Umno's war drums herald bleak future
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Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength."
- George Orwell (1984)
COMMENT For someone who is gung-ho in parroting Winston Churchill, Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar has a strange way of emulating the complicated former British prime minister. For someone mimicking the "never retreat, never surrender line" his preference of defending his Youth post but sitting out of the next general election is rather perplexing.
Surely, in this great time of Umno's needs, when Umno is facing ‘Bitter moments between two possibilities, between two futures, between light and darkness. This warrior did not falter, did not fear, and so he vowed: his country will fight at sea, in the air, on the beaches and even on the streets itself. Even starved and subjugated, his country would never surrender!' Khairy thinks of himself as one of the few good Umno men whose fate will be decided at the ballot box.
Indeed, when we have a Wanita Umno representative sounding the alarms bells of hidden hands spreading the gay disease and highlighting the Sunni/Shiite schism, it would seem that minorities would always be the convenient targets of Umno in lieu of any substantive policy debates.
Churchill claimed the difference between war and politics is that in the latter, one could be killed many times, and Umno is testament to this truism. I see so many faces of the corrupt and the immoral, banished for a time for misdeeds forgotten by the Umno supreme council, making speeches of war, on a certain section of the electorate who no longer will toe the Umno line.
I have always been cautious of making Nazi analogies with Umno, having had the misfortune of actually meeting those who profess allegiance to those people and ideas that had disposed of the Weimar Republic. However, this Umno general assembly reeked of the ideology that sustained the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
With Umno Youth information chief Reezal Merican Naina Merican (right) proclaiming that Umnoputras are the chosen people and God's choice will always be Umno to rule and liberate this land, what we as non-Malays/Muslims are left with is the cold comfort that as 'pendatang', Umno and the God they worship will never consider us as Malaysians. Will it be a stretch to replace Aryan supremacy with Malay supremacy?
To Umno, we non-Malays are Jewish stand-ins. This is why there were the constant references at the Umno general assembly to May 13 and the delusion that the Malays would be reduced to the state of refugees in their own land.
The non-Malays are reduced to a Jewish stereotype in the hope that this will bolster Malay/Muslim nationalism. To Umno, we are here to take what rightfully belongs to the Malays and what rightfully belongs to the Malays belongs to Umno.
If you have the stomach for it, read up on the speeches of Nazi officials (Hitler was not the only one) or maybe just the writings of Umno sympathiser Ridhuan Tee Abdullah. Doing so will offer clarity on how the 'other' is demonised as part of the Umno state's propaganda efforts and the philosophy that supports the systemic marginalisation of a certain section of the Malaysian polity. I wonder if the Langley spooks, who Umno claims are Anwar Ibrahim's handlers, briefed Obama on this when he met Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.
The long Umno watch has been an era of 'Gleichschaltung'. For those unfamiliar with the term, it is Nazi terminology meaning 'coordination' or "the restructuring of German society and government into streamlined, centralised hierarchies of power, with the intention of gaining total control and coordination of all aspects of society".
Poisoning minds of Malay graduates
What have we been witness to over the years? To name a few: the Biro Tata Negara courses that have poisoned the minds of Malay graduates and civil servants, to bolster the Umno narrative that the Malays community is under siege; and ‘Operasi Isi Penuh", which saw the civil service decimated and one ethnic group monopolising the instruments of government.
The natural consequence of these was that anyone questioning the credibility or efficiency of these institutions would be construed as attacking the 'Malay' institutions.
Our identity cards feel more like 'Ariernachweis' - the certificate that identified one as belonging to the Aryan race - and as Malaysians, we are divided according to race and religion.
'Operasi Lalang', which aimed to cripple dissent from opposition forces. Add to this the subversion of the mainstream media - does anyone remember the time when Utusan Malaysia was considered a 'leftist' news rag? And the restrictions on freedom of speech, under the guise of protecting "racial sensitivities".
State (read Umno) propaganda organs are allowed to inflame racial and religious sentiment but those who attempt a rational dialogue or defend themselves against such attacks are deemed as traitors or engaging in sedition.
The ISA and the practitioners of the dark arts (Special Branch) are reminiscent of the Gestapo and over the years, many were carted away in the dead of the night in the Black Maria.
The historical distortions in our history books, which are then fed to the younger generation in the hope that they would believe that Umno was truly the party chosen by God, and the absence of non-Malay/Muslim cultures that further estrange the Malay community from the rest of Malaysian society.
The formation of para-security groups such as Rela (People's Volunteers Corps), which Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak once described as Umno's "last line of defence".
Outsourced thugs
Of late, with the rise of Anwar Ibrahim as a credible threat to the Umno hegemony, the hate mongers of Umno have been on overdrive, linking CIA and Jewish conspiracies to the ascension of opposition political parties and special interest groups sympathetic to the aims of these parties. Outsourced thugs in the guise of right wing groups harass anybody questioning their (Umno's) misinterpretation of the constitution.
Umno, which has always been at war with itself, attempts to put on a unified front. However, a 'Night of the Long Knives' threatens to redefine the power structures within Umno. The race and religious cards are the only cards Umno can play.
Let us be honest. With all this talk of Malay sovereignty being at stake, the real target of Umno is always the Chinese community. Umno blames the resurgence of PAS under the multicultural cloak as a devise of the Chinese. It accuses Anwar of being a Chinese proxy in his attempt to divide the Malay community. The DAP is vilified as communist agitators, Singaporean lackeys or Christian zealots threatening the ummah, through (that is right, their proxy) Anwar Ibrahim.
The other non-Malays who pose no significant threat and are merely collateral damage in the coming general election. I suppose what distresses Umno is that the Chinese (or a sizeable majority of them) have paid attention to Winston Churchill's dictum that "an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last" and have decided not to appease the Umno crocodile any more.
What of the MCA, MIC and all those other satellite political parties circling around the Umno sun? Well, as appeasers to the Umno machine, they are the Neville Chamberlains of this tragic tale and May 13 was their Munich Agreement.
I realise many people may be offended by this analogy (certainly many of my Jewish friends would find this piece distasteful, since Umno has done nothing in the league of the Shoah) but if the honourable gentleman from Rembau wants to indulge in a Churchill analogy, I see no reason why I cannot explore the same.
The irony is that Khairy's 'Between Two Visions' manifesto is something worth exploring. An interesting discussion could have been had concerning the visions of Pakatan Rakyat and Barisan National. Instead, what Khairy and his ilk have chosen to do is play the same old cards in the hope that their own record of (mis)rule is forgotten in the ensuring outrage.
I will end this piece with another Churchill quote one that I believe Lee Kuan Yew (he will always be Harry to me) would appreciate: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
I suppose Harry could be forgiven for this because unlike Umno, Harry could mount a credible defence of his party's record of administering the state, even if many are ignorant or choose to ignore, the PAP malfeasances. Umno, unfortunately, cannot do the same.
S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.
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