January 25, 2022

The following is from an article by Jason Morgan, Associate Professor at Reitaku University, published in today’s Sankei Shimbun “Seiron” column under the title “Where Have the Concerns About Holding the Olympics Gone?”

It is no exaggeration to say that this article is the first to reveal that academia and the media, controlled by the left, are creating a crisis of democracy.

Through his article, the great majority of Japanese people, myself included, have learned for the first time about the realities of the left-controlled academia and media around the world, as well as the names of their leading figures.

The crisis of democracy is a phenomenon that arises when public opinion becomes extremely divided.

Academia and the media, controlled by the left, are working tirelessly to create this division of public opinion for the benefit of totalitarian countries such as China.

In Japan, left-controlled academia and the media, so-called human rights lawyers, so-called citizens’ groups, and politicians from the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Communist Party, and other parties are dividing Japanese public opinion and serving countries such as China and South Korea.

This article is of value to the world today.

It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for people around the world.

Recently, an acquaintance said something interesting to me.

“The Beijing Olympics are approaching, but where have the people who were calling for the Games to be canceled because of the novel coronavirus gone?”

Indeed, that is true.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics were postponed until 2021, and there were difficulties along the way to holding them.

However, ever since the epidemic that originated in Wuhan, China, began to afflict the world, anti-Japanese scholars and journalists specializing in East Asia have repeatedly called for the Olympics to be canceled.

“Japan Experts” Slam the Olympics

The American journalist Jake Adelstein, for example, was one of those who ardently opposed the Tokyo Olympics.

In July 2021, he co-authored an article for the American news site The Daily Beast under the headline “Tokyo Is Insanely Sending an Army of Under-Vaccinated Volunteers to the Olympics,” mercilessly attacking the Japanese government and Japan.

The article stoked fear by claiming that, because of delays in vaccination, “Tokyo seems to be turning its Olympic volunteers into a pack of walking super-spreaders.”

Mr. Adelstein is a trusted “Japan expert” in the United States.

Other major American media outlets also picked up Japan-bashing articles by Adelstein and others.

The COVID-19 pandemic was not the only reason anti-Japanese commentators in the West called for the Tokyo Olympics to be canceled.

For example, Gavan McCormack, a historian and professor emeritus at the Australian National University, invoked “Fukushima” in March 2021 in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (APJ/JF), publishing an article that cast a dark shadow over the Tokyo Olympics.

In 2013, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe assured the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the situation in the areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake was under control.

Mr. McCormack criticized Japan for having still failed to resolve the problem.

He also claimed that a large amount of radioactive waste remained, reinforcing a misleading image of the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

He also distorted the remarks of former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, then chairman of the Olympic organizing committee, that “board meetings with many women take a long time,” and maliciously described the Tokyo Olympics as a “farce.”

In this article, Mr. McCormack also suggested that the Tokyo Olympics be canceled because of the pandemic.

He expressed concern that holding the Games “could result in the transmission and spread of large quantities of coronavirus.”

Silence on the Beijing Olympics

APJ/JF also published another article mocking the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

Academia and the media in the English-speaking world sought to criticize the Tokyo Olympics.

Yet, ironically, although the Beijing Games are also an Olympics, both Mr. Adelstein and Mr. McCormack have remained silent about them.

Recently, Mr. Adelstein wrote an article harshly criticizing Japan as a “xenophobic” country over its tightening of border controls in response to the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant.

An internet search, however, reveals no article by Mr. Adelstein criticizing the Beijing Olympics.

The same is true of Mr. McCormack.

A search of APJ/JF reveals no articles skeptical of the Beijing Olympics.

In academia and the media, which are controlled by the left, criticism of the Beijing Olympics is virtually nonexistent.

On H-Net Asia, an information-sharing site used by Asian studies scholars, only one scholar has dared to take a skeptical stance on the Beijing Olympics, and that scholar is Swedish.

Information attacking Japan continues to circulate almost daily.

Even after the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics ended, the novel coronavirus has not disappeared from the world. So where, exactly, have the concerns about holding the Beijing Olympics gone?

Will They Ignore “Genocide”?

Although China continues to wage a fierce battle against the novel coronavirus, there are no articles or papers in the Western left-wing media mocking the Beijing government for not canceling the Olympics.

And the pandemic is not the only issue.

The Beijing Games are called the “Genocide Olympics,” and that is not merely a malicious label.

In China today, the Beijing government is driving the Uyghurs toward extinction.

I would like to ask left-wing “experts” and so-called Asia experts why they still do not speak out.

Holding the Olympics during the pandemic is unacceptable to them, but will they overlook the genocide Olympics in Beijing?

Even by the double standard on which the left always relies, this is utterly unreasonable.