Violence, Colonialism and Possible Histories
Commentary on The Rise of Fascism in Malaya (1971) by Partai Rakyat Malaya
Who wrote this piece and why?
The People's Party of Malaya (Partai Rakyat Malaya, PRM) is attributed to be the author of this article at the end of the document but there is no indication of who exactly wrote it. Likely candidates are Kassim Ahmad, the then leader of the party, or Ahmad Boestamam, the party’s prominent founder. The PRM has had a long history on the Malayan Left, tracing its linage to the foundational Kesatuan Melayu Muda, and having worked with the Labour Party of Malaya.
This article and its tone would not be surprising given the context in which it was written. The PRM was the target of attack by the UMNO-led state even before the riots of May 13, 1969. The first Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) gave the then British authorities cover to repress the radical left and militant labour elements. Ultimately, this repression would continue as the Federation of Malaya and later Malaysia gained its independence, all the way up till the near-complete destruction of the Malaysian Left in the 1980s.
Fascism in the Malaysian Context
This article by the PRM is, if nothing else, an interesting piece to reflect on given the current moment in Malaysian history. The collapse of Pakatan Harapan has seen the return to the hegemony of Malay nationalist parties within the state, marking a rise in police actions and harassment – think the #Lawan protestors and Fahmi Reza. While one might think that state repression was more severe in the past, it does not minimize the significance of the resurgence of the state’s political use of force to suppress dissent today and warrants some discussion about whether these actions constitute fascism.
The PRM author certainly had some cause to use fascism in his/her time. The extensive use of the police state to lock up opposition figures, left-wing activists and trade union leaders; the brutal repression of student activists; the mass mobilization of unemployed youth into the ‘Pemuda Tahan Lasak’; and of course, a rising ethnonationalism in the ranks of UMNO. Many of these actions have similar parallels to European fascism under Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy where right-wing street violence was combined with that of the state apparatus. During the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and his later vacating of the presidency – when his supporters stormed the congress on January 6th, 2021 – there was a lot of discussion in the US academic sphere on whether Trump was a fascist, many depended on which definition one used. (1)
A definition that is not often used, one by Aimé Césaire, a Black intellectual from Martinique, could be of some relevance in Malaysia’s post-colonial context. Robin D. G. Kelley writes in the introduction to his famous work, Discourse on Colonialism:
“Césaire provocatively points out that Europeans tolerated "Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack." So the real crime of fascism was the application to white people of colonial procedures "which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the 'coolies' of India, and the 'niggers' of Africa."”
Césaire links the colonial methods of repression to those used by the Nazis on the Jews, Gypsies and communists of Western nations. Similarly, Malaysian fascism could be viewed through the lens of reproducing the violence of the British – on the anti-colonial radicals, trade union leaders and the ordinary people who were put under oppressive internment in the New Villages – now carried out by the independent Malaysian political elite.
Possible histories of Malaysia
Though there seems to be no evidence to prove this, the use of inverted commas (“ “ / ‘ ’) with the word Malaysia and Singapore in the article seems to be the author’s possible hinting at these nations being colonial constructions. The PRM was in favour of ‘Melayu Raya’ and notions of Pan-Malay nationalism so the use of the inverted commas could also signal their temporary or artificial nature. It appears that the author still might have held out hope for a different Malaysia, one that was constructed on more progressive terms.
Malaysians today have no reference for what fascism looks like, making the use of the terms politically useless in public discourse. British and Japanese violence during their occupations were whitewashed and erased from the popular imagination and the national curriculum. Invoking the term fascism against state violence backed by right-wing Malay nationalism does not generate the alarm and attention it might otherwise get in other countries who have experienced it. What this article offers then is a glimpse into a ‘possible’ world that was, a world where the Kesatuan Melayu Muda, PRM and other left parties held hegemony over the definition of Malay nationalism and Malaysian nationalism, while UMNO and its offspring are rightly seen as fascist of one kind or another.
Footnotes:
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism This Wikipedia page does a decent job of laying out some popular definitions of fascism. See the ones by Umberto Eco, Leon Trotsky and George Orwell.
(2) https://libcom.org/files/zz_aime_cesaire_robin_d.g._kelley_discourse_on_colbook4me.org_.pdf Page 19-20