Nice to know Japan has wingnuts too...

America certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on crazies insisting that 9/11 was all an inside job of the gubermint*. But I still suspect that not many people living on the lunatic fringe could make it very high in national politics in the US.

Not so in Japan: please say hello to Yukihisa Fujita. He is not only a senior member of the current ruling party in Japan, he’s also head of the Research Committee on Foreign Affairs, a task force in Japan’s Diet. Oh, and he thinks 9/11 was a gigantic hoax.

Fujita has been back-pedaling after his story was picked up by Japan’s media. His own homepagecarries his own reply: I’m spot translating here, but the gist of what he says is, the Washington Post’s editorial concerns comments made after the official interview, which lasted about an hour. I was asked comments I made on the floor of Japan’s Diet concerning 9/11. I merely noted some points surrounding the attacks that I found unclear. And I never said ‘conclusively’ that 9/11 was a hoax.

Even funnier: Right to the left of these comments are two links: One to ‘9/11 hoax materials’, and another to buy a book he co-authored with David Ray Griffin on…the 9/11 hoax.

Now, I know Sarah Palin is kinda off the charts (towards the bottom) when it comes to common sense intelligence. But just how far up do you think the 9/11 truthers could get in US politics? Local government, sure. State politics? Federal?

*I’m always slightly fascinated at how these crazies can believe that the government can’t do anything right, yet still be capable of expertly carring out massive conspiracies involving hundreds, if not thousands of people….

Oh good, and I was worried that Shintaro Ishihara might be lonely in wingnut land.

Rep Cythina McKinney was a truther, though she lost her seat pretty quickly after she started talking about it, so I guess you can take her case to suggest that a truther can’t hold a position at the federal level, or at least not do so very long after they openly reveal their views.

Van Jones lost out on an environmental-czar position in the Obama administration after it came out that his name was on a truther petition, and that he had ties to a truther organization. It should be noted that he denied sharing any such views.