February 26 2025,
Before I get into this day I will briefly mention what happened on the 25th. Since I no longer have my PoliSci research class I will have Tuesday’s and Thursday’s free, but even so I had a required meeting to attend. By meeting I actually mean a resume consultation. This was required for my work placement class as we have to redo our resumes after learning how to properly make one. This consultation is required to do before we hand in our new resumes, this is to ensure that we got the proper knowledge and tips. I made sure to take notes during my consultation and I think I did okay when I actually went to remake my resume. Anyway, let’s get into my classes.
Before my Canadian history class started, I was sitting outside the room and overheard the anti-communist classmate talking. He was talking to another student about how Stalin was a paranoid leader and that if you stopped clapping for him he’d have you executed. He also claimed that the USSR was the North Korea of Europe, this was obviously said as an insult. What an annoying thing to hear but I am not surprised since he has his google background as the anti-communist symbol. What a joke.
So this class was about the 1935 federal election. It was a battle between Bennett’s “New Deal” and “King or Chaos”. Bennett’s plan was called the “New Deal” because they wanted to make reference to FDR’s thing. Bennett introduced a legislative package during this time that instituted an 8 hour work day, minimum wage, and market regulation. All of these quickly passed, it was ruled “ultra vires” (I think thats what he said, there were no slides to accompany this) by the Privy Council because it violated provincial rights. Mackenzie King said it was like fascism, which is crazy! This is the same guy who wrote about Hitler’s “glowing eyes” in his diary. If you’re curious just look up “Mackenzie King and Hitler.” Wild shit.
King or Chaos basically preached “the best policy is no policy” and let Bennett dig his own grave, which is just the theme of Canadian politics, even today. King made no promises during his campaign, except the incredibly vague “balance the budget”, and still won by a landslide. Canadian elections use first past the post so the ratio of seats is incredibly weird: the Cons got 30%, which gave them 39 seats in the house; the Libs got 44%, which gave them 173 seats. Some conservatives blamed the Reconstruction party for the loss but they only got 8.7% which resulted in 1 MP. Social Credit got 17%. King’s success can be attributed to luck mostly, it was best to lose the 1930 election and win when the economy was slowly recovering. King manages provincial benefits the same way Bennett did but doesn’t face the same ire he did. My professor then said that Orthodox economics could not solve the Great Depression, only WWII would do that.
In 1935, while Bennett was still PM, the Reciprocal Trade Agreement was being negotiated with FDR, but was signed after King became PM. This agreement benefited the US much more but King liked the optics. Signing this looked good. When finished class by briefly going over agreements made in 1937 and 1938., nothing crazy, only that tension was rising.
French Revolution class was interesting because before it started one of my classmates was going around with a box of chocolates, giving them away for his birthday. I chose a coffee crisp! It was good. The actual lecture was about the impact Enlightenment ideas had, the main being religious tolerance. Another was art, this was the most interesting part of the lecture, probably because we got to look at a bunch of paintings. We first looked at Rococo art, the example shown was of the Swing. Bourgeois Drama came afterwards and was the preferred form of art by Philosophes like Diderot. Enlightenment thinkers anted to moralize art, it’s sentimental, the example image was Son Punished. Neo-classicism was shown as well which was called “Rousseauian” due to it reflecting republican lessons. She showed us two paintings, Oath of the Horatii and The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons. Both paintings show off gender in that women are portrayed as overly emotional while men are rational. The Oath painting portrays the Roman salute and I think thats where it originated. Did the Roman salute even exist in Ancient Rome? I heard it didn’t. Ever since Elon did it there was some discourse on twitter, while many called it out for what it was some other people showed photos of what looked like Middle Eastern fighters (couldn’t tell you the groups) doing the salute as well. So that was something.
Anyway sorry for the tangent, class ended with analyzing paintings of Marie Antoinette. The first portrait was a traditional one called En Grand Habit de Cour, it showcases riches and national symbols (fleur de Lis), her hand was also placed on a. Globe o symbolize France’s vast empire. The next painting we looked at was Marie Antoinette en Chamise, which was considered incredibly scandalous as the dress she wore, while fancy by our standards, was like pyjamas. It was also painted by a woman, which is interesting. She then showed us the Queen’s hamlet, where she and her friends would cosplay as farm hands and feed goats, it was quite strange. The last painting was Marie Antoinette and Her Children which was a way to rehabilitate her image as a grieving but hands on mother. This was due to not giving an heir for 7 years, which made people go crazy. Apparently there was something wrong with Louis, he had some procedure done and was able to sire children. What procedure? I have no clue, she didn’t say.
For political science we got into the civil society of the DPRK. Before I get into the lecture I had some thoughts: after reading several articles for this class and my other polisci one (the one I dropped) I am having a hard time wrapping my head around Civil Society. For the most part it just seems like an avenue to facilitate regime change in Socialist and Socialist “sympathetic” countries, it’s why China has them heavily regulated. I know in Japan they helped out with disaster relief and what not, which is great but are there other example where civil society was actually fine? I am most likely misunderstanding what it means, it’s just the examples I have seen have not been super great. Let’s move on.
My professor began the class by admitting that he really struggled to find sources on Civil Society in the DPRK and the course we had to read was almost 20 years old, but it was better than others as they relied on interviews from refugees. He says that is not good because it severely limits the point of view and can be heavily skewed. Studying Civil Society in the DPRK is difficult due to academic integrity being compromised, you cannot access North Korean archives unless you are writing a positive perspective, and you cannot publish in the west unless it is negative. With that out of the way we begin with defining civil society and public sphere. Civil society = specific forms of mobilization and citizen participation related to the state, public sphere = social sites where people communicate with one another about issues of public importance; there is no overlap between state authority and the public sphere. Deliberations between civil society and the public sphere present challenged to the state. According to Marx, bourgeois society is an arena of class oppression and illusory emancipation, it is an unequal exchange of ideas. So e was critical of civil society and stated that society must be dominated by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would result in no civil society being present. I guess I was on the same page as Marx?
In fascism, civil society exists as an organ of the state. But what about the Authoritarian public sphere? Well my professor says it is an oxymoron. The venue is tightly controlled and monitored by the regime as the public sphere can be an avenue for resistance. The sphere under this type of regime is used to propagate and legitimize its rule as all powerful and inevitable. It is also a product of direct disciplining power of a regime seeking to limit communication. It also prevents citizens from articulating ideas, the example he gave was preference falsification, as in disguising one’s perspective and outwardly expressing a more publicly acceptable viewpoint. With the public sphere controlled there is difficulty when voicing conflicting ideas as you must express the demands and views of the state.
Next we covered authoritarian rule and how it relates to civil society. This section began with the dictator’s dilemma, I am sure you know what that is but basically dictators repress their population, but that repression can lead to resentment which the dictator fears so they spend more resources than necessary. Repression is used along side bribes, like when Communist Party membership was given out in China. Next he covered Dominance and Hegemony by Gramsci, this section was a little weird because of how disjointed it was so forgive me for this: dominance = physical force; hegemony = voluntary subordination, expressed through rule vs govern. Authoritarian rule is expressed through repression, cooptation, and legitimation.
Repression is expensive so there must be voluntary subordination; every regime combines all three to solidify their rule. The regime controls boundaries through state infrastructure by shaping world views and systems of meaning. Civil society is consultative, which he also called an oxymoron. What it means is that the state allows civil society to exist at it reduces the dictator’s dilemma, it also allows local elections to gather information on how to fix local issues on a national level. Some guy named Teets made up the consultative thing based on China. My professor made it a point to say that authoritarian regimes can be democratic, the example he gave was Putin’s regime.
Next is the authoritarian public sphere in the DPRK. It is different from the Soviet satellite states, many thought and hoped it would collapse alongside the USSR, but it stood strong. The 90s famine killed millions, was turned into the arduous march as if it was guerrilla warfare and was framed as being related to foreign powers rather than a result of the regime. There was an economic crisis in the 70s but the DPRK still survived. The state infrastructure is all encompassing and an indoctrination machine. A student then asked is the DPRK was able to survive because of China’s help, my professor said that elites related to China were purged in the 50s, and the guerrillas were established in their place in the 60s, so the DPRK was actually quite nervous about support from both China and the USSR. The DPRK wanted some sort of mutual relationship. China and USSR support didn’t totally stop as the North was needed as a buffer from both South Korea and the USA, so support was limited. He concluded that the DPRK’s self-reliance was the most important to its survival but it stifles development.
Juche replaced communism from the 50s and is an ideology based on leadership, the supreme leader. It is used to subjectivize the population. He then mentions that there was no peace treaty after the Korean War, only an armistice agreement made with the UN so the peninsula, especially the North, is still under a war situation. Because of this war terminology is used everywhere, society is militarized (e.g. the Arduous March). There are shadow markets, information dynamics, and corruption. In the end we are unlikely to see a civil society emerge in the DPRK in the near future.
So that ends my lectures on the DPRK, next will be about South Korea. I will say, my professor’s tone throughout these few lectures has been fairly even and not aggressive at all compared to his lectures on Japan.
Afterwards I went to office hours as I was supposed to present to him four sources on my proposed topic for my research paper which is to analyze the National Security Act and how it is detrimental to unification with the North. He found my sources fine and said he would try to find more for me but it’s a bit hard. This led to me asking him about if the National Security Act is even mentioned in the North at all because all I knew was that Kim Jong Un removed reunification from the constitution (or something). He old me one of the reasons he did was fears over being fully absorbed by the South and their influences so now Kim Jong Un considers both Koreas as separate entities. He also told me that that is exactly what South Korea wants, to fully absorb the North rather than have some sort of peaceful unification, it would involve some sort of military conquering. I then mentioned the garbage situation, where the North retaliated against the South, he laughed and seemed embarrassed. He told me the South did that to try and provoke the North, thus finding justification for the Martial Law. I wanted to ask him more but there was another student waiting so I left.