2024/03/24

Repost! Even by the Double Standards the Left Always Relies On, This Is Far Too Unreasonable.

“Japan Experts” Slam the Olympics…Silence on the Beijing Olympics
2022/1/25
The following is from an essay by Jason Morgan, Associate Professor at Reitaku University, titled “Where Have the Concerns About Hosting the Olympics Gone?” published in today’s Sankei Shimbun’s “Seiron” column.
It is no exaggeration to say that this essay is the first to reveal that academia and the media, dominated by the left, are creating a crisis of democracy.
Thanks to his essay, the vast majority of Japanese people, including myself, have learned for the first time about the realities of academia and the media run by the left around the world, together with the names of their central figures.
The crisis of democracy is a phenomenon arising from the extreme polarization of public opinion.
Academia and the media, dominated by the left, are zealously creating this division of public opinion in totalitarian countries such as China.
In Japan’s case, academia and the media dominated by the left, so-called human rights lawyers, so-called citizens’ groups, and politicians from parties such as the Constitutional Democratic Party and the Communist Party are dividing Japanese public opinion and serving countries such as China and South Korea.
This is a highly valuable essay for today’s world.
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but also for people throughout the world.
Recently, an acquaintance said something interesting to me.
“The Beijing Olympics are approaching, but where have the people who called for cancellation because of the novel coronavirus gone?”
Exactly.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics were postponed to 2021 and were finally held, albeit amid problems.
However, anti-Japanese scholars and journalists specializing in East Asia have repeatedly called for the cancellation of the Olympics ever since the epidemic that emerged in Wuhan, China, began afflicting the world.
“Japan Experts” Slam the Olympics
For example, American journalist Jake Adelstein was vehemently opposed to the Tokyo Olympics.
In a jointly authored article published in July 2021 on the American news website The Daily Beast, he mercilessly attacked the Japanese government and Japan under the headline, “Tokyo Is Sending a Grossly Under-Vaccinated Army of Volunteers to the Olympics as Though It Has Lost Its Mind.”
The article stirred up fear by saying, “By delaying vaccinations, Tokyo appears to be turning Olympic volunteers into a group of walking super-spreaders.”
Adelstein is a trusted “Japan expert” in the United States.
Other major American media outlets also picked up articles criticizing Japan by Adelstein and others.
The pandemic was not the only reason anti-Japanese commentators in the West called for the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics.
For example, historian Gavan McCormack, Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, invoked “Fukushima” in an essay published in March 2021 in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (APJ/JF), casting a dark shadow over the Tokyo Olympics.
In 2013, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promised the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake were under control.
McCormack criticized Japan for still not having resolved the problem.
Furthermore, by stating that large quantities of nuclear waste remained, he reinforced a false image of the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
Regarding former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who had been chairman of the Olympic organizing committee, he also cited a distortion of the remark that “board meetings with many women take time” and maliciously declared the Tokyo Olympics a “farce.”
This essay by McCormack also hinted at the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics on the grounds of the pandemic.
He expressed concern that holding the Olympics “could lead to the transmission and spread of large quantities of coronavirus.”
Silence on the Beijing Olympics
APJ/JF also published another essay mocking the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
Academia and the media in the English-speaking world sought to criticize, ironically, another Olympic Games—the Tokyo Olympics.
Yet both Adelstein and McCormack remain silent about the Beijing Olympics.
Recently, Adelstein wrote an article harshly criticizing Japan as a “xenophobic” country over its tightening of border measures in response to the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant.
However, an Internet search turns up no article by Adelstein criticizing the Beijing Olympics.
The same is true of McCormack.
A search of APJ/JF turns up no articles skeptical of the Beijing Olympics.
In academia and the media dominated by the left, criticism of the Beijing Olympics is virtually nonexistent.
On H-Net Asia, an information-sharing site used by Asian studies researchers, only one scholar has dared to take a skeptical stance toward the Beijing Olympics, and that person is from Sweden.
Information attacking Japan continues to be provided on a daily basis.
Even after the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics ended, the novel coronavirus did not disappear from the world.
So where have the concerns about the Beijing Olympics gone?
Will They Overlook “Genocide”?
Although China continues to wage a fierce battle against the novel coronavirus, no articles or essays mocking the Beijing government for not canceling the Olympics can be found in Western left-wing media.
Moreover, the pandemic is not the only problem.
The Beijing Olympics being called the “Genocide Olympics” is not merely a malicious label.
In China today, the Beijing government is driving the Uyghurs toward extinction.
I want to know why left-wing “experts” and so-called Asia experts still do not speak out.
The pandemic is unacceptable, yet will they overlook Beijing’s Genocide Olympics?
Even by the double standards the left always relies on, this is far too unreasonable.