My hands have not stopped shaking since I read this.
The Prime Minister of Japan.
Her chief secretary.
A TikTok account run from inside her office.
100 smear videos a day.
Aimed at her own party rivals.
During the leadership race she went on to win.
Weekly Bunshun, the magazine that has broken every major political scandal in this country for decades, published the receipts on April 29.
Internal messages.
Named witnesses.
The actual videos.
"Shinjiro Koizumi is incompetent." Posted again. And again. And again.
"Yoshimasa Hayashi is OUT." Posted again. And again. And again.
And then the opposition. "An amateur who already broke this country once."
Not by foreign bots.
Not by some shadowy troll farm.
By the office of the woman who now runs the country.
Voters thought they were watching a grassroots movement.
They were watching a script.
Every democracy in the world is fighting this exact war right now. Manufactured outrage. Fake accounts. Algorithms weaponized against your own neighbors.
We just learned ours started at the very top.
I do not want to believe it.
I am reading the messages.
I have to believe it.