Latin America’s complex and polarizing political history with dictatorships, neoliberalism, American intervention and economic inequality favors the ultra-wealthy and neglects the poor, especially in rural areas. The right- and left-leaning sides of the political spectrum relate to the tendency that these countries have in terms of centralization. While individuals who live in metropolitan areas are more likely to have access to resources and economic prosperity, those who live in rural areas tend to be ignored, pushing toward an imbalance in the countries’ development which results in contrasting political ideals among those who live in these opposite environments. However, a surge in left-wing politicians across Latin America is winning presidential elections against their right-wing incumbents signifying the resurgence of the “pink tide.” The pink tide represents the shift in Latin American countries, leaving their neo-liberal ways for leftist ideology during the early 21st century. Political analysts believe its revival is reoccurring, especially with the victories in Chile, Colombia, and Peru. 

Recently elected Chilean president Gabriel Boric is the country’s youngest president at 36 years old and who raised the temperature of the leftist wave in Latin America. The country’s history of leftism died when the right-wing military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet overthrew the socialist Salvador Allende government in 1973, which ruled Chile for almost twenty years. Pinochet’s legacy left Chile in a neoliberal state championing free-market fundamentalism. Boric vows to work with his cabinet members and political organizations to end Pinochet’s neoliberal model and constitution by raising taxes on the rich while expanding social services. 

More recently, Chilean feminists and Indigenous organizations fought and wrote the new constitution which expands Chileans’ rights and provides an environmental agenda. The updated text would guarantee individuals’ rights to health, housing and abortion, and establishes universal public services while granting nature rights by protecting Chile’s glaciers, parks, and waters from mining. The constitution’s passage would revolutionize the standard for Chilean democracy compared to Pinochet’s suppressive past of overthrowing the previous socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1973. While the vote for a new constitution overwhelmingly passed with a 78% vote, its progressive policies and leftist values stirred misinformation perpetuated by conservative politicians and media outlets like Fox News claiming that the new constitution bans private property, allows private companies to count votes and grants prisoners and migrants voting rights in the upcoming constitutional referendum. This misinformation spread across social media platforms in Chile dropped support and contributed to its failure. However, Boric’s determination for its passage plans to stage a revote to continue his promises of deconstructing Pinochet’s past. 

In Colombia, Gustavo Petro was sworn in as the country’s new president in August of 2022, and he is the first leftist candidate to hold office. Petro participated in the M-19, a military group formed by university students and activists created as a response to alleged fraud in the 1970 presidential election. His left-wing past resonated with voters which helped him defeat right-wing businessman Rodolfo Hernandez, joining a wave of leftist politicians and political outsiders winning elections in Latin America since the Covid-19 pandemic left incumbents struggling to fix their country’s economic problems like about half of the population living under the poverty line and lessen the economic reliance on fossil fuel. Petro promises to shift Colombia in a new direction away from its capitalist and American reliance. He wants to combat social and economic inequalities by increasing spending on anti-poverty programs, raising taxes on the wealthy and eliminating corporate tax breaks. His environmental agenda addresses climate change by stopping granting new licenses for oil exploration, banning fracking projects, delaying deforestation, and reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. In terms of Colombia’s U.S. relations, Petro plans to end the U.S.’s war on drugs in Colombia by redirecting billions of dollars in funding toward social resources. 

The case study of Peru’s current president, Pedro Castillo, is unique and shocking given the way in which he rose to power. The former school teacher and union leader had little experience in politics yet managed to win the election in the second round while not even being in the top ten candidates, according to a poll conducted by El Comercio. Castillo went from being predicted to win 6% of the vote to obtaining almost 19% of the vote in the first round. This percentage of support is significant considering that there were 18 different candidates running in the 2021 elections.  

During the campaign season, little was known about him but his ability to win the support of the majority of Peruvian voters by centering his campaign in the more rural areas of the country. Being originally from Cajamarca, a city in Peru’s northern highlands, 

Peru is a very centralized country within Lima, the capital city. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics, 29.5% of Peru’s population is concentrated in this province where over 124 million soles of the GDP is generated. The fact that those in the capital did not consider him a prominent candidate before his victory shows the deep divide between those living in Lima and the rest of the country. Fujimori won with over 50% of the votes in all 43 districts of Lima, and the disparity increased in the central Lima districts which are the most wealthy areas in the entire country. For example, in San Isidro Keiko, the rival candidate won with over 80% of the votes. 

His success as a candidate is also linked to his opponent, Keiko Fujimori. Keiko is a prominent political figure in the country as she inherited her role from her father Alberto Fujimori, who was among the most polarizing presidents in Peru’s history and faced a tremendous divide between the capital and the rest of the country. Alberto Fujimori’s goal was to eradicate terrorism which was a pressing security issue that the country faced in the 1980s and early 2000s, however, to achieve this goal, he became dictator and the president with the most amount of human rights violations in the country’s history. From massacres to forced sterilizations, Fujimori’s means were violent and were mainly targeted at Peru’s most vulnerable populations. While his time in power is characterized by his fight against terrorism and the ability to capture Abimael Guzman, the leader of Sendero Luminoso, the most prominent terrorist group at the time. This presents the dilemma of whether the end justifies the means. In the end, Keiko was not able to beat Castillo despite being the most experienced in conventional politics as well as being a well-known public figure. Fujimori’s failure at the polls says a lot about how much Peruvians desired to move on from the politicians of the past. This discontentment of so many Peruvians with previous governments leads to the question of how many people truly supported Castillo and his campaign versus how many people did not want a second Fujimori government.

In the past decade, Peru has had mainly right-leaning presidents, from Alberto Fujimori’s authoritarian regime to the more recent Pedro Pablo Kuchisky; the one thing that all these leaders have in common is their involvement in major corruption cases. All of Peru’s leaders in the last two decades have ended up either being impeached, in jail, or fleeing the country. The changes in the political ideology of Peru’s leaders can be described as a reaction to the failure of Peru’s previous right-leaning leaders and the county’s need for a radical change in the political system deeply rooted in corruption and inefficiency. 

As the pink tide continues more recently with far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro losing to leftist Luiz Inacío Lula in the 2022 presidential election, the pink tide power grows to eight Latin American countries and as the time comes, there may be more.

The post How Leftist Politics is Regaining Popularity in Latin America appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

In 2018, Mexico elected President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist member of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA). Although he had long been a divisive figure in Mexican politics, López Obrador entered office with an astounding 53% of the popular vote and a promise to prioritize Mexico’s sovereignty. After multiple failed presidential elections, AMLO (the popular abbreviation for López Obrador) finally achieved the highest office in Mexico on the rising tide of Mexican nationalism, which had dominated Mexican politics for a majority of its relations with the U.S. and had only subsided in the late 80s.

Americans observed Mexico’s return to nationalist tendencies with anxiety, heralding AMLO as “Mexico’s answer to Donald Trump” and anticipating exacerbated tension between the United States and its southern neighbor. However, AMLO and Donald Trump maintained a surprisingly functional, occasionally even congenial, working relationship.

In many ways, Trump and López Obrador were diametrically opposed, but one crucial shared opinion allowed the two leaders to collaborate. Trump was uniquely uninterested in intervening in Mexico’s domestic politics, and AMLO appreciated the absence of American oversight and intervention.

Donald Trump’s platform toward Mexico focused almost exclusively on issues of migration and renegotiating regional trade agreements. Trump’s approach to foreign policy, toward Mexico and many others, was unprecedentedly one-dimensional, relying on his personal business dealings rather than a multifaceted, coordinated agenda. Trump’s narrow focus allowed AMLO to pursue his own domestic agenda with less American influence.

In a recent call with newly elected President Joe Biden, AMLO said “I must mention that we do have a very good relationship with the now president of your country… Regardless of all other considerations, he respects [Mexico’s] sovereignty.”

Joe Biden’s approach to relations with Mexico is a far cry from his predecessor’s. Where Trump relied on his own personal relationships, Biden will rely on a fully appointed cabinet to manage a wide range of issues. One of the many ways in which Trump’s presidency marked a divergence from the status quo was his resistance to assemble a cabinet that could navigate the complexities of a relationship between two countries whose economies, cultures and politics are so inextricably interconnected. Biden intends to reconstruct this infrastructure of diplomacy that will allow him to tackle multiple campaign promises.

AMLO anticipates the increase in American oversight that will come with Biden’s more holistic foreign policy platform. He has already begun sending signals to the incoming American president that he will not tolerate the same amount of American influence as his predecessors. Not only was López Obrador among the last global leaders to congratulate Biden on his victory, but he has also exonerated a former Mexican defense secretary from prosecution for drug trafficking in America and granted asylum to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who has been evading U.S. extradition since releasing thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016. Many Americans received these actions as slights to the incoming administration, but the sum of these minor affronts is a broader message: Mexico’s president intends to continue pursuing his robust domestic agenda with minimal American interference.

AMLO has championed the charge for Mexican energy independence, a goal which he has ardently pursued since he took office in 2018. An outspoken critic of his predecessor’s energy sector redesign that opened the industry to extensive privatization, López Obrador has repeatedly vowed to restore the dominance of Mexico’s state-owned electricity company.

Recent storms across Texas, a major source of Mexico’s natural gas, resulted in widespread blackouts across the northern half of Mexico. Pointing to these blackouts as evidence, AMLO argued for fortifying Mexico’s own domestic energy supply and in late February put forth a bill that would strengthen the state-owned energy program and limit the involvement of private companies in the energy industry. Ultimately, López Obrador aims to buttress Mexico’s economy from America’s political and economic influence through the centralization and nationalization of the energy industry.

AMLO’s fear that Biden’s election will spell out more roadblocks to his dream of energy independence is not unfounded. Hordes of legislators, environmental advocates and industry experts have criticized his proposed bill for violating carbon emission regulations and trade agreements. These infractions will likely attract opposition not just from his domestic opponents but also from the Biden administration.

Lourdes Melgar, a top energy official under former President Enrique Peña Nieto, said AMLO “has a nationalistic view of how to utilize resources.” Melgar and many other energy experts argue that this policy sacrifices environmental sustainability for an ideological power play. Although the bill is expected to become law within the coming days, Mexico will continue grappling to find a balance between nationalistic impulses, international cooperation, and environmental sustainability.

Unlike his predecessor, President Biden will not look the other way when it comes to violations of environmental agreements. Throughout his campaign and into the first month of his presidency, Biden has remained adamant about the need to uphold environmental protection agreements and expressed a willingness to reassert America’s role as a leader of international environmental cooperation.

According to Pamela Starr, director of the U.S.-Mexico Network at the University of Southern California, Biden should expect to ruffle some feathers when addressing Mexico’s disregard for carbon emission limits and other sustainability regulations. The new president may not necessarily care that Mexico is striving for energy independence, only considering the repercussions of the tactics employed to achieve self-sufficiency. Nevertheless, increased oversight could set off alarm bells for AMLO and others who remain skeptical of American involvement.

Starr points to Jeffrey Davidow’s metaphor for the complex relationship between the United States and Mexico, “the bear and the porcupine,” which captured the difficulties of navigating a relationship between two closely connected countries when one was overtly interventionist and the other hypersensitive to perceived intervention. This dance between American brashness and Mexican defensiveness defined their relationship until the election of Ernesto Cedillo in 1988.

AMLO has openly asserted his disapproval for his predecessors’ approach to dealing with the United States, accusing Mexico of kowtowing to American interests over the past few decades. His approach to diplomacy marks a return to the era of the porcupine, defined by Mexican nationalism and apprehension of U.S. involvement. In order to avoid returning to the role of “the bear,” the United States must carefully navigate the rising sentiment of Mexican nationalism, an endeavor further complicated by rising nationalism within its own borders. Competing threads of nationalism could cause friction not just within the realm of environmental policy, but also within negotiations of labor, trade, corruption and migration.

According to Starr, Biden’s policy toward Latin America rests on three pillars: corruption, climate change and democracy. Although the ongoing migration crisis will likely monopolize much of Biden’s first year in office, the early months of his presidency could define the timber of their relationship and define the trajectory of negotiations of the other items on his agenda in the subsequent years of his presidency.

Despite AMLO’s initial posturing, he has recently demonstrated his commitment to maintaining a productive relationship with the United States. The two leaders convened virtually to discuss issues of immigration, the pandemic and climate change, and both seemed intent on redirecting the nature of their nations’ exchange away from the blatant antagonism that defined the Trump administration. López Obrador, like many Mexicans, is relieved to work with an American president who does not openly degrade their country.

However, this relief at a return to amiability will not dissuade AMLO from fiercely protecting his plan for energy independence. The past four years have exacerbated a relationship that had been fraught with mistrust for decades. This history of unwelcome intervention and competing nationalist sentiments will guide the next four years of U.S.-Mexico relations.

Biden has already begun to dismantle Trump’s hardline anti-immigration policies, ending the “Remain in Mexico” program and working with Mexican officials to reinstate mechanisms for granting asylum to the thousands of migrants waiting at the US-Mexico border. Biden has already encountered numerous roadblocks: an SUV crash in California left 13 migrants dead and a bottleneck of migrants in encampments at the border. Recent reports predict thousands more migrants from Central America are marching toward this chokepoint, hopeful that the new administration will open more doors for their arrival.

Tensions of migration at the border continue to reverberate throughout the region. With the support of Mexican police and leadership, Guatemalan police confronted a caravan of Honduran migrants in late January in an effort to stem the flow of northbound Central Americans. As the entire region reels from the effects of widespread migration and the ongoing public health crisis, Biden will need to rely on coordination with Mexico to stabilize their shared border and eventually the region.

Constructing a productive relationship after four years of Trump’s nationalism and centuries of prior American interventionism will be no small feat, especially with a Mexican president with his own political agenda that runs counterproductive to American interests in certain sectors.

The post Biden, López Obrador and the Precarious U.S.-Mexico Relationship appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

As we entered into the new year, vaccine roll-outs across the world served as a source of hope for many, a light at the end of a very long tunnel. So how is it then, that Britain, despite having one of the most successful vaccination programs, finds the world looking at it so despairingly? 

With the highest death toll in Europe, having recently surpassed the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths, one can be under no illusions about the United Kingdom’s failings during this pandemic. It’s failure is stark and beyond tragic. While the current British Government has made a slew of errors, such as its late decisions to implement a lockdown or restrict travel, the cause of many failings are systemic and arise from its neoliberal policies. 

These policies, which Stephanie Mudge, a specialist in political and economic analysis of the west, describes as the “embrace of 3 things: economic privatization, deregulation and liberalization as the means of government,” have proved to be the UK’s Achilles’ heel during the handling of the crisis.

While the term neoliberalism was first coined in 1938 in Paris, it wasn’t until 1947, when Friedrich Hayek formed the Mount Pelerin society, that the neoliberal ideology began in earnest. Mount Pelerin was a small cohort of philosophers, economists and journalists who were tasked with spreading the doctrine of neoliberalism. However, it was only in the late 70’s and early 80’s that Ronald Reagan and Margert Thatcher in the UK, began to implement such policies. And so, the neoliberal era was born.

The pandemic, as well as serving to illuminate pre-existing inequalities, has acted as a controlled experiment by exposing different systems of governance and politics to the same multi-facetted difficulties simultaneously. The group of countries that have effectively managed the pandemic possess an eclectic mix of political systems ranging from poor countries like Vietnam to developed western democracies such as Germany. The common factor here is that all these countries rejected their respective economic ideologies in favour of the pragmatism that a public health crisis of this magnitude demands.

The UK, however, in a naïve attempt to mitigate unnecessary economic damage chose to stick to its economic ideology when on February 3, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the UK would act “powerfully” against “a desire for market segregation” caused by the new disease. A key failing in the UK’s response was the government’s inability to outsource tasks to private companies effectively, a move only necessitated by the neoliberal trend towards privatization. The New York Times recently reported that out of 1,200 government contracts that were made public “about half went to companies with political connections, no prior experience, or histories of controversy.” In choosing “speed over due diligence ministers squandered millions,” this undoubtedly cost lives.

A similar problem occurred with the UK’s ill-fated Test and Trace program, an initiative designed to alert people who have been exposed to the virus. Many of its tasks were handed over to outsourcing giants Serco and Sitel where reportedly staff only reached less than half of contacts of people who had recently tested positive for COVID-19, greatly reducing the programme’s efficiency at limiting the spread of the virus. Another key hindrance was the state of the UK’s healthcare system following the financial crisis. As a result of the neoliberal austerity that was ushered in following 2008, 17,000 hospital beds were lost and there were more than 40,000 vacant nurse positions across the NHS. Whereas in Germany, they have 29.2 ICU beds per 100,000 people — the highest ratio in Europe — in the UK the same figure is 6.6. In Germany, they were able to instigate a rapid health response and keep mortality rates low. In the UK, they could do neither.

It’s also well documented that a wider macroeconomic loyalty to markets —- a hallmark of neoliberalism —-  incurs such financial risks that it effectively blocks pharmaceutical companies from taking preventative action. Since the SARS outbreak in 2003, scientists around the world have been warning that a global pandemic of this magnitude was inevitable. Many of the vaccines for COVID-19 are similar to those developed for SARS which is also a Coronavirus. However private pharmaceutical companies are not incentivised by the market, due to a lack of profit, to produce potentially useful vaccines. While we have not seen adaptability in the vaccine market, I should note that the pandemic has demonstrated market dynamism with many British companies, such as the clothing manufacturer Burberry, successfully altering their production lines to successfully procure vital personal protective equipment. Yet, on balance, it seems the UK’s adoption of neoliberalism, at least to some extent, prevents an effective crisis response.

With the World Health Organization’s recent warning of more pandemics to come, something must change to ensure the UK, a country fighting for global status, is better prepared. Despite the recent Democratic victory in the United States there is an acquiescence that the Democratic party is committed to neoliberal and free market ideals. In the UK however, there is still a hope for change. If the Labour Party (the UK’s centre-left political party) were to win a majority in their 2024 general election, they could conceivably begin to undo some of the UK’s neoliberal tendencies. In addition, it would bring a 15 year spell in office to an end for the Conservatives (the UK’s centre-right political party), who have held office since 2010. While it seems likely that the Government’s myopic handling of the pandemic will form the bedrock for a Labour victory, Stephanie Mudge, in her 2018 book Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism, makes a worryingly compelling case that even a Labour landslide would not spell the end for neoliberalism. To understand why, we must take a look at just how neoliberalism came to be the UK’s status quo.

During the sixties, the rhetoric of the Labour party was of management of the economy and full employment. The Government, following Keynesian principles, unashamedly sought social goals and the welfare state continued to grow. Yet as ‘stagflation’ began to take hold in the seventies this began to change. Stagflation, a mixture of rising inflation and unemployment, directly contradicted Keynesian principles. This was the so-called ‘scientific’ critique. There was also the ‘political’ critique. This view, which was promoted by a rebellious cohort of economists, Mudge writes, was “that mainstream economics [Keynesianism] was implicitly an economics of the left.” Actors such as Milton Friedman argued that Keynesian economists, and by proxy their economics, were too politically involved and therefore not scientific enough.

This latter critique won and fundamentally changed the dogma within economics, giving rise to a new breed of economist. This new breed of economists saw their responsibilities in terms of expanding and sustaining markets. As neoliberal economics became the mainstream during the Thatcher years, economists-in-politics sought not to manage the economy, but to insulate the markets from political interference, even if this worked directly against the interests of voters. However, when Labour came into office in 1997, under Tony Blair and the label of ‘New Labour’, they too adopted the neoliberal view of the economy cultivated years earlier. As a result the party moved towards representing markets more than the working class people they claimed to represent.

So while the recent decade of neoliberal rule in the UK has been at the hands of the Conservatives, this neoliberalization of the left parties, seen also in the Democratic party, gives UK citizens reason to be pessimistic, even about a 2024 Labour landslide. Until contemporary economists in the Labour party revert to being voter-, instead of market-centric the UK is bound to follow the U.S. on its path to implosion. Realigning left leaning parties with their constituencies is without a doubt a hard task, but as George Washington once said, the harder the task the greater the triumph; and what a triumph it would be.

This article was written by Glimpse from the Globe’s guest contributing author.

Will Lewallen, who grew up in London, is in his second year at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Whilst majoring in philosophy he has used his first two years to broaden his studies, minoring in economics and politics. His are of interest lies in seeking ways to radically re-think existing structures to improve people’s lives. He is particularly interested in cooperatives and how these can further democracy in the political and economic realms. In his spare time Will is an avid skier, alpinist and a general lover of mountains.

Contact: williamlewallen00@gmail.com

The post Coronavirus and the UK’s Neoliberalized Left appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

In contrast to the affluent roots of Shinzo and several other prominent Japanese politicians, Prime Minister Suga was raised by parents who were strawberry farmers in the country’s north. In a country familiar with bureaucratic leaders from influential families, some citizens see Suga as an anti-establishment political figure that can relate to the struggles of the common people, something they have explicitly called for in the last 60 years. 

The ongoing and evergreen struggle in Japan between its monarchical and historical political structure and its ever-growing modern citizenry is a common theme in many forms of art, entertainment and literature detailing the country’s sociopolitical environment.

However, there is perhaps no stronger allusion demonstrating these key themes dominating Japan’s current political scene than in the 2000 Japanese thriller film “Battle Royale.” The movie, created by Kunji Funkansuku, illustrates the desires of Japanese citizens to be heard by politicians and, through entertainment, represents the frustration many citizens feel toward the government, with themes of social deviance and government defiance permeating the film. 

The film begins with the Japanese government passing a law known as the “BR ACT” after a major economic recession. This act, designed to allow the government to contain and control the rebellious Japanese youth, forces a different class of 40 students to participate in an annual competition where they must fight to the death. 

Battle Royale was originally adapted from a best-selling novel by the same name and two Japanese films that told similar stories. The 1999 novel, written by Koushun Takami, was inspired by the author’s childhood in 1960s Japan when the All Campus Joint Struggle Committee, otherwise known as the Zenkyoto, protested the Japanese governmental and institutional push towards mirroring American capitalism in the Japanese collegiate system. The student organization, created in 1948, had different chapters at each university and targeted issues specific to each institution, with tuition fee reductions being their most significant objective. However, by the 1960s, Zenkyoto was calling for systemic changes in the way universities approached academics and how students and researchers operated. They believed that the education system was wrongly managed like a factory. The revolts of the Zenkyoto were met with strong resistance by the Japanese government. This only caused the protesters to become even more aggravated with the Japanese’s constant necessity for control, law and order. The repressive government portrayed in Battle Royale is a dystopian imitation of Japan’s management of the youth in the 1960s. The film is protest art, trying to unpack the oppression and the perceived misdirection of the Japanese government. 

Despite Suga framing himself as an outsider, which is a characteristic desired by some of Japan’s general public, his beliefs and actions are not aligned with any anti-establishment rhetoric. Rather, his undertakings are aligned with protecting the bureaucracy. 

When Japan descended into mass protests in the 1960s, Suga avoided the movement. After graduating from university, he served as a secretary for Hukosaburo Okonogi of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for 11 years. LDP is based on conservatism and nationalism and is frequently right of its opposition parties. The party’s platform includes export-based economic development, tax reform, privatization of state-owned industries and strong cooperation with the United States, which are direct contradictions to the stances of more left-wing ideologies.

In 1996, Suga became a member of parliament for the LDP. In this position, Suga became closer with soon-to-be prime minister Abe, also a member of the LDP. Abe appointed Suga to serve in his cabinet as Chief Cabinet Secretary. In this role, Suga had a record of trying to manage the bureaucracy. He brought more tourists and foreign workers into Japan, blocked and delayed information to the media at press conferences, and worked effortlessly to protect Abe’s image from criticism in various scandals. 

While many Japanese citizens desire a less bureaucratic and dynastic government, politicians like Suga do not try to change the damaging culture in Japan, which dominantly encourages silence in the face of oppression. As a common saying in Japan goes, “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” Contrary to the Western concept of individualism, conformity is appreciated and expected. The government’s push for conformity is a product of Japanese nationalism that rose to prominence in the Empire of Japan with the 1860s Meiji government. Confucian leaders ingrained the importance of loyalty to the state. In order to ensure adherence and uniformity, the government sent officials across the country to enforce patriotic behavior. Japan successfully created a centralized government where individual communities had no control over their jurisdiction or laws. Later, in the 1920s, the Taishō and Shōwa governments modernized the meaning of nationalism by competing with other countries for international and regional power; this was done with the intention of making their country more economically successful and therefore encouraging Japanese citizens more patriotic. 

Japanese nationalism was and continues to be an initiative of creating and maintaining a unified society by focusing on the unity of culture, politics and a shared understanding of Japan’s history and destiny. This is also a crucial part of the LDP’s mission. 

“Battle Royale” demonstrates that this kind of society does not work. Despite the government’s emphasis on togetherness, culturally and politically oppressing the Japanese people led to serious violence, as seen in the 1960s protests. Instead of confronting the political frustrations of the people, Suga, just like his predecessors, does not seem interested in dealing with the desired change.

Looking forward, Suga will have to run again in September of 2021 once his term comes to an end this summer. His success in this next election may depend more on how he deals with the coronavirus and its economic and social fallout, rather than an assessment of his ability to unite the nation after its decades-long social and political turmoil. 

With our world in such disarray, inclusion and diversity of ideas in Japan’s political arena is an overlooked issue. In spite of this, the issue of government oppression and strict bureaucracy in Japan is not any less relevant.

“Battle Royale” still serves as an ode to change today, despite being a response to Japanese political issues of sixty years ago. Clearly, modern reform and progress in Japan is stagnant, which begs the question: Will the desired systemic change in Japan ever really occur with Suga in charge? 

The post Out With the Old: What Japan’s New Prime Minister Can Learn from “Battle Royale” appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

Once citing fewer than 10 COVID-19 cases a day, cases have risen to triple digits since August 14. With new clusters being attributed to gatherings of fundamentalist right-wing Christian churches and anti-government protests, these groups have come under fire for contributing to COVID-19’s spread. Underneath the cloak of health disputes, the health crisis in South Korea is incredibly telling of the expanding divide within the East Asian country’s political climate. 

Previously, South Korea was widely applauded for their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, even coining their recovery strategy as “K-Quarantine”, projecting it as a successful world model. Though other countries such as New Zealand and Australia have also been able to tame the virus, South Korea is arguably the largest democracy to “reduce new daily cases by more than 90 percent from peak”. Their success is largely due to the three pillars of fast testing, thorough tracing, and mandatory isolation, all of which is communicated to citizens daily through official government messaging systems.

Now, amid the virus’s resurgence, churches have come under fire as being virus spreaders. In particular, the fundamentalist Christian church “Sarang Jeil,” meaning “love comes first” in Korean, has faced significant criticism. 

More than 1,100 cases of infection have been linked to the Sarang Jeil Church, second only to that of Shincheonji Church’s 5,200 cases in February. Its pastor, Jun Kwang-hun, has been known for his criticism of President Moon Jae-in, accusing him of being a North Korean sympathizer, as well as perpetuating and capitalizing on election fraud. Having tested positive for COVID-19, he has also battled criminal charges for spreading libel and obstructing epidemiological tracing by reportedly turning in false lists of church-goers used for contact tracing. Despite this, his devout following has not wavered, with members of the conservative right-wing blatantly disregarding social distancing measures and partaking in anti-government rallies. 

On August 15th, thousands gathered to protest President Moon Jae-in’s policies, carrying pro-South Korea banners, American flags, and cut-outs of President Trump. The conservative protesters advocated for President Moon to step down, claiming that he was “handing South Korea over to North Korea”. 

Though exacerbated by the rise of COVID-19 and subsequent economic hardships, the association of Christian fundamentalism and the conservative right in South Korea is not new. Rooted in Protestant American missionaries, Christian fundamentalists have historically aligned themselves with the South Korean conservative right’s’ fervently anti-communist stance and their strong opposition to the efforts to open diplomatic engagement with the North.

In the early 2000s, participation in the Christian fundamentalist movement skyrocketed as other churches started catering towards more “affluent urban professions,” alienating the lower class. As a result, the fundamentalist church bases grew. Sarang Jeil, for example, has a base largely made up of older, lower-income South Koreans, who “took the ostracization they experienced amid the changes South Korean Protestantism went through in the late 90s and turned it into a political holy movement,“ says Kim Jin-ho, a pastor and researcher at the Christian Institute for the 3rd Era.

The rise of COVID-19 cases has only deepened the existing divide in South Korea. Pastor Jun and the church have accused the government of intentionally infecting church members and publishing false COVID-19 test results to cast the brunt of the blame on churches. Many churchgoers have also criticized the government for their mishandling of the situation, with church-going patients citing that they “treated me like a ball of germs, not a citizen of the country.” Meanwhile, the government has also publicly criticized churches for being inconsiderate and senseless. 

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, tensions have been exacerbated by an ongoing recession, with the South Korean economy suffering a shrinkage of 3.3% in GDP between April and June. The recession has impacted the lower class disproportionately, brewing strong dissent from the right. Many churches also rely on donations from church attendance, furthering their opposition against government attempts to restrict public attendance. 

Politically, the government’s clash with right-wing churches has only put President Moon’s administration under further scrutiny. As of August 14, his Gallup Poll approval rating dropped to 39% amidst allegations of corruption and sexual harassment allegations within the Democratic party. In addition, he began receiving heavy criticism from the right after his unsuccessful efforts to rebuild South Korea’s relationship with North Korea. Being born to North Korean refugees himself, President Moon’s original campaign policies were centered around North Korea rapprochement to establish more cordial relationships between the two countries. Since groundbreaking reconciliatory actions between the North and South in 2018 when President Moon became the first South Korean leader to be ceremonially received, relations between the two countries have deteriorated after South Korea failed to mediate nuclear agreements between the United States and North Korea. South Korea has continuously made efforts to make peace with their Northern counterpart, but their unsuccessful attempts have divided the citizens, with the conservative right accusing President Moon of being a “communist sympathizer” and advocating for his removal. Left to choose between reconciliation with North Korea and maintaining diplomatic relations with the United States, President Moon remains stuck between “a rock and a hard place” as the resulting political divide continues to deepen. 

Going forward, South Korea is faced with difficult decisions between balancing virus prevention regulations, economic recovery, and managing domestic dissatisfaction with the government. Though the number of infections is now lowering, domestic political tensions still persist, and South Korea must tread carefully to avoid complete political upheaval. 

The post What COVID-19 Has Uncovered: South Korea’s Deep Political Divide appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.