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| Mahathirism, other regimes and transcending mainstream politics by John Hilley Aliran Monthly 2003:9 Please support our work by buying a copy of our print publication, Aliran Monthly, from your nearest news-stand. Better still take out a subscription now. We also welcome donations.
Yet, perhaps the student of politics (in the widest sense of the term) may find a more educational legacy to draw on from Mahathirism and its place within the prevailing global disorder: namely, how this and other political projects have all utilised elements of hegemonic persuasion and coercive domination to sustain them. Deception, imperialism and the rise of the "crazies" The wicked persecution, trial and associated witch-hunts surrounding the Anwar affair gave the Malaysian populace some rare glimpse into the repressive capacities of the BN state. Over in London, meanwhile, the recent Hutton inquiry allowed some notional insights into just what Blair and the faceless civil servants of death are capable of when it comes to asserting British corporate interests abroad, notably in support of arms and oil. In true Whitehall style, even this ‘free-ranging’ investigation looked more like the usual ‘gentlemen’s inquiry’. It was a sanitised sham which pored over every syllable and intonation of the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan’s ‘45-minute’ account and looked for a scapegoat within the Ministry of Defence for David Kelly’s suicide. But the inquiry studiously avoided the real charge of deception by the British state and its wilful sanctioning of terror, including the dropping of cluster bombs on a defenceless people. Web of deceit We should not be misled by simplistic notions of Britain as some supposed poodle in this and other imperial adventures. Readers in any doubt about what I’m saying here should find themselves a copy of Mark Curtis’s brilliant exposé, Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World. They might then better understand what this secretive, authoritarian regime has been up to, not just in its past colonial exploits, but in spreading poverty, misery and death around the globe today. They can be in the guise of an ‘ethical foreign policy’, which arms dictators and supports other repressive regimes. Or it can be in the form of an active lead in asserting neoliberal condition-alities on poor developing countries under the pretext of a caring aid agenda. Drawing on recently declassified documents, Curtis shows that the level of British scheming and brutality on behalf of colonial business in, for example, Malaya, Kenya, Iran, British Guiana (now Guyana) and Indonesia was much more serious than previously realised. Likewise, he brings us up to date with some of the UK’s more recent interventions, such as the supply of Hawk jets and other instruments of death to Indonesia, thus allowing its Kopassus special forces to carry out their repression in East Timor, West Papua and Aceh. Alongside this are the non-interventions, such as Britain’s lead in seeking the removal of vital UN peace-keeping forces in Rwanda, a strategy which on-the-ground NGOs and key military personnel specifically link to the ensuing genocide and deaths of a million people. Single-ideology totalitarian state And if Malaysians are rightly sick and tired of what passes for critical enquiry in their own media, they might like to reflect on the British media. Despite the supposed standard-bearing independence of the press here, barely a single word of criticism was offered in the mainstream or ‘qualities’ over Britain’s complicity in the Rwandan slaughter. In the face of intense public hostility, the media’s view of Blair’s recent Iraq actions may have been more searching, but the rationalisations and veiled apologias are no less apparent. It is a mark of the sustained and entrenched notion of liberal democracy in the West, a set of ideals variously filtered through the mainstream and liberal media, that most people could not possibly countenance the idea of Blair as a war criminal.
Hypocrisies in Malaysia too Mahathirism has, likewise, treated us to many such deceptions and hypocrisies in seeking to legitimate its project. Examples of these could been seen in the attacks on IMF neoliberalism while using all the opportunities of privatisation and deregulation to entrench corporate wealth among the favoured elite. Or witness the cooperation with Bush to establish an ‘anti-terror’ centre in KL, while claiming, that, under the guise of a US security agenda, “our culture, our religion and other things will become the target”. From the purges on Harakah and Malaysiakini to the detention of opposition dissidents and alleged Islamic plotters, the list of repression and political malfeasance goes on. It’s all familiar practice, though no less real or painful for the brave people locked up in Kamunting under the ISA for daring to question it. Yet, at the same time, we have the disgraceful spectacle of Guantanamo Bay, a Nazi-style concentration camp run by strong-arm US soldiers; a place, defended as morally justifiable by the UK, where men (and even children) are incarcerated, incommunicado, without recourse to basic human rights and legal conventions. Meanwhile in the UK, the Criminal Justice Act (2000) is being used with impunity to detain and harass Islamic citizens and peace activists, while providing a convenient pretext for hounding, humiliating and deporting desperate asylum seekers, many here as a result of Britain’s own foreign policies. 
There is also, of course, the frightening spectacle of the Bush regime itself, with its blueprint Project for a New American Century (see www.newamericancentury.org). It is a game plan for unprecedented imperial expansion, which has seen the loss of multiple thousands of lives and a world destabilised to the point of nuclear confrontation.
Helped along by Bush’s invocations of homeland and Christian righteousness, Sept 11 has created the political moment for people like Rumsfeld, Perle, Feith, Bolton, Wolfowitz and others within the PNAC cabal. This is a circle commonly referred to as “the crazies” by Ray McGovern, a senior ex-CIA adviser and friend to Bush the elder, during his time in office (as offered in a recent discussion with John Pilger). Accepting the novelist Norman Mailer’s recent assertion, McGovern also warns that America may now, indeed, be heading towards a state of “fascism”. Coercion and/or consent My main point here is a simple one: that all political elites are capable of deception, repression and, ultimately, state-directed killing in defence of their regime interests. The primary purpose of the political elite within the overall structure of power is to protect political-corporate interests, including, of course, their own, and to police any emergent dissent. Likewise, the task of mainstream politics and its media satellites is to manage the public, if not through popular persuasive appeal, then through outright deception and the inculcation of fear. Beyond tired liberal notions of political pluralism and the more artificial simplification of countries as either democratic or authoritarian, there is a continuum line between hegemony and domination. In its Gramscian sense, it illustrates how power is actually pursued and maintained, both through the increasingly vital space of civil organisation and the traditional state apparatus. The more effective route, in terms of legitimacy, is the hegemonic one, a form of social control based on persuasion and consent. This is more effective than domination, which involve more outright coercion and repression — the variable use of such being applicable at both domestic and global levels of power. Thus, we might note how the US/UK multilateral roadshow moved in persuasive mode around the UN, the ASEAN region and other locales in trying to build its ‘coalition of the willing’. Simultaneously, it worked on finessing its pre-existing plan for outright force and the invasion of Iraq. Similarly, while Howard was pursuing a (largely failed) populist war agenda in Australia, Canberra was already, like Blair, proceeding with deceptive intent in support of the Bush war plan. Here, in effect, supposedly accountable and democratic states have reverted to illegal actions and outright force to impose their interests. And so it is with Mahathirism, a project which has ably utilised civil persuasion, a mediated reward structure and other forms of hegemonic inclusion. But it is ever-vigilant with the big stick, moving ruthlessly into domination mode when required. Just as would-be democracies have shown their capacity for moving along this spectrum, so too has Mahathir and the UMNO/BN network, both domestically and in its negotiation of the changing international climate. Project riddled with contradiction Yet, if more qualitative legitimacy is to be gained from a hegemonic approach, the turn to domination, domestic and global, is always a more dangerous affair. This can be seen in the deepening malaise that Bush, Blair and Howard now find themselves in. Likewise for Mahathir. For beyond the dynamic images of high-digit growth and development, the invocations of Bangsa Malaysia, the Vision mantras, the tough-talk on Islamic terrorism and the crafted anti-US populism, this is a project riddled with contradiction and crises, leaving in its wake a number of deeply problematic legacies. There is, firstly, the long-term damage to UMNO from the Anwar debacle. UMNO/BN may proceed towards a further term (or terms) in office, but it has lost much of the moral (i.e. hegemonic) high ground, creating a more critical political generation in the process. The ruthless handling of Anwar, complemented by police intimidation, elite corruption and judicial bias, will remain a stain on the political elite’s character for a long time to come. The Anwar conviction may have served its purpose in checking a dangerous competitor and holding the ruling bloc together. But it has also allowed Malaysians a new understanding of the repressive side of the BN state. The second unpalatable truth for Mahathir is that for all his astute leadership, defence of modernist Islam and attempts to hold the Malay vote, he is responsible for the gathering shift of support to PAS. Indeed, interwoven with the Anwar saga, this political and ideological loss of ground to ‘PAS-Islam’ is probably the greatest calamity in UMNO’s history. Kelantan is unlikely to fall again in the foreseeable future to UMNO and Terengganu is likely to continue with PAS, while Kedah and Perlis may well endorse the PAS model in time. By splitting the Malays and allowing the emergence of a northern PAS bloc, Islam is now firmly implanted as a major political force in Malaysia. Thirdly, Mahathir’s exploitation of September 11 has seen questionable returns. As noted, the ‘war on terror’ has been used as a pretext for further clamping down on the general opposition; Mahathir, as with his Western political peers, playing the fear factor to its fullest advantage. But while Malaysians seem broadly supportive, there is also growing resentment at US presence in lands where Bush and his corporate associates do not belong. Mahathir, of course, carefully articulates that mood. Yet, as the West’s wider repressions continue, many Muslims, particularly educated Islamic youth, are also discovering new forms of political awareness through the mosque and other Islamic organisations. To a significant extent, this and religious fraternity with Muslims in other countries is part of an external Islamic politics that UMNO/BN have little control over. But, it is also a radicalism being sustained by Mahathir’s perceived doublespeak over Washington, just part of the difficult balancing act Abdullah Badawi et al will struggle with in carrying forward the ideals of moderate Malaysia and ‘Vision Islam’. Opposition and changing the mindset Besides the above view of power and structure, I’m rather drawn these days to the looser idea of ‘zenpolitics’; a kind of inner palliative for channelling one’s emotions and political anger in more compassionate ways. It’s a particularly disciplined task, I feel, when faced with evidence of what the crazies at the Pentagon and the neoliberal evangelists inside the IMF, World Bank and WTO are doing right now to our world and its people. Perhaps we might more optimistically look towards the heroic struggle of the Zapatistas in Mexico and the profound assertion of Subcommandante Marcos that the very existence of the autonomous zones in Chiapas is testament to the idea that another world is not only possible, but is already in a state of proto-formation. This reflects the kind of non-mainstream political thinking coming out of anti-globalisation activism at present — notably the World Social Forum. It provides us with the particular idea that while we may welcome, for example, Lula’s pledge to attack poverty in Brazil and support Chavez’s struggle in Venezuela against right wing unions, media and White House-backed School of Americas militia, we need to remain circumspect. We should be wary about trusting or placing all our tactical energies in mainstream politics or opposition politicians. Crisis of democracy Never before has conventional politics stood in such disrepute. And for good reason. In the West, this has been variously peddled by parties, parliamentarians, media scribes and career academics as a ‘crisis of democracy.’ Yet, as people, disillusioned by the marketisation of politics, like everything else, disengage en masse from the mainstream, their action can itself be viewed as a political statement, part of the growing refusal to acknowledge its relevance or usefulness. For many Malaysians, the push for even a modicum of democratic reform will, no doubt, take precedence over any such agenda. Understandably so. But, perhaps the opposition in Malaysia might also see this mood of discontent as a key impasse. It provides an opportune moment to move more engagingly towards the ‘new politics’ noted, a transition perhaps more worthy of discussion than the supposed differences anticipated between Mahathir’s and Abdullah Badawi’s versions of BN rule. In this regard, I sincerely wish the new Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People’s Justice Party) good fortune in their electoral endeavours and struggles against a vicious if often subtly repressive system. Alongside the courageous task undertaken by Wan Azizah, I find it gratifying to see a man of Syed Husin Ali’s intellect and moral stature at the forefront of a serious opposition grouping. If only the same could be said of what passes for political intellectuals here in New Labour Britain these days. Yet, as Syed Husin Ali might himself acknowledge, the idea of a truly democratic, forward-thinking party needs to connect leaders and led in ways that transcend machine politics and party managerialism. It has take on board the new mood of political thought now emerging. Again, removing the BN clique is a key objective. But there also has to be a new assertion of the political; that which taps into and complements the desire for a more participatory and qualitative politics. It is a politics that is neither mired in ethnic questions, the BN’s discourse of developmentalism or the minutiae of facile policy debates over relative tax adjustments and the like. This politics must instead be willing to confront the big intellectual issues of power, injustice and real social change, domestic and global. It must have a radical agenda that - like the thinking now coming out of the wider anti-globalisation movement - can at least make the conceptual leap from seeking to modify and patch up a corrupt, decaying system to dismantling and rebuilding it completely.
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The ruthless handling of Anwar, complemented by police intimidation, elite corruption and judicial bias, will remain a stain on the political elite’s character for a long time to come.
