Reading up on the United Red Army for an essay, a Japanese communist group who purged its own members in 1972 during the Asama-Sansō Incident.

Its leaders Mori Tsueno and Nagata Hiroko were deranged radicals who would beat their followers over the slightest perceived offense.

Mori and Nagata demanded absolute loyalty from URA members and ended up killing 14 of their own, but not before physically and psychologically torturing them.

As part of their self-criticism struggle sessions, one follower had to beat herself in the face. She was killed anyways.

Mori and Nagata viewed femininity, self-consciousness about appearance and natural desires as bourgeoisie excesses.

Mori denounced a URA member pregnant with an eight-month-old child for treating it like “private property.” Neither survived his wrath.

Surviving URA members fought a ten-day standoff with Japanese police in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture.

Two police officers were killed, and millions of Japanese saw the entire incident unfold live on television. It unsurprisingly shocked and horrified the nation.

Mori Tsueno killed himself in prison and Nagata Hiroko spent 30 years on death row before dying of brain cancer in 2011.

There were other offshoots and factions of the United Red Army, but they all failed to bring about any kind of revolution either in Japan or worldwide.

I’m very concerned with this idea some have that the left is incapable of violence and that it’s only a trait of the right, especially in Japan.

The Japanese Red Army at its highest point attracted hundreds of followers and too many lives were lost because of their terrorism.

Those who associated with the Japanese Red Army ended up being killed, imprisoned, dying in obscurity or are currently hiding in disgrace.

This was a dangerous, deluded organization of terrorists that the Japanese public thankfully rejected en masse and is all the better for it.

History teaches us that otherwise normal people of all political persuasions are capable of violence and dehumanizing others.

But most are ignorant to history and believe earnestly that their side is always good no matter what.

The consequences of that mentality are deadly.