On Tuesday, Kyodo news agency quoted Aso as saying, “I don’t question your motives (to be a politician). But the results are important. Hitler, who killed millions of people, was no good, even if his motives were right.”<\/p>\n
Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso on Wednesday retracted a remark to lawmakers of his faction in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that could be interpreted as a defence of Adolf Hitler\u2019s motive for genocide during World War Two.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s comment by Aso, who also serves as finance minister, drew criticism from a U.S.-based Jewish group. The incident followed a rare June apology by Japan\u2019s central bank over a board member\u2019s praise for Hitler\u2019s economic policies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is clear from my overall remarks that I regard Hitler in extremely negative terms, and it\u2019s clear that his motives were also wrong,\u201d Aso said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Aso said he wanted to stress the importance of delivering results, but not defend Hitler.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was inappropriate that I cited Hitler as an example and I would like to retract that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aso is no stranger to gaffes, having retracted a comment in 2013 about Hitler\u2019s rise to power that was interpreted as praising the Nazi regime.<\/p>\n
Referring at the time to Japan\u2019s efforts to revise its constitution, he said the constitution of Weimar Germany had been changed before anyone realized, and asked, \u201cWhy don\u2019t we learn from that technique?\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Kyodo news agency quoted Aso as saying, \u201cI don\u2019t question your motives (to be a politician). But the results are important. Hitler, who killed millions of people, was no good, even if his motives were right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed \u201cdistress and disappointment\u201d at Aso\u2019s comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is just the latest of a troubling list of \u2018misstatements\u2019 and are downright dangerous,\u201d the centre\u2019s head, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said in a statement on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese words damage Japan\u2019s reputation at the very time when all Americans want to show their solidarity with Japan, our sister democracy and ally, following the missile launch from Kim Jong Un\u2019s North Korea,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Tuesday, Kyodo news agency quoted Aso as saying, “I don’t question your motives (to be a politician). But the results are important. Hitler, who killed millions of people, was no good, even if his motives were right.” Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso on Wednesday retracted a remark to lawmakers of his faction in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3262,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260\/revisions\/3262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}