Of Being on the Left Side

Divided by ideology is like CROCS. Let me deliberate more on this bizarre observation. A diabetic fashionista would be torn to two in deciding whether she is brave enough to confront the cruel critics of how outdated Crocs are or drop the whole fashion worshipping and put on the crocs because those are medically endorsed footwear for diabetic patients. Make sense?

What I am trying to say is how having two ideological roads do not necessarily make sense in our multicultural world. Cold War was yesterday’s news. And what is more significant during this troubling contemporary time of ours is the fact that taking sides restrict our ability to reflect on our own weakness. We are privileged by the existence of “the others” in the sense that we have a perfect target for our moral blameworthiness. It’s like “yeah, I sucked at the peace talk but just because the other side did not stop yakking about the legitimacy of war”.

My two cents this time around has a lot to do with the revivalism of anti-communism propaganda in the country. It started off with the public furore over Chin Peng’s unwelcome homecoming, ironically with Malaysia-China’s diplomatic relation’s anniversary as the backdrop, the official raid of a poor fella’s hip stall in the Central Market that sells Mickey Mao tees, the attempt to filter and ban materials that are leaning to the left and finally…take a deep breath, the idea to erect memorials as reminder of the Communist guerilla insurgency in the country at strategic historical locations. I contemplate that the next move will be banning any items or objects (re: pencil colors included) that are red in color since it is a color associated to communism, but perhaps I overestimated our State’s mediocre attempt at distorting history, they stopped committing hilarious blunder just at the point where they claimed Chin Peng is a Brit. I suspect if he is, he would be a regular at those bars in Camden, planning guerilla wars in between indie gigs.

But, let us not be too excited about our lefty side. We felt in a way, a lot more better-conscience and moral-wise than say our corrupted nepotistic despotic right wingers. We are the subtle worshippers of the Superiority of the Victimhood Complex Syndrome indeed. However, that does not make us any more noble that our right winger when we fall short at condemning our comrades that in history, has been responsible for the death of thousands of civilians and the downfall of socialism credibility- Stalin, Mao,  and of course Saddam Hussein. Nick Cohen in his argumentative recent work entitled “What’s left?” has passionately  argued that in choosing sides during the first and second gulf war, the rule of thumb for the leftist movement during that time was “make sure we are not taking the west imperialist side”. Cohen argued how the failure of the Left to attack both the invasion by America on Iraq AND Saddam Hussein’s tyranny was not only a case of misplaced focus on the overall factors that led to the conflict but also a major blunder to the left intellectual culture. Priority might be offered as the underlying reason for allying with Saddam rather than the Empire, but try explaining about the priority of our socialist struggle to the hundred thousands of Kurds slain by the Baathists or millions of ordinary folks tortured under the Franco regime. Don’t expect thank you cards, will you?

The inevitable drawback of these would definitely be the difficulty to depart ourselves, the so-called left from fascism. The powers that be; mostly whom are right wingers find it easier to clamp down leftist ideals since now, they could just generalize all left ideals as causing public chaos and destruction as evident in history. The consistent propagandas on the evil of the left ideology won the hearts of many people because people, are exposed to the limited information of what leftist ideology is all about. Socialism, Marxism, Communism seemed like close siblings when in reality, they have issues about each other all the time. Lotsa issues.

Perhaps it is the fate of the left to stay marginalized. After all, victimhood provides the left the edge it needs to sustain its support from the oppressed. However, let us not romanticizes the left so much that it leaves us blind to our own wrongdoings. The State in all its attempts to cleanse Malaysia from the Attack of the Red Guards is actually relying on our lack of grasp of the whole issue to further its own national agenda.

 Reference of such: Nick Cohen, New Left Review, Franco, Republic of Fear