Are we targeting Marina for her father’s sins?

 

To what extent should we vent our frustrations with a parent on their children? What is the right equilibrium point, when it comes to 'cancel culture'? What kinds of apologies are and aren’t enough?

These are the three questions I’d like to examine in turn, in the aftermath of some recent controversy surrounding my fellow columnist Marina Mahathir.

The story starts with a column printed in The Sunday Star on Jan 30.

Rereading the entire column, I am deeply struck by how all the people I saw passionately decrying Marina for this one paragraph, were the same people who were fighting for the exact same cause expressed by almost every single paragraph in Marina’s article.

I’ll go into more detail later, but I do hope everyone will read her column in full.

Here is the controversial paragraph, as originally appeared in print:

“I’ve been through embarrassing moments abroad when our politicians have said something stupid and then tried to cover it up. In the late 70s when we had many Vietnamese refugees landing on our shores, our then home minister announced that we would shoot any that washed up on our beaches.

“Predictably, outrage ensued around the world. He then gave the standard politician’s excuse, that he was misquoted, that he actually said he would ‘shoo’ them away. Did anyone believe it?”

As has been pointed out repeatedly, this is factually incorrect.

It was in fact Marina’s father, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who announced that Vietnamese boat people would be "shot on sight" if they landed on Malaysian beaches.

This misattribution to then home minister Ghazali Shafie (not named in Marina’s article), caused an uproar amongst Mahathir haters.

I think this uproar provides a lot of opportunities for productive reflection.

I myself am guilty of often asking: “What is the background of/who is sharing this opinion?” before really studying an opinion. Context matters I suppose, especially to me.

So, for those who want context: I think I have amassed a considerable amount of writing over the years that have been very critical of Mahathir and the effect he has had on Malaysia.

Long story short, it is my considered opinion that Mahathir is more responsible for some of Malaysia’s biggest, deepest, and most intractable problems than perhaps any other person in Malaysia’s history.

I don’t believe that anyone is a pure saint or a pure evil. This applies to Mahathir too, who has his good qualities and has undoubtedly contributed to Malaysia’s development as well. But what small smattering amount of people there is who follow my writing will know that I have always considered his contribution to be net negative.

Mahathir is also a very polarising figure. His haters came out in full force in the wake of this article by Marina, viciously attacking this distortion of history. I have also seen his diehard supporters, viciously attacking people who dare to say a bad word about him (most recently during his memorable chopsticks controversy).

Having seen both sides, I can only humbly conclude that viciously attacking one another doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t help our country, it doesn’t help our democracy, and it sure doesn’t help our own health and wellbeing.

Cancel culture

In the western context, this phenomenon is often referred to as ‘cancel culture’ - where someone says something found to be politically incorrect, and the knives all come out, with wolves baying for blood.

You might even say that in recent times, it’s become something of a fashion.

I will admit most unreservedly that some people really do deserve to be 'cancelled'. There are unrepentant sexual predators, abusers, hardcore racists, bigots, and goodness knows who else. It is right and well to train our sights on and speak out against such people.

But there comes a point where we start to get a little too trigger-happy. The term that resonates the most with me is that some people are filled with just a little too much ‘self-righteous anger’.

We live in an era of echo chambers, where we can vent online non-stop to others who cheer us on, creating a self-righteous anger feedback loop.

Do these habits contribute anything meaningful to the country?

Let’s not aim to dance on graves

Let’s come back to this particular case. It is absolutely true that Marina published something that was undoubtedly historically inaccurate. This was a mistake, and it needed to be rectified.

The level of attacks that I saw against Marina, however, is generally only reserved for people that one deeply hates.

I don’t know a lot of people who hate Marina, but I do know a lot of people who hate Mahathir. What’s dangerous is when we start to conflate the two into becoming one and the same thing.

I was alarmed reading some of the comments about when Mahathir was recently re-admitted into the National Heart Institute. There were people practically already doing the equivalent of dancing on his grave. It was appalling to read.

I believe people have every right to be angry at Mahathir - especially those who suffered under him most directly. Victims of Ops Lalang come to mind, for instance.

But in my experience, those are not the ones who are flinging the most vicious attacks against Mahathir. I’m not sure what to make of that.

I personally might go so far as to believe that Mahathir might be legally liable for some of the things he has done, and maybe should even stand trial. But I would never in a million years wish upon him excruciating pain or untimely death, the way a few others seem to openly do.

My reluctance to do so stems not from the fact that he is Mahathir or special in any other way. It stems from the fact that whatever else, he is another fellow human being.

Projecting hate

Coming back to Marina: it would be different if you believed, say, that Marina was a raging hypocrite, and was perhaps trying to purposely and maliciously whitewash her father’s history, for their family’s benefit - at the expense of someone else’s reputation at that.

If this is what you truly believe, then it is my personal belief that you probably have not spent much time with Marina.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should state that I have worked together with Marina on a number of occasions. She was a guest reader for two events organised by civil society organisations I work with, one on the plight of frontliners, and the other on sexual harassment in schools.

I don’t remember when we first met, but I believe it was quite a long time ago. Her work on issues such as AIDS and women’s rights is internationally recognised, and while not everyone will agree with all of her positions (myself included), in all our interactions, I have always found her to be sincere and committed to helping others and making Malaysia a better place.

Obviously, she loves her father - in the same way that most of us love ours. To my memory, she does not generally take public positions against him, even though I’m sure she must have disagreed with him many times.

She also does not act like a Mahathir fanboy, going around trying to convince everyone that he is the best ever or anything. Most of what I observe her doing publicly with her father is limited to family concerns, such as his health and wellbeing.

I thus find it extremely perplexing that people - consciously or subconsciously - project their hate for Mahathir onto his daughter.

The only thing I would hate is for any children I might have to be blamed for my sins. That would be patently unfair to them.

Incentivising apologies

It would also be different if Marina tried to deny that there was any mistake, or fought against the facts of the matter.

She did the exact opposite and apologised for making the error.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, this did not seem to placate many people. Instead, they doubled down on their attacks, going after her for not mentioning this or that, not apologising well enough, or specific enough. The term ‘pound of flesh’ came to mind.

The subject of apologies could take up an article of its own. Briefly, in my line of work as a communications consultant, there are some who say, never apologise.

Their argument is, what’s the point? It will only be seen as a sign of weakness and cause the sharks to smell more blood.

Marina’s apology seems to be a case in point. People demand an apology, and when the apology comes, the apologiser still gets crucified for their apology.

There are times of course when an apology is truly insincere (“I’m sorry you feel that way” and other such nonsense). But that’s not the category in which I would personally place Marina’s apology.

I am something of a student of these controversies, the apologies that follow, and public reaction to those apologies. Generally, there will always be a few for whom no matter how eloquent, moving, sincere, or comprehensive an apology is, it will not be enough.

The most tragic part of this is that it disincentivises future apologies. I dream of a Malaysia where people are willing to and incentivised to self-reflect and make amends where they can. If we keep pouncing on those who try, we will only create an even more adversarial, zero-sum atmosphere, filled with siege mentality on both sides, where Malaysians are always at each other’s throats.

Aren’t we fighting for the same things?

Speaking of which, an apology is due for how long this article is. Let me end by briefly examining the rest of Marina’s fateful column that day.

She spoke out against claims that logging was ‘good for tigers’, the MACC chief commissioner using his brother as an excuse, the Securities Commission being a lame duck, the MACC being hypocritical, and the Wall Street Journal reporting on how corrupt Malaysia is.

She also spoke up against incompetent ministers, our complete failure in the area of flood relief, sexual harassment in our schools, whiskey-naming, and the abuse of migrants and refugees.

This is the part that saddened me the most - the people I saw attack Marina most viciously were exactly the same people I see going on and on about these exact same issues.

To me, one fellow columnist’s mistake - a mistake retracted and apologised for - is such a small matter compared to what seems to me to be the real problem our country is facing: that we can’t stop revelling in self-righteous anger and fighting each other long enough to fight the real enemies together. - Mkini

NATHANIEL TAN works with Projek #BangsaMalaysia. Twitter: @NatAsasi, Email: nat@engage.my. #BangsaMalaysia #NextGenDemocracy.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.