Project Malaysia Commentary: Another article has the same ideas as mine

Okay I’ve been going through a few preliminary reactions to the last Mahathir post. So I decided to go see what other people have been writing on, and I go visit a site I’ve been meaning to go read iup a bit on, which is Project Malaysia.

First, to plug project Malaysia. It’s basically a web journal — journal in the sense of “academic journal”. The articles are wordy and they try to straddle a middle ground between readability and depth. Around this time, the articles are based on the theme of “Politics of Race”.

So I have some thoughts on some articles posted there, enough to cobble together a substantial blog post. So here we go:

New Revolutionaries – The Solution to Race PoliticsBy Zubin Rada Krishnan

This new notion of ‘we’ based on race-blind trust in contrast to the old battlefield of ‘us versus them’ may not however, manifest naturally. We need revolutionaries [...] ordinary people who stand up and take action to grow our civil society and our stock of social capital. From the mundane rock band fan clubs and local badminton leagues, these new revolutionaries will rise forth and usurp considerations of race from their routines, fostering trust across race lines so that it becomes a force of habit.

Zubin Rada Krishnan is the article I refer to in the title of this blogpost. We basically come to the same conclusions: bridge the ethnic divide at the social, civil society level. Both of us basically draw from Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, which itself is a modern interpretation of Tocqueville (and has over 3500 citations on Google Scholar). Instead of Putnam’s bowling leagues, he sneakily puts in badminton leagues. It’ll be a sad day when Malaysians practice badminton alone

There is a difference between his piece and mine. I make the causal chain longer — not necessarily a good thing. His argument essentially is “stronger civil society, stronger trust, less racism”, true to the theme of this volume of Project Malaysia. My argument begins from a democracy-administration point of view, in which racism is treated as a subservient issue to being able to make good decisions democratically. In less words, “stronger civil society, stronger trust, less racism, better democracy, no need for authoritarian rulers”.

His piece is also overtly political, in the sense that he uses rhetoric. He’s compelling Malaysians to be the social change that we want to see in Malaysia. However, he hasn’t given several ideas on how to bridge that social divide. I’m going to attempt some new ideas here.

I’m going to throw in a bit of Gramsci here. Tocqueville’s useful to a point, but Gramsci is the real deal in social revolutions. As a communist revolutionary, he wrote his stuff while the government kept him in prison. My lecturer even tells me that when she first read it, it explained the universe.

He basically goes that THIS MEANS IDEOLOGICAL WAR. We fight not only class warfare, but also in ideas. This basically means that just because our ideas are great doesn’t mean that everybody will immediately love them. We’ve got to get down to the trenches and make sure they spread good and well. Guess where the trenches are?

They’re in the ideological apparatus of the state. Basically, it’s the institutions in which ideas are indirectly taught to people, often flying below the radar of politics, such as schools, churches, the state-sanctioned media, and what not. As revolutionaries, we’ve got to dig through all these institutions that give ideological support to the state and seed our ideas.

What does that mean to Malaysians who want to see a Malaysia for Malaysians?

• National service isn’t such a bad idea. Just need to stop kids from DYING and remove that idiotic nation-building module. No nation-building module is sufficiently taught at the pre-university level.
• Let’s start an United Malaysians National Organization NOW. We’ll acronym it UMaNO.
• More local exchange programmes. Between rural and urban homes, and between races. No matter what.
• Really brush up your Malay. or English, to the point of near-native proficiency.
• In fact, I really need to bridge the English-speaking Chinese and Chinese-speaking Chinese divide.
• Non-Malays need to start attending Malay things and vice-versa.
• Like each other’s night markets. Are there any Chinese dudes who go kapchai racing with the mat rempits?
• Start attending talks on which race-religion is a topic and be civil. Non-Muslims, attend talks on political Islam. We need to make sure we’re not silently mistreated. Dittto for Muslims.
• If it means no beer or hard drinks so that Malay Muslims attend, so be it (can’t believe I just WROTE that.) On the other hand, can we be not so hard up on the non-halal food being served?
• make a bloody effort to make friends.
• If there is somebody of another race who’s a minority, be extra nice to them. Yes, don’t take them for granted unless they fit perfectly in. (Actually, this applies regardless of ethnicity.)
• Take up smoking just to have a chance to talk to people of all races. (not recommended).
• When touring Malaysia, go ask your friends for contacts to show you around. Preferably not your own ethnicity.

Okay, I can’t churn anymore. Next article up tomorrow. I’m trying to pre-write it and automate publication.