On Malaysia’s recent elections and Eurocentric Western commentaries. (super long post)

Skip to conclusion and discussion for TLDR.

Firstly, I want to discuss an article on the “Journal of Democracy”, the NED’s “academic” propaganda outlet. The China one is not surprising whatsoever. And the Malaysian one… exhibit the same eurocentric rhetoric, although is less obvious at first.

The article recognises Anwar Ibrahim’s (AI) shapeshifting politics depending on the climate, literally the most politician ever to politicking. The article mentions that corruption has been a problem for Malaysian democracy since the beginning. That is true. It is a DOTB after all.

Typical politicians and western commentators only say that the ruling party has corruption, but corruption and nepotism infects Malaysian society in all of its popular bourgeois parties and beyond parliamentary politics and the state.

On Mahathir and his “anti-imperialism”

Western media always depicts Mahathir as more anti-West than he actually is. It was during his rule that a large scale privatisation programme took place. You can’t even blame Western neocolonial institutions because Malaysia was lucky than most countries and had no sovereign debt. He literally oversaw an economy that was 50% run by the state to one that is <10%. The only reason the resulting financial crash in 1997-8 didn’t destroy us was due to both Chinese and Japanese cooperation with ASEAN.

Mahathir literally asked Reagan for and subsequently allowed Amerikan troops into our land in the 80s. The high GDP growth in the late 80s to mid 90s was due to the very profitable state-run oil sector, and a lot of FDI that funded all these privatisation programmes. Privatisation and economic growth continues to be a myth perpetuated by the ruling parties during that time. Post-crash, even the economic growth had decreased compared to pre-crash.

Not to mention it enabled the shift of the Malaysian economy to “importing” (to use their terms) of foreign labour to pay them subsistence wages for plantation work. Our real wages may have increased but it ignores at how much of that is subsidized by “importing” labour from poorer countries, considering that 10% of the Malaysian population in 2020 are immigrants. Another example would be the privatisation of our power grid through TPPs, in which specific capitalists and their cronies benefit from favourable government lending contracts. This economic liberalisation also lead to chronic food insecurity and a destruction of our rainforests for cash crop plantations.

After the 1997-8 crash, the government relaxed their privatisation policy. This is because lots of privatised industries failed, and not only that, but they stopped mentioning privatisation by their 11th five year plan (yes we have 5 year plans that are also produced in English!) due to the failures. This neoliberal policy, however, was continued and maintained by his successors.

The 97-98 crash prompted Mahathir to kick out AI, justifying it by saying AI was an IMF stooge. Mahathir exploited the anti-imperialist tendencies found in a postcolonial population. We are not the west, we still remember, either through popular discourse or even through current material conditions, the role of imperialism and colonialism in our country and global history more generally. It is a matter in which this sentiment is channelled towards. As I demonstrated before, this depiction that Mahathir was a principled anti-imperialist in any regard falls apart with any close inspection.

Akshually, Mahathir and BN/UMNO generally was doing a based anti-imperialism because they didn’t fully subscribe to Westernisation and follow what Westerners expected. Wow! The… Oxford graduate really told the colonizers off!

On “Anti-imperialist” westerners

AI will not impose Reaganite neoliberal measures because that already happened. AI can’t discontinue every single chinese-linked project because he doesn’t have the power to do so. The prominence of bourgeois Malay-muslim money that went into all these projects further secures the development of these projects.

Most of the “development” (including some of the BRI projects) as well, are high-rises like the country hasn’t already seen 10 million condominiums for the T20 (top 20%, see previous link). A lot of them are for the inflated and speculative property market in Malaysia. It was for political convenience that these programs were determined to be part of BRI, NOT something China itself proposed. Not to mention the flagship ECRL project was continued.

If you actually followed Malaysian politics, read the coalition manifestoes, it would have been obvious that none of the parties had any form of bare privatisation policy in mind. All of them are an eclectic mix of social democratic policies. Of course, manifestos are not representative of what the coalition will actually do - a limitation of bourgeois democracy, I might add - but it is still useful to see what the parties think is valued to Malaysian voters.

Furthermore, the New Atlas uses statements from AI as fact. Of course the dude in front of anglos would be a neoconservative war hawk. I can easily find quotes of him being a centrist liberal in local media.

Like here, and here (from the Turkish Anadolu Agency), and here:

The new government’s foreign policy will be largely shaped by Anwar himself. Since Malaysia’s foreign policy is highly consistent and institutionalised, his approach to foreign affairs will be like that of his predecessors but with his characteristic energy and self-confidence. …and here: “(Of course) he (Anwar) will expand the process of diversifying our economic dependence and trade relations with other major economic players in Asean, India and the US.” […] “China is an important neighbour. Of course it’s a priority to enhance bilateral, trade, investment and cultural relations with China,” said Anwar. “I would not just leave (ties with China) as it is. (They) need to be enhanced.”

Even in the clip of the IRI the New Atlas referred to, they mentioned how other US agencies (USAID) said that the current Malaysian governments were friendly to the US, and they didn’t want to jeopardise the relationship. Great choice we have here in a bourgeois democracy, Western-friendly reactionary right or Western-friendly reactionary right enabler.

Like Malaysia’s 2021 GDP PPP per capita (29000) is closer to states like Russia and Turkey (33000, 31000) than even her immediate neighbours (Indonesia, 13000, and Phillipines, 9000). GDP isn’t everything, but you need to understand, the Malaysian ruling class has matured and isn’t composed of weak neocolonial compradors (mostly). We don’t even have a prominent communist or socialist opposition in the government like in Turkiye or Russia. It is simply ridiculous to support the bourgeois Malaysian government.

As for the bersih movement, that is much more complicated. Again, like other protests, it came from a genuine result of the bourgeois dictatorship. The nature of protests I think are much more organic than it is made out to be. Somehow when the rakyat face succeeding economic downturns, marketisation of welfare, racialized and spatialized gap between rich and poor, rising living costs, and corruption and rentierism, the assessment is: akshually this is all concocted by the West and we should support a bourgeois government because they are marginally not as anti-Chinese geopolitically (even that is subjected towards the government’s own need to villify and scapegoat the chinese minority and I remain unconvinced that Najib was anymore pro-Chinese and anti-West than his predecessors).

The protests was done through a so-called united front, including Marxist and socialist, as well as petty bourgeois-liberal and social democratic elements. So the claim that the Marxists involved in organising, who had faced police harassment, threats of death penalty, and arbitrary detention throughout their entire lives, are actually “Western agents” is not only tone-deaf about the Malaysian political reality, but screams Western chauvinism.

In Malaysian politics, foreign funding is a constant political trope levelled against the opposition. It’s nothing new. Not saying its wrong but acting like Malaysians don’t care is simply wrong. There were already concerns raised about NED funding of AI by Malaysians prior to the western “anti-imperialist” saviours! Right-wingers in this country especially love talking about foreign intervention (unless it’s disguised under US-allied Saudi Wahhabist flavour).

The government had always accused anyone critical of them for destabilization and other red scare propaganda to scare the people into submission. But the government are the good guys! The protests are bad because some people and organisations that participated in the protest took some NED money! Ignore that the major orgs have stopped taking NED money after IRI-NED connections were discovered. Regardless, the Marxist orgs involved of course had no NED funding. Imagine if this was Amerikan politics, and someone insisted that you vote for the Libertarian party because they are isolationist (ie. they have a “good” foreign policy), not recognising this is part of the election cycle of Western bourgeois dictatorships. Dissent is allowed, and isolationist tendencies are just a reactionary response to labour aristocrats receiving less of the imperial profits.

In the talk of Malaysian elections, ignoring the alternative coalition, headed by a radicalised and chauvinistic PAS is a grave error. It simply is dangerous for the party who wants to introduce Sharia to all people in the country to be in charge. Not only is that unwanted by the ethnic minorities and the bumiputera of East Malaysia, it is this right-wing political Islam that may actually pivot Malaysian foreign policy more to the West. They act like typical religious chauvinistic political movements. They perpetuate red scare propaganda and ostracize Jews and the Chinese. It is a no-brainer that in the long term their interests lie more with the West, considering recently in their party propaganda they claim that Communist colonialism was worse than the Western colonialism. I probably don’t need to explain why that is wrong and dangerous now do I?

And all these westerners have the gall to say that Malaysians are propagandized! Yes they are! But they are propagandized by the denial of the explicitly left-wing and communist movements that gave our independence! They are propagandized about neoliberal capitalism and democracy! They are misled by those who resort to ethnic chauvinism for their support!

What Malaysians want is continual equitable prosperity and modernisation. Stability and peace is highly valued. This weird fear mongering that AI will want war with China, when it runs counter to the aims of the Malaysian ruling class and the rakyat, is ridiculous. China has been Malaysia’s largest trading partner, and Malaysia has been China’s largest ASEAN partner, for a decade plus. Although we form part of the FPDA, and host an Australian military base (which also counter the assertions that previous Malaysian governments were anti-western in the first place), these bilateral arrangements are well, bilateral, and a more comprehensive military partnership is domestically unpopular. It is only the Global North that has a fully developed Military Industrial Complex.

Malaysian opinion polls show that they have a positive opinion of China and US for years now as well. Although I wish Malaysians would hate the US more, these polls show how non-alignment, not playing into Amerikan geopolitical games, is popular.

So when they talk about Malaysia - clueless of its history and culture, doesn’t attempt to understand the complexity of a postcolonial semi-peripheral state - is it not just eurocentrism? What’s with this fear-mongering about AI’s ascension like you have an attention span of a liberal (one election season)?

Conclusion and discussion

The culmination of events that led to AI's prime ministership was a result of decades long bourgeois rule. It was inevitable. Communalist/racialist politics perpetuated by the British and ruling classes after independence is inherently unsustainable and destructive for society.

To simply attribute it to US influence is simplistic and signifies a lack of knowledge and understanding of southeast asian and Malaysian politics, and reeks of eurocentrism in which the only thing they seem to know about the country is that the flag looks similar to the Amerikan flag.

Malaysian, and in general SEA politics, is a result of numerous upon numerous contradictions of colonialism and capitalism. This is reflected through our politics. Please do not import your understandings of geopolitics, colonialism and capitalism from the Americas and Europe. Like it’s amazing that a Trotskyist website was more accurate, which is a low-bar considering their most profound analysis is “Malaysians should rise up against their bourgeoisie”!

Malaysia normalised relations with communist countries after the cold war, and is part of the NAM and ASEAN, which may have had anti-communist roots, but by the late 1990s had changed with the ascension of Laos and Viet Nam. Malaysian foreign policy has been largely consistent since then, and will continue to maintain certain “non-negotiables” such as Palestinian support and a safe distance between any great power (neutrality).

Euro-Amerikan news media likes to picture foreign politics as solely about them and their anxieties. It must always be about China-US relations. It must always be about them because people in the global south don’t make history, only northerners do!