and go directly to the Japanese people. How might we more closely judge such efforts? To say it another way: to what extent has Abe’s message ridden socioeconomic fault lines, as Donald Trump’s has in the United States, making some citizens more susceptible to government disinformation and demagoguery and others perhaps more critical of it? And what’s up, by the way, with Japan’s liberals? Are they offering a concerted defense of freedom of speech and, if so, what impact has it had on public opinion or political action? In its broadest frame, Press Freedom encourages us to think about what the world starts to look like when we give up on the truth. We know it’s possible, today, to bruise or even break democratic values without resorting to strong-arm tactics. Politicians and their surrogates can use the trick mirrors of social media and savvy public relations strategies to drown out, intimidate, and confuse. “[T]here is a case to be made,” Kingston writes, “that insidious methods are more effective because they are harder to trace, bamboozling the credulous while providing cover for apologists and thus impeding accountability” (p. 2). But the fundamentals don’t change: the point of the exercise is to get power and hold it. In a 1973 interview, the philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt observed, “The moment the press is no longer free . . . then anything can happen.” When people are uninformed and fl ooded with lies, they “are deprived not only of their capacity to act, but also of their capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.” Japan has its share of smart, committed journalists, to be sure, but in Abe’s war on the media they appear to have been supremely outmaneuvered and outgunned, and where that struggle goes from here could have consequences well beyond Japan.

中文翻译：

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十八世纪和十九世纪日本的价值观、身份和平等编辑。作者：Peter Nosco、James E. Ketelaar 和 Yasunori Kojima

直接去找日本人。我们如何更仔细地判断这些努力？换一种说法：安倍的信息在多大程度上跨越了社会经济断层线，就像唐纳德特朗普在美国所做的那样，使一些公民更容易受到政府虚假信息和煽动的影响，而其他人则可能对其持批评态度？顺便说一下，日本的自由主义者怎么了？他们是否为言论自由提供了一致的辩护，如果是，它对公众舆论或政治行动有什么影响？在最广泛的框架中，新闻自由鼓励我们思考当我们放弃真相时世界会变成什么样子。我们知道，今天，如果不采取强硬手段，就有可能挫伤甚至破坏民主价值观。政客及其代理人可以利用社交媒体的诡计和精明的公共关系策略来淹没、恐吓和混淆视听。“[T] 这里有一个案例，”金斯顿写道，“阴险的方法更有效，因为它们更难追踪，迷惑轻信者，同时为辩护者提供掩护，从而阻碍问责制”（第 2 页）。但基本面不会改变：练习的重点是获得权力并保持它。在 1973 年的一次采访中，哲学家和政治理论家汉娜·阿伦特 (Hannah Arendt) 观察到：“新闻不再自由的那一刻。. . 那么任何事情都可能发生。” 当人们不知情并充斥着谎言时，他们“不仅被剥夺了行动能力，也被剥夺了思考和判断的能力。有了这样的人，你就可以随心所欲。