The general election was over. The issue was the choice between authoritarian nationalism and democracy with grass roots movement. However, the vote rate remained pretty low, even if the effects of the typhoon attack considered, that is, approximately just above 50%. It has made me stunned some vote places were closed earlier due to that typhoon attack. It has violated our right of vote. At any rate, I suspect there has been little consensus among people that the vote right is the fundamental right in our society. Or they have despaired too deeply for the present political situation.
Prime minister Abe would go straight ahead for changing our constitution. His authoritarianism will bring the article of the state of emergency provision into the constitution. It seems to be his ultimate goal in the politics. That article made it possible for him to do anything revisionistic or authoritarian. It is comparable to the enabling act by Nazis. It may reflect the fact some people crave for something strenuous and powerful in the politics even if it could bring forth to severe pain to the people.
With the result of this election, PM Abe would hide the privatization scandal of the national assets as well as of the governance system. He and his administration may blindly follow the brinksmanship of the President Trump against NK. Both the President and NK have been on the edge of military conflict, which may result in catastrophic war in this area. NK has never insisted of invading the other countries including Japan. Their main purpose of this brinkmanship is to maintain their regime. The US government has not taken any strategy against the armament of nuclear bomb by NK but rather permitted the nuclear merchant in Pakistan etc to export the material and devices for nuclear weapon production to NK. There seems to be plots by the military industrial complexes regarding this crisis in the East Asia. The binkmanship policy won't solve the problem but expose us to the risk of nuclear war. Our PM won't care for that but would take advantage of this situation to arrange the authoritarian administration.
It was a real waste of our budget spending the amount equivalent to five hundred million USD only to realize his purpose. The bright aspect of this event is, however, that there is a real democratic party born based on the grass roots movement. It is the Constitutional Democratic Party. It has gained only 50 seats in this election. But the number of the voters to this party was only a little bit less than the LDPJ, the party fo PM Abe, in the proportional representation district in Tokyo. This will be the nucleus for the movement against the authoritarianism in Japan.
I won't stop committing in such political movements for real democracy in order to provide better future for the next generation.
Shin
ReplyDeleteI was following the progress of Yuriko Koike's Party of Hope, but she seemed to mismanage her campaign and results were disappointing. It appears that some members of her party have combined with CDP, which is encouraging.
Japanese politics may be following a worldwide trend. Liberal democracies are under threat from populist movements which in turn give rise to quasi-dictatorships. Even the EU is being eroded by populist movements in UK, Netherlands and Germany. The recent successes by Macron in France may be only temporary, and the EU could break up into small nation-states like those of the 19th century, jealously guarding their borders and trade and going to war over disagreements.
The lessons of two world wars are being forgotten as those who were directly involved die of old age, and the events pass beyond living memory.
History repeats itself.
John
John,
Delete100% agree with you. Koike is essentially a ultra right politician pretending to be a populist. She is told to have chosen the thema of the public commitment from a study of artificial intelligence, which has given her those which attract people most. No philosophy nor background on them.
It was really a choice between authoritarianism leading to fascism and grass root democracy. Prime minister Abe is trying to shorten the time for discussion with the non ruling parties at the diet. He is also aiming adding the emergency provisions into the constitution. It may complete his political ambition to be a leader of dictatorship like those in the prewar history.
I wonder what is causing such populism/fascism in the world. It must be a backlash to globalism in a sense. But why not to liberalism?
Hi Shin
DeleteIn the eyes of millions in the US and EU, liberalism is equivalent to globalism. In fact they do seem to be inextricably linked. Where you have no trade restrictions between countries, lower cost nations will prevail and the established 1st world manufacturers will collapse. The only winners are the middle-men, the "elite" bankers and traders who profit from the difference.
There is a whole new class of entrepreneurs who have emerged in the past 40 or so years. The income disparities between this class and the traditional blue-collar workers in say, Baltimore USA, have increased spectacularly. We now have a sub-class of workers who were once able to afford to send their kids to college, drive two cars, and own a nice house in the leafy suburbs.
No longer. All this has gone now. Whole communities in the Rust Belts of USA are unemployed. Gunshot deaths and opiate addiction have reached epidemic levels. Despair stalks the land.
In these circumstances people like Trump, Farage and Marine le Pen emerge to whip up resentment against imagined foes, the evil foreigner. The press aids and abets. In US you have Fox News which spews hatred. In UK it is the Daily Mail.
The disenfranchised working classes have been betrayed by the elites, represented by Clinton in US and May in UK. These leaders really only represent the privileged few, the bankers and entrepreneurs.
Populism is the inevitable solution and always has been, since Greek and Roman times.
Socialism has been tried and has failed.
There seems to be no middle way.
What is the answer?
Hi John,
DeleteI meant the grass root democracy or the democracy with the idea of equal human rights with "liberalism". The anti these to totaltareanism. I know liberalism stands for globalism from the economical stand point. I haven't meant that way.
I fully understand globalism has brought forth the worker class which had been exploited by the global companies. It is my question why those people won't go against the globalism but concentrate on hatred toward the immigrants or the alienated people. They are apt to be nationalistic, sometimes, with fanatic ultra right ideologies.
Just after the WWII, there was an era of social welfare, when the peoples could expect life long welfare from the governments. It turned out that the governments could not go on the service of social welfare. It was the time when neo liberalism claimed everythng was self responsibility. Globalism based on the neo liberalism economy theories has started exploiting ordinary people. It has reached all over the world. We are living in the world where it has distorted every aspect of our lives. I bet we should come back to the socialism again, not the same regime as failed in the end of the last century. Not robbing the social common capital and looking upon subsuming all the people, we should construct the new
world. I know how difficult it is but we should do that. Or we could be perished.
Shin
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteShin
ReplyDeletePerhaps socialism could succeed if only the tendency to morph into totalitarianism, like the USSR or North Korea, could be avoided. China has a hybrid system with an authoritarian communist government and a capitalist economy. It remains to be seen if this strange compromise will survive.
The EU's experiment with a socialist union of 28 nations is now experiencing a slow disintegration.
There does seem no alternative to a pure socialist solution to the world's problems, but it is a Utopian ideal and unlikely to emerge in the near future. Let us pray that another massive war is not necessary for a socialist world order to rise from the ashes.
We are at the crossroads.