Catholic Bishop Dr Paul Tan Chee Ing has deplored the “rising tide of McCarthyism” in the country that he said was let loose by the tendency to see adversaries where none exist and to “divert attention from actual causes of conflict to imaginary ones”.

“This strain of intolerance that has arisen from a tendency to see adversaries where none exist has led to a lot of accusations being levelled without substantiation against sundry groups,” said the head of the Catholic Church in the Malacca-Johor diocese.

(‘McCarthyism’ refers to the phenomenon of hysteria directed at imaginary enemies that US Senator Joe McCarthy made infamous in the 1950s simply by charging scores of loyal Americans with being proxies for Soviet communism. The poisonous phenomenon was responsible for causing people of otherwise unimpeachable loyalty to be viewed as suspect, and of blighting promising careers.)

“This McCarthyism has spawned a psychosis of fear that there are afoot in our society a whole lot of conspiracies and threats,” opined the Jesuit-trained prelate.

“When you look at things objectively, there has been no proof of the existence of these conspirators and of the menace they pose to our security,” he claimed.

sabah sulu lahad datu invasion intrusion standoff mop up operation 100313 “Thus far the only manifest threat was posed by a ragtag bunch of intruders who when they first came ashore in Sabah were welcomed as benign interlopers and when they overstayed, were set upon as aggressors,” continued the bishop.

“Other than that incident earlier this year, we have had no evidence of the existence of threats to our equilibrium than the unproven ones of Christian proselytisation of Muslims, the clamour for equality of treatment from people of different sexual orientation, and now the threat posed by supposedly deviant Islamic sects.

“In other words, the fevered imagination of a few is allowed to run riot and conjure up all sorts of threats to our country,” he claimed.

“I think this is to divert attention from the actual causes of conflict to imaginary ones so that the real perpetrators of evil can get away with their machinations.”

“I’m saying this to all who are involved in public affairs because it touches on the moral question of who’s telling the truth and who’s telling lies,” concluded the bishop.