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Our democracy is bereft of ideas.

Civil society movements that claim to champion our democratic rights are plagued by a new kind of crisis. The latest #TangkapNajib, with its focus on an ad hominem attack is a prime example. Suffering from a paucity of ideas, civil disobedience has replaced intellectual discourse as the paradigmatic form of protestation against state hegemony. The anger is palpable. Yet anger when not driven by ideas and done in an erudite manner is unsustainable.

The fetishisation of civil disobedience in Western media is fanning an unprecedented rise of interest in mass demonstration against the state in Malaysia. Everywhere, there is an ongoing incarceration of ‘thinkers’ who are derided as ‘unhelpful’ and ‘cowards’.

Firshow essentialises the hatred against ‘ivory-tower-types’ most accurately when he said that “thought is essentially spectatorial, a matter of watching rather than doing". Yet, violence and disobedience is ephemeral. Only ideas are infectious. Only ideas are permanent.

The Arab Spring, hailed as a ray of hope in a despondent region by most mainstream media in the West immediately fell short of expectations soon after old regimes were toppled and new ones were elected.

The use of bodies as a tool of protestation and occupation, though crucial to democratic change, immediately disappoints when confronted with the reality of today’s politics. The embodiment of revolutionary spirit cannot reside only in physical bodies. A concurrent intellectual revolt against the oppressors is an important counterbalance to the usually unruly, directionless mass protests.

Ours is a democracy without ideas. Intellectuals at public institutions, whose tenure are financed through public funds, are cowed into submission and silence over grave social injustice. Contented with merely publishing to a limited audience, they have absolved themselves off political responsibilities.

This is a far cry from the conception of an ‘ideal city’ by Plato, who hypothesised that “there will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world...”.

In their place are pseudo-intellectuals who populate the columns of mainstream media and alternative online media. Usually espousing empty truisms instead of enlightened commentary, they do not live up to their role as the supposed mediator of public opinion.

In politics, power is accumulated in the hands of the most populist leaders, not those who offer visionary leadership. Our ideas on how to run the country are so backward whenever someone merely hint at a moderate stance, they are celebrated as if they are the Messiah to our predicament.

The reality is that political discourse in other countries have developed leaps and bounds ahead of ours. Nazir Razak’s opinions, celebrated with such great fanfare, are simply uninspiring in a different space and time.

We cannot just resist the current regime and their oppressive ways. We have hit rock bottom, but this is an opportunity offer radically new proposals to how we want our society shaped. Resistance to the regime is futile, only ideas are resilient.


LAY SHENG YAP is a government student at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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