“Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

COMMENT | There is this old Buddhist shrine on the roadside in a sometimes quiet but often bustling suburb in Petaling Jaya. It has been there for decades. Nobody really knows who built it.

For decades in this racially diverse neighbourhood, the roadside shrine had endured. School children passed by it on their way to and from school. Adults drove past it on their way to work and on the drive back.

There was nothing extraordinary about it; it was just there, and...