News outlets falsely link Hideo Kojima to Shinzo Abe assassination after racist 'joke'

pcgamer.com:

On Friday morning, Japan's longest-serving Prime MinisterShinzo Abe was assassinated while delivering a campaign speech for upcoming elections. Abe was shot twice, and died after being taken to a hospital. A suspect named Tetsuya Yamagami was arrested at the scene and has admitted to the shooting.

That would seem a clear resolution to an event that has sparked global horror and condemnation; Abe is regarded as one of the key shapers of the modern Japanese political landscape, to the extent the country's economic policies have been nicknamed 'Abenomics.' This hasn't stopped parts of the internet from spinning up an alternate versions of events.

One that has acquired momentum is the absurd claim that the assassin was Metal Gear and Death Stranding game designer Hideo Kojima. The original 'joke' seems to have originated from 4Chan, quelle surprise, which was then picked up by a French comedian who, in a tweet intended to mock that post, said that Kojima was a famous J-League player and AC Milan legend as well as Shinzo Abe's assassin.

This was then retweeted by far-right French politician Damien Rieu, who is known for being an especially grim example of racism and mendacity. He is associated especially with the Génération Identitaire movement he co-founded, and which before its dissolution in 2021 was widely seen in France as being white nationalist and Islamophobic. The daily paper Libération called it an organisation where "le complotisme n'est jamais loin" / «a conspiracy is never far away.»

True to form, Rieu took the comedian's tweet seriously, and went on to disseminate various images of Kojima alongside the false claim that Kojima was the assassin, saying it was proof that «the far left kills.»

Despite the fact Rieu