically doesn't allow for long-term immigration, except probably in exceptional cases like PhDs.

Where EU countries (I know this excludes the UK but it didn't for a long time) allow easy long-term immigration by EU policy. Even with Brexit, I don't think that culture of easy immigration is going to just up and disappear. So having a culture and/or policy of easy immigration alongside "well, actually, not those guys" where "those guys" includes anybody who's not already culturally/ethnically part of the nation is, minimally, counter-productive and perhaps a bit hypocritical.

> it's always seemed really odd that some countries (Japan sticks out) are allowed to prioritize cultural preservation

can we clarify... by whom? just kidding :) whether a country is "allowed" to do something is probably a red herring.

spitballing here, i think folks who engage in criticism of ethnonationalism are most likely to criticize the ethnonationalism they see close to home, as opposed to what might be happening on the other side of the planet.

there are valid critiques of japan's treatment of its nondominant ethnicities, and lots of anecdotal experiences covering the same, but it's a lot easier to discuss the nuances of an issue like this when you're more intimately familiar with the culture and sociopolitical history of a region.

There aren't a whole lot of people celebrating Japan's immigration policies. Further, their policies have been around for quite some time. It's one thing to continue enforcing decades old policies and quite another to create those same policies today.

A very ironic example is that Americans moving to Mexico is seen as bad, whereas Mexicans moving to the US is seen as necessary by the left...

In Canada here, we have land acknowledgements and it's politically correct to say we stole the land and should give it back to the natives. Then when native Europeans want to keep their land, it's white supremacy...

It's a very obvious double standard.

I used to work at a Ruby on Rails shop many years ago (New Bamboo, now part of ThoughtBot) which is in London.

I got pointed to the blog post, and it was such a strikingly-bad hot take that I had to write a response: http://paulbjensen.co.uk/2025/09/17/on-dhhs-as-i-remember-lo...

In my opinion, initially I thought "Oh David's been sucked into some kind of social media bubble (on X) or disinformation space", but then as I read the post, down to the bit where he started talking about "demographic replacement", I came to the view that this is who he is a person.

It's shocking and disappointing.

Or maybe don't call someone names corresponding to behavior that they haven't endorsed.

[flagged]