#so-called progressives

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/opinion/trump-biden-protests.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage 

“Waah, waah. The far left is actually having a moment in politics! I hate that!”  

That is the tone this article essentially takes, and it’s disgusting.   

Seriously, any “progressive” who votes for Trump because “waaah! I can’t stand the idea of the far left!” is not a true progressive, period. 

Because a vote for Trump is a vote for fascism. It is a vote for poor handling of the pandemic. It is a vote for racism, for anti-LGBT policies, for rolling back healthcare. It is a vote for everything progressives are AGAINST. 

I’m not shaming anyone who is ACTUALLY center-left here.I don’t expect everyone who is on the left to be super, super leftist. That would be impossible. 

 But I am shaming people who would vote for such a monster because “waaah! I don’t like socialism! I don’t like intersectional politics! WAAAAH! The only leftists should be center leftists!” 

Because the far left has ALWAYS penetrated politics. Things that are “center-left” nowadays were once very far left. 

Only a couple of decades ago, not being bigoted towards the LGBT community was considered “far left”. 

Being okay with interracial marriage used to be “far left”.  Women having jobs, credit cards, and financial independence was considered “far left”.  Hell, black people having civil rights used to be “far left”. 

At just over 50 years, Malaysia is relatively young as far as countries go. Malaysians, however, behave like they are “younger”: like a primary school kid who runs to his mum complaining, teary-eyed, every time another kid calls him names or says something nasty about her.

That “mum” is the government, and a recent example of such a kid is the Penang Hindu Association (PHA) which demanded the Home Ministry ban posters of a Jimi Hendrix album cover.

Didn’t anybody tell them that they were about 47 years too late?

(deep breath)

Ahh, Zurairi. I promised that I'd post something about this when it came out, because believe me, I have things to say about this whole fracas. And, as it turns out, at how you and many Malaysians who identify themselves as progressive have approached this situation.

I love how so many progressive Malaysians characterise the anger and hurt that religious groups like the PHA feel towards capitalist Westerners who take symbols they consider divine and repackage them into… I suppose the word you're looking for is “brand differentiators”. I mean, it's not as if Hinduism is the only religion that gets this sort of unwelcome attention: of course, we know that it happens to Muslims, it happens to Hindus and heck, it even happens to Buddhists. Basically what happens is that some Westerner decides to mine into the cultures of the Global South, strips it out of its cultural context, and then makes the performance of the “exotic” culture All About Themselves. Heck, I've even waded in and discussed the possibility that many Muslims may have with Erykah Badu “disrespecting” the Arabic name of God as a part of that Western tendency to pick and choose from “exotic” religions as a method of self-expression1.

And there are things that we can go about the way Zurairi characterises the anger that groups like the PHA and groups that are “offended” by crass attempts by Westerners2 who attempt to strip-mine the cultural elements of a culture that, over 50 years ago, was characterised as less-than-civilised and in some cases less-than-human. I mean, remember — we've had over several hundred years of being told that our cultures and belief systems were “superstitious” and heretical, and then suddenly bam, we get Westerners coming in and being better at our belief systems than we are, and we're not supposed to be angry? Imagine that. That Western interpretations and appropriations of “exotic” cultures will likely face less resistance and get more air-time than the same expressions that the colonised have struggled with for so long… one wonders where the anger could have come from. And, when voicing their anger and displeasure in whatever fashion, to be infantilised, to be silenced, to be told that this is how one should live one's religion…

Understand something. My stance on the actions of religious groups towards illustrations of “disrespect” on their sacred symbols remains the same — that while you can criticise and express anger, the kind of action proposed — bans and some kind of mechanism where some ideas are “too sensitive” to discuss — is dangerous and leads to a slippery slope where freedom of speech is curtailed. Which is important, because sometimes you need to bring into light the abuses any religious group3 performs. But just because a person is angry or hurt doesn't give you the right to mock them for being “children”, or “uneducated” or weak. If there's anything that we picked up from our colonisers, it's our craven acceptance that emotional and verbal abuse would make vulnerable people “stronger” or “more mature”. Sometimes, more abuse on people abused just breaks them down further, and means more violence is handed down, often with unexpected consequences.

Indeed, this whole situation is an illustration of how far we need to go. But it's not just about how Malaysians need to navigate on “being offended”, but how much work we need to do in decolonising ourselves and dismantling the harmful systems we have inherited. And until we do that, this sort of shit will keep resurfacing, and we'll keep reproducing the same old conflicts and making the same old mistakes, over and over again.

Several commentators in the comments of that post, and in later conversations with me have pointed out, rightly, that the anti-blackness that permeates Malay-Muslim culture, along with the hyper-visibility of black American culture that contributes to their oppression should also be considered in the conversation. And they're right. The fact that Malaysians got angry more with Badu appropriating Muslim symbols and imagery than say, Lady Gaga is telling. But then again, considering the fact that Badu's look references an Alejandro Jodorowsky work is… you know. White mystics. The mess when different marginalised groups use the works of appropriating privileged groups in ways that hurt other marginalised groups can get deeply tangled indeed. ↩︎

And I don't know if the late Hendrix had anything to do with the design of the poster. It could really have been a Western A&R executive, or someone else, or whatever. We can't really be sure anyway, because he's dead. Do we even know where the money for those poster sales go? Wherever it is, it probably doesn't go back to its originators. ↩︎