American right-wing journalist claims "all anime is satanic"

Monday morning saw right-wing political commentator and Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh answer fan-submitted questions on a livestream when the topic of anime was brought up. While the livestream didn’t explicitly deal with anime topics, the nature of the questions submitted by fans opened the floor up to such discussions.

The topic revealed some interesting opinions from Walsh, who claimed that every piece of work in the medium is “satanic.” Interestingly enough, Walsh also refused to elaborate on the statement, saying he had “no argument for why it’s satanic.”

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Daily Wire contributor Matt Walsh claims anime leads to “demonic possession in upwards of 87% of cases”

During the livestream, Walsh was asked for his opinions on anime, as it is quite popular among teens and young adults right now. This led to him claiming that the medium is satanic, before parlaying into other, more general opinions on cartoons and those who watch them.

He continued to claim that the medium is "bizarre and creepy," and added that other than rare exceptions, no adult should be watching cartoons whatsoever.

Needless to say, fans didn't let these opinions slide and many even cried out in rejection of the commentator's baseless assertions.

Walsh followed up his claims with a tweet where he clarified that the medium will "literally lead to demonic possession in upwards of 87 percent of cases, studies show." However, several hours later, he tweeted once again and apologized for singling anime out and elaborated that he felt like all cartoons are satanic.

The Japanese medium has found itself intertwined in American politics on a few occasions.

The late John McAfee once changed his Twitter profile picture to a picture of Joseph Joestar giving the thumbs up in front of an American flag background. In 2016, the Republican strategist Rick Wilson likened Donald Trump's supporters to “childless single men who m*sturbate to anime” in 2016.

Republican representative Paul Gosar posted a political parody video of Attack on Titan’s first opening theme visuals, which saw his political rivals featured as Titans who were killed. Unsurprisingly, the video led to Gosar’s censure and removal from committee assignments during 2021, the same year in which the video was released.

In 2020, Eric Trump, son of the now-former then-President Donald Trump, made a tweet that suggested that Google was manipulating Americans to associate mobs with the foreign medium. This was because he typed 'mob' in the Google Images search bar and saw pictures of characters and scenes from the Mob Psycho 100 series.