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“The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies.”

- John Lescroart, ‘A Plague of Secrets’

In my last article, which was inspired by Peter Bergen’s use of Robert Paxton’s model of European fascism, I attempted my own take on why I think that Umno and fascism are intimately linked. In this article, I continue the task. Mind you, I am not saying that under PM Najib Abdul Razak, that Umno has become a fascist organisation, merely that the Najib regime in my opinion has moved Umno from the proto stage to that despotic state that Washington has always found a way to deal with.

The three remaining points are:

“The belief of one group that it is the victim, justifying any action.”

Umno has always justified its “struggle” on the disenfranchisement of the Malay polity. Post-1969 policies have been instituted that favoured the Malay polity because of arguments of marginalisation.

Race-based policies like the New Economic Police (NEP) - however you define it - quota systems, manipulation of electoral boundaries, the racial gerrymandering of the civil and security services, the politicisation of the education system, the biased land distribution and the Ali Baba system, are but some of the policies that favour the Malay community but in reality have formed an elite Umnoputra class.

I have written about this Umno orthodoxy and really, nobody in Umno could dispute this: "Anyway, the Umno representative Razlan Rafii made two banal observations which best define Malay supremacy which was (1) ‘This is our struggle, we should press on without stopping. When do we stop? When the NEP achieves 30 percent (equity for Malays)’ and (2) ‘This is our country, if we want to talk about the struggle for Malays, then the special privileges should not be questioned and it should be granted to Malays indefinitely.’”

Look at it this way. When Bagan delegate Hamidah Arshad said, "What's happening now is that other races are holding top positions and this means contractors, consultants and lawyers appointed are all from their race" - what she is saying is that government-controlled enterprises should cater to Malays only and that positions of power should only be in “Malay” hands.

In other words, this is not a government for the people of Malaysia but rather the government for the Malays. Furthermore, this is merely more evidence that Umno uses the government for its own ends and that government policy is predicated on the desires of a single race-based political party and not in a coalition of equals.

This siege type mentality is well documented, but remember the only people holding the Malay community to ransom is Umno...

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