Democracy is the opiate of history’s losers, as Japan proves

Thorsten J. Pattberg says no people’s protests have ever succeeded in overturning foreign oppression, as shown by the long-running rallies in Okinawa against the US military presence

3-MIN READ3-MIN

Protesters in Naha, Okinawa, rally last month against the US military presence in Okinawa, as they have done since 1995. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 3:00pm, 5 Jul 2016Updated: 2:03pm, 6 Jul 2016

It’s a dull summer month in Nihongo, and 50,000 locals march against the US military presence in Okinawa and a recent rape-murder of a Japanese woman by a US military contractor. The Japanese have protested against the US soldiers in Okinawa since I can remember – 1995. Only if we are willing to see democracy as a form of opiate of the defeated [Japan lost the second world war] do we start to see its peril: nothing in Okinawa is going to change for Japan in a democracy. Nothing is ever achieved by democratic protest.

Nothing is ever achieved by democratic protest

Notwithstanding the protests, the US is relocating 60 per cent of its war fleet to the Asia-Pacific region. In a way, we could even blame Japanese democracy for legitimising US militarisation. Let me explain.

This is true for all democratic rallies around the globe: They are mostly impotent.

Take the European Union, which is an authoritarian regime. The union’s leadership promotes its citizens to democratically protest against anything they please. That’s because such protests don’t mean a thing and challenge nobody. But, lo and behold, when the United Kingdom acted, and a majority of the British people actually voted to exit the EU, the EU turned fiendish: politicians, corporations and the media mafia engaged in a ruthless shame campaign, calling the British stupid, irresponsible and suicidal.