Chinese are Jews: A Malaysian syllogism for Ketuanan
Anti-Chinese racism in Malaysia has this historic, lasting quality in varied forms: before, in stereotypical portrayal of Chinese as gangsters, prostitutes, towkays, usurious money-lenders (‘Ah Longs’); today, gamblers and Jews.
By Shuzheng
Morality of this tale: You were right to emigrate; it’s still safer elsewhere.
Ng Wei Aik is state assemblyman and aide to Penang chief minister Lim Guan Eng. This fact is of no fundamental political consequence until, one day soon after Israel’s military operation against the Gaza flotilla, he saw that his party, the DAP, had beaten Najib Razak to the clock. The prime minister was being tardy, Ng complained. “He took 12 hours to register his anger,” a news portal quoted Ng on Najib’s remarks (the prime minister had twitted his response).
In another way of saying the same thing, the DAP was quicker on the draw. If Najib is slower, then by inference, his heart may not be with the Palestinians, that is, Muslims. If not with Muslims, who with? Conversely, DAP people like Ng cast the impression that they think of Muslims every moment of their waking hours. So touching….
Now it seems domestic politics is beginning to be measured in terms of hours taken to react and to issue a condemnation. And that over an ancient, Jewish-Muslim conflict nearly half a world away and reignited more than half a century ago, it having sparked when Malaysia was not even in existence.
Ng’s posturing is sign that the country is off on yet another trajectory in demonizing Chinese and in Sino-Malay relations. Anti-Chinese racism in Malaysia has this historic, lasting quality in varied forms: before, in stereotypical portrayal of Chinese as gangsters, prostitutes, towkays, usurious money-lenders (‘Ah Longs’); today, gamblers and Jews.
Most tellingly it is DAP’s scathing attacks on Israel that beat even the usual hate mongering coming from Umno and PAS/PKR.
This is to the credit of the Gaza flotilla, which offered a window of opportunity to propel Malaysia into arriving at the milestone in Chinese-Malay relations – a milestone reaffirmed on the streets earlier this month in demonstrations against Israel (against Jews really), and almost simultaneously in the Ketuanan Melayu propaganda papers: Jews equal Chinese.
He who started it
Mahathir Mohamad has been one of the earliest to bed the Chinese and the Jewish diaspora – his two pet hate projects. His most recent rants against both Jews and Chinese are today preambled and chorused by other Malaysians, notably Mohd Ridhuan Tee Abdullah (left), and Muslims and Chinese Christians who are staunchly anti-Jew.
From a lone Mahathir project before, it’s gone truly Malaysian. DAP, PKR, Chinese, everybody appears to have unanimously jumped on the bandwagon, or should we say the flotilla?
Equating Jew and Chinese, Ridhuan Tee says upfront: “the Jews are already right in front of our eyes”. To rub it in for the Chinese, he praises Hilter and fascism.
Ng, of course, did not equate Jew and Chinese. In suggesting that Najib was slow on the Palestinian, Muslim side, he has to mean, equally, the man was hesitant to stand against the Israeli Jews (recall the Apco episode).
It isn’t just the religious undertone. More pertinently, Ng invokes the default moral position – Jews are oppressors, Muslims oppressed – that puts him, on parallel in point of principle to Ridhuan Tee: one side oppressors, the other side oppressed. This requires little imagination to name the two sides.
In consequence, Ng contributes to feather the very bed made by Mahathir – Jews equal Chinese – and which Ridhuan Tee now repeats to no end.
