“The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies.”

- John Lescroart, ‘A Plague of Secrets’

In my last article, which was inspired by Peter Bergen’s use of Robert Paxton’s model of European fascism, I attempted my own take on why I think that Umno and fascism are intimately linked. In this article, I continue the task. Mind you, I am not saying that under PM Najib Abdul Razak, that Umno has become a fascist organisation, merely that the Najib regime in my opinion has moved Umno from the proto stage to that despotic state that Washington has always found a way to deal with.

The three remaining points are:

“The belief of one group that it is the victim, justifying any action.”

Umno has always justified its “struggle” on the disenfranchisement of the Malay polity. Post-1969 policies have been instituted that favoured the Malay polity because of arguments of marginalisation.

Race-based policies like the New Economic Police (NEP) - however you define it - quota systems, manipulation of electoral boundaries, the racial gerrymandering of the civil and security services, the politicisation of the education system, the biased land distribution and the Ali Baba system, are but some of the policies that favour the Malay community but in reality have formed an elite Umnoputra class.

I have written about this Umno orthodoxy and really, nobody in Umno could dispute this: "Anyway, the Umno representative Razlan Rafii made two banal observations which best define Malay supremacy which was (1) ‘This is our struggle, we should press on without stopping. When do we stop? When the NEP achieves 30 percent (equity for Malays)’ and (2) ‘This is our country, if we want to talk about the struggle for Malays, then the special privileges should not be questioned and it should be granted to Malays indefinitely.’”

Look at it this way. When Bagan delegate Hamidah Arshad said, "What's happening now is that other races are holding top positions and this means contractors, consultants and lawyers appointed are all from their race" - what she is saying is that government-controlled enterprises should cater to Malays only and that positions of power should only be in “Malay” hands.

In other words, this is not a government for the people of Malaysia but rather the government for the Malays. Furthermore, this is merely more evidence that Umno uses the government for its own ends and that government policy is predicated on the desires of a single race-based political party and not in a coalition of equals.

This siege type mentality is well documented, but remember the only people holding the Malay community to ransom is Umno. This is why someone like Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin has to tell ‘Malays” not “to be so defensive”, and for Malay polemics to be only about always being weak and in need of continuous assistance.

The problem here is not that this is a question about Malay polemics. It is a question of Umno policies that enable a defensive mindset and a false sense of superiority. To quote Lim Teck Ghee (again), someone who has made it his business to challenge Umno orthodoxy, “It is understandable why Perkasa and similar parasitic groups are raging away at the corporate equity issue. The ultra-nationalist movement badly needs issues that can burnish its credentials as the protector of Malay interests and derail the structural reforms the country needs to flourish.”

“The need for authority by natural leaders (always male) culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny.”

This is a little tricky. The question I get very often is why I do not write about the prime minister’s wife. Why don’t I write “scathing” pieces about Rosmah Mansor? The opposition narrative is that she is the power behind the Umno throne but since most times I try to stay away from yellow journalism,  I have no desire to attack the prime minister’s wife. I will judge the prime minister on his deeds and actions.

Anyway, this is tricky because this particular criteria gets a bit muddled because unlike some Muslim countries where there have been women as heads of states, the Wahhabi-inspired Islam practiced here in Malaysia acts as a glass ceiling when it comes to women politicians. 

Male bigotry is accepted as a natural means to uphold race and religion and male sexism is condoned by a state-sanctioned religion and Islamic political parties that ensure that Muslim women’s rights are crippled in an effort to maintain gender and religious superiority.

Meanwhile PAS, an Islamic cult masquerading as a political party, has always had a problem with political prisoner Anwar Ibrahim’s wife as the leader of the opposition. Add to this, the Umno ideology that only Umno can lead the Malay community and only Umno can defend Islam, you are in a perfect storm of racism and misogyny.

So the deeper question is, is fascism embedded in Malay culture or has the Umno establishment merely exploited the variables in the Malay community - or all Asian communities for that matter - that encourages subservience, communalism, prejudice and toxic displays of racialism?

“The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will when they are devoted to the group's success.”

The sight of that “idiot” Jamal ‘red-shirt’ Yunos, to quote Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli, strutting about in the Wanita Umno assembly should tell you everything you need to know about Umno and its use of violence. I have no doubt that “several Wanita Umno delegates could be heard thanking Jamal for standing up for their leader “because to Umno standing up for something means acting out violently like a child”.

Under the Najib regime, the use of violence by outsourced thugs has become the new normal. Whereas threats of violence have always been an Umno staple, the new reality is that not only will Umno use the security apparatus to silence dissent, but it will use its outsourced thugs to curtail the democratic rights of Malaysians, which is exactly what Jamal did when he waged a campaign of violence and intimidation on Bersih 5.

However, it goes beyond merely having outsourced thugs to enforce your will. It is about the state using violent incidents to encourage a sense of racial hegemony. An example of this would be the Low Yat fiasco where a (now) convicted felon was used as an example of why the Malay community needed special privileges and the setting up of Low Yat 2 to demonstrate the sympathy that Umno has for the supposed underlying anger of Malay thugs.

As I wrote in a piece a couple of months ago, at the height of the red-shirt rampage, “this idea that the criminal underclass and political power - some would argue that there is no difference - within Umno is not something new except that these days the latter legitimises the former. This is why an organisation like the red-shirts have free reign. They do not answer to anyone except Umno potentates and they fear no repercussions from the security apparatus because as (Umno veteran Tengku) Razaleigh (Hamzah) said, ‘jangan memandang rendah kepada kerajaan kerana mereka ada kuasa’.”

Ultimately, of course, we are still a kind of democracy. We still have elections, however compromised they may be. There is still a glimmer of hope that people will overwhelmingly vote for change and this will overwhelm whatever electoral shenanigans the Umno regime indulges in or that perhaps, an awakening from the East will destabilise the Umno’s grip on power.

For the meantime, the long Umno watch continues.

Yesterday: Umno and the fascist state, Part 1

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.