Following crude and ignorant comments on social media, Kojima Productions’ Hideo Kojima has been mistakenly identified as Shinzo Abe’s assassin in Greece. Among others, far-right politicians deliberately spread the lie.

The revelation that former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had been assassinated quickly spread across the Internet, as did the arrest and name of the assassin. Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, who is unemployed, is said to have confessed, saying he did it because he was frustrated and angry with Abe. Other details about Yamagami have since gone viral on the Internet, including his unemployment, his time in the Navy Special Forces, his work at a medical and physical therapy school, and his passion for revolutionary Che Guevara.

However, not a picture of Tetsuya Yamagami was shared in addition to this information in at least one news station in Greece, but a picture of the head of Kojima Productions, the legendary game developer: Hideo Kojima. What’s more, the misinformation comes from a now-deleted joke by French politician Damien Rieu, who echoed one of the Internet’s dark, racist jokes about the matter.

Fake profiles, jerks, insensitive people, extreme right-wingers and the like shared the racist jokes that Tetsuya Yamagami and Hideo Kojima look alike. Rieu, who didn’t realize it was a joke, shared a picture of Kojima with images of Che Guevara – connecting the two more because of those pictures and Yamagami’s known passion for Guevara. Rieu posted the photo alongside a message that said, “the far left is killing”. This comment has since been deleted, but before that, it was widely circulated, and a news channel broadcast about the attack in Greece used images of Hideo Kojima.

While discussing Tetsuya Yamagami’s alleged confession and details involving Guevara, they showed pictures of Hideo Kojima – mistakenly identifying the Yamagami who carried out the assassination of Shinzo Abe as Hideo Kojima. The whole situation is unfortunate, and many people were outraged by such outrageous handling of Kojima’s image. Utterly unrelated to the problem, internet racists, far-right livelihood politicians and a series of viral posts led to the incident.

As is known, Shinzō Abe was campaigning in the elections in Nara Prefecture, Japan, when he was shot from behind while giving a speech. Abe was rushed to Nara Medical University, where he arrived without vital signs and was later pronounced dead. The shooter was arrested immediately after the shooting, and police reportedly found a hand-made, double-barreled gun in his possession.

Source: Gamerant