Earlier today, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated during a rally. In shock after the event, many politicians and media personalities from around the world began scrounging for any information on the assassin. Many began sharing an image of who they thought was the killer, but it was actually a photo of renowned game developer Hideo Kojima.
The mistake was first shared on ResetEra, where screenshots show Damien Rieu posted images on his Twitter feed of Kojima with the caption “the extreme left kills.” It seems that Rieu was claiming that Kojima was a liberal extremist who killed the former prime minister. News outlets began running with this information, posting pictures of Kojima alongside footage of the rally.
No one is sure why the French politicians and media began jumping on the theory that Kojima was the assassin.
Kojima is an innocent bystander in this event and a completely random person to try and blame this unfortunate event on. While Rieu did eventually delete his tweet, the misinformation had already spread across the world.
Seeing the developer put in the hot seat mistakenly has rightly made a lot of his fans on social media angry. Some have called it racism that a random game developer who’s unrelated to this event would be blamed just because he’s from the same country where it happened. While there’s been no word from Kojima yet, he hasn’t been known to let an opportunity to comment on an event pass.
