“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”

– Franklin D Roosevelt

As someone who once compared the long Umno watch to the Nazi state*, I was chuckling at Umno vice-president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s description of opposition propaganda to the propaganda of Nazi officials. How many times have I used the term “Goebbelsian” to describe the lies coming from the warlocks of Putrajaya?

(*From my article ‘Umno’s war drums herald bleak future’ – “The long Umno watch has been an era of ‘Gleichschaltung’. For those unfamiliar with the term, it is Nazi terminology meaning ‘coordination’ or ‘the restructuring of German society and government into streamlined, centralised hierarchies of power, with the intention of gaining total control and coordination of all aspects of society’.”)

Every time Umno has its big pow wows, the polemics emanating from the various assemblies of Umno potentates has the urgency of one of the more popular Leni Riefenstahl films, a display of synchronised racial unity, choreographed populism and narcotised ignorance.

While I have no problem with the Umno vice-president making Nazi analogies – as I have shown, I am known for making my own – I think it is wrong to describe the opposition kool aid as something as debilitating as Nazi propaganda. The former, of course, was awful because behind it was actual state policy, while the latter is frustrating because it is just a case of unfulfilled promise.

The image of Zahid “whispering” in PM Najib Razak’s ear – a Horatio or Iago, I wonder – is indicative of the supplicant nature of Umno politics or maybe Zahid thought that approximating bedroom talk at a women’s meet, was the way of seducing his audience to work harder for the benefit of the men in Umno. Who knows?

I have always described Umno as a fascist entity or that this country has slowly and deliberately sliding down to fascism, but I have never really explored this issue beyond recognising warning signs and baiting the Umno establishment.

It took the election of Donald Trump and the resulting American punditry (which I decried in another piece, go figure) to articulate my ideas on the Umno fascist state. In this article and another one tomorrow, I hope to explain why someone like me (I do not, have not and will not, claim to speak for anyone else) who has been part of the establishment despise the current state of our union.

I always liked the opening rejoinder of the Roosevelt quote that frames this piece, “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated…”, which merely is a reminder that for decades as Malaysians, we tolerated the excesses of Umno for whatever pragmatic ‘Asian’ reasons we could come up with. We enabled a regime that systematically and overtly corrupted the constitution and eroded our rights.

We were the dupes in Winston Churchill’s admonition, feeding the Umno crocodile hoping it would eat us last, never realising that very soon we could become like the Maria Chins, the Uthayakumars, the Zunars, the Hishamuddin Raises, the Rafizi Ramlis, and the Orang Aslis that have been persecuted by the Umno state. Eventually the system always comes after you.

Like many have said, scary stuff. When Trump was elected, the American Left went berserk. Nazi and fascist analogies before and after the election spewed like the noxious black fumes from an old Proton Saga. However, beyond superficialities nobody was really interested in examining the issue.

Last year however, Peter Bergen, in an insightful piece about the Trump phenomenon, questioned if Trump was a fascist by exploring “the history of European fascism, the rise of far-right nationalist parties around the West today and what historian Richard Hofstadter famously termed “the paranoid style in American politics”.

What is of interest to Malaysian readers is the five commonalties of 20th century European fascist movement that Bergen uses from Robert Paxton’s seminal work ‘The Anatomy of Fascism’ (Just read the book).

Readers, of course, are encouraged to seek out Bergen’s article but having discovered the article in my research files and the ongoing Umno pow wow, I have decided to use Bergen’s piece as an excuse to further my own ends. There are, of course, commentaries rejecting Bergen’s analysis and readers are encouraged to seek them out too.

In this and the next piece – like Bergen – I will use Paxton’s model to illustrate why I think Umno is a fascist state (although to be fair to Bergen, he was more interested in discovering if Trump was fascist, while my writings on Umno are a matter of public record).

In the articles, I will use “Umno” and “Najib” interchangeably because Umno is Najib and Najib is Umno. I have seen no rhetoric from Umno that this is a faulty assumption.

Here goes:

“A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of traditional solutions.”

The rejection of traditional, Mahathir-era politics and policies and the internal Umno checks and balances that was essentially a “do not kill the goose that lays the golden egg” ideology is Najib reshaping Umno in his own image.

All this has been replaced with the existential threat that Malay political power needs to be preserved by working with traditional Umno enemies like PAS and the introduction of the National Security Council (NSC) Act that would ensure the safety of Malaysians by possibly overriding the power of the Agong.

The current Umno propaganda of rejecting traditional Umno power structures, like Zahid’s speech about the dangers of Umno warlords or his encouraging of Umno cybertroopers who have not been a mainstream Umno propaganda tool because they maintain a stranglehold on all mainstream media.

“The superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason.”

An example of this would be Najib’s reaction to the 1MDB fiasco. As I wrote, when I said he should resign but won’t – “The Najib regime has managed to silence critics, used the various security and legal apparatus to whitewash the alleged corruption charges and done its best to disseminate the propaganda that this is a politically-motivated attack against the prime minster.

“The Najib regime have implied that not only are there local actors in this elaborate conspiracy but there are also foreign elements, which includes Washington and, yes, even the Jews. While the Najib regime continues to maintain that the prime minster has been cleared of any wrongdoing locally, he has never once brought a civil suit against any of his foreign critics or attempted to clear his name by litigation.”

There is no community and no conspiracy that Umno/Najib would vilify or disavow in their quest to maintain hegemony. Facts do not matter; only what they believe is true and what they believe is true determines policy.

In the next piece, I will elaborate on the other three points.

Tomorrow: Umno and the fascist state, Part 2

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.