Bulletins and News Discussion from September 30th to October 6th, 2024 - Qassam, Qassem, Quagmire

Hey folks! I will be busy for a long while and will probably be inactive on this site for the same period. I am starting my final year of university - very exciting times ahead.

As a result I’d like to leave a short primer about Malaysian and Singaporean politics on a highly contentious issue: race. Feel free to DM for further elaboration or sources regarding Malaysian/Singaporean politics. I am happy to oblige (whenever I have the time).

Alright, here it goes.

Class, race, culture, community, ethnicity and religion. All are jumbled up when talking about politics in Malaysia and Singapore.

How so? Firstly we have to take a civilisational approach: Chinese, Indian, Malay and Orang Asal (“Original People”) all have their own unique history of thousands of years, and within each there are defining characteristics that define their social structure.

What happens when this long overlapping cultural exchange in the Straits of Malacca gets disrupted by more recent and numerous immigration from South and East Asia under colonization?

This leads to stratification and polarization of the Malayan political economy (old name for Peninsular Malaysia that includes Singapore).

The Malayan Left had many arguments and debates on how to handle these fundamental cultural issues that have plagued the region for centuries. The debate is still ongoing.

However, there, perhaps 2 main strands can be identified:

1. Those that defines cultural autonomy as the primary contradiction.

2. Those that defines class and national liberation as the primary contradiction.

Many organisations can be labelled as one or the other but those within the same camp may not necessarily agree with each other with everything.

For an example, those that fall into

1. often fall into communal fights with other groups. An example of this would be the Chinese Literacy Movement that sought to maintain the existence of colonial era Chinese Language Schools, which more often than not, are also not under the purview of the colonial government (ie. in effect are private schools).

2. often underestimate the role of culture and race in the social reproduction of the Malayan economy. An example of this would be the MCP (Malayan Communist Party). In many of their party debates, it was often assumed that after national liberation was achieved, racial/cultural/communal issues would vanish. Unfortunately for us, we did not achieve true independence and the racialised political economy remains.

Prologue -

I can continue of course but I hope this short glimpse can help you understand why in my arguments I often involve terms such as “racialised”, “culture” or “chauvinism”. Because it is an essential part of understanding Malayan politics.

But understanding Malayan politics also requires some understanding of South, East and Southeast Asian politics. Under the global hegemony of US-led Capital, Eurocentrism and Orientalism pervades many thinkers, even in the Global South. There must be acknowledgment of this fundamental inequality of intellectual production which is overwhelmingly skewed to the West.

Only then you can finally understand and deal with the material realities of what we, the peoples of the Third World, have to face everyday.

See Read you all later.