The unease behind the military videos

 The viral clips may yet prove misleading or incriminating. But the deeper discomfort lies in how quickly Malaysians moved from fragments of footage to moral certainty, long before facts were established.

The military videos that circulated over the weekend were brief, fragmentary and quickly removed.

They showed civilians inside what was said to be a military facility, socialising with men described online as officers.

From these short clips, a narrative of “immoral activities” took hold almost immediately.

What stands out is not only what the videos appeared to show, but how quickly judgment followed.

We do not know who recorded the footage or why. We do not know when it was taken, what preceded or followed it, or whether any rules were breached.

We do not know the relationship between the men and women shown.

Yet many were swift to label the scenes immoral, even though the videos themselves offered little context beyond discomfort.

The women were described as entertainers. That assumption hardened into fact within hours.

Almost no one paused to ask whether they could have been spouses, partners or guests invited for reasons unrelated to impropriety.

The absence of such questions says as much about the moment as the footage itself.

This is where the unease begins.

In the age of social media, visibility often substitutes for evidence. A setting that feels incongruous becomes suspect.

Behaviour that appears out of place invites inference. Before verification enters the picture, moral language takes over, closing the space for uncertainty.

Once the word “immoral” enters the conversation, it sets the terms, and what follows is not inquiry but alignment.

One is expected to condemn or appear complicit. Nuance quickly looks like evasion.

The defence ministry’s response followed established procedure. It ordered an internal inquiry and urged the public not to jump to conclusions.

That response acknowledged the seriousness of the claims without endorsing them. It also reflected a reality institutions cannot escape: investigations operate on verification, not inference.

But public judgment now moves on a different timeline. The speed with which conclusions formed did not come from nowhere.

It sits within a broader climate shaped by recent scrutiny of the armed forces, including corruption investigations into procurement and the placing of the army chief on leave pending inquiries.

In such a context, plausibility carries unusual weight. Suspicion, once triggered, no longer waits for corroboration.

This does not make the public reckless, rather makes it conditioned. Repetition teaches people what to expect.

Over time, trust erodes not through a single episode but through accumulated disappointment. When outcomes remain unseen or feel inconclusive, patience thins.

That conditioning explains why fragmentary evidence can feel sufficient. It explains why deleted videos still linger. It also explains why official restraint, however necessary, struggles to calm the atmosphere once a narrative has formed.

Yet it is worth asking what is lost when certainty outruns facts.

When discomfort becomes proof, the threshold for accusation drops. When plausibility stands in for evidence, context becomes expendable.

This affects not only institutions but the quality of public judgment itself.

It narrows the space in which truth can emerge without distortion.

None of this requires the allegations to be false to be troubling. Even if wrongdoing is eventually established, the process by which conclusions were reached still matters.

If judgment arrives fully formed before inquiry begins, findings risk feeling redundant rather than clarifying.

The risk, then, is not simply reputational damage. It is the normalisation of moral certainty in the absence of knowledge.

Once that takes root, every future controversy follows the same arc: exposure, outrage, demand, fatigue. Resolution, whatever its substance, rarely restores trust.

This is not unique to the military. Courts, police and regulators face similar pressures, but the armed forces occupy a particular place in the public imagination.

They ask for discipline, hierarchy and discretion. In return, they rely on trust. When that trust weakens, even silence meant to preserve integrity reads as avoidance.

The current inquiry will proceed and its findings may confirm misconduct or dispel it.

But beyond that outcome lies a quieter reckoning. It concerns how Malaysians now process authority when evidence arrives in fragments and certainty feels easier than restraint.

The videos did not merely raise questions about conduct. They exposed a deeper fault line: how quickly unease hardens into accusation, and how readily judgment now outruns understanding. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.