Thread by @olliekarp

In today's #dailysoup, I'll introduce a former #Malaysian PM and a Lee Kwan Yew wannabe, Mahathir Mohamad.

He's known for serving a long premiership that ended badly and his anti-West, pro-China, and pro-Russia rhetoric.

This will be a long thread, so brace yourselves!

1/25

After #Malaysia declared independence from the UK in 1957, Mahathir had a disagreement with Malaysia's first PM, Tunku Abdul Rahman, coz he opposed the Tunku's decision to retain British forces in Malaysia post-independence.

2/25

While clashes between ethnic Chinese and Malays brewed in Malaysia during the 1960s, Mahathir accused the People's Action Party for "siding with the ethnic Chinese", criticising Lee Kwan Yew for "arrogance".

Then, Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in 1965.

3/25

Before Mahathir became Malaysian PM in 1981, he was under the UMNO, a party that ruled Malaysia for a long time.

After criticising the Tunku for "failing to accommodate Malay interests" when Chinese-Malay clashes were brewing, Mahathir was fired from the UMNO.

4/25

In the 1970s, Mahathir was reinstated to the UMNO by Abdul Razak Hussein, the father of infamous Malaysian former PM Najib Razak.

Mahathir served in various positions in the Malaysian Parliament before becoming PM in 1981.

5/25

During his premiership, Mahathir continued the New Economic Policy that was created in the late 1960s as a response to race riots. His economic policies were something along the lines of Thatcher-style privatisation, with Mahathir coming up with the "Malaysia Inc." policy.

6/25

While "Malaysia Inc." was doing its job in allowing government to attend to private interests, Mahathir's policies during the early parts of his tenure looked promising. Malaysia was experiencing a solid economy, especially coz...

7/25

...Malaysian poverty levels were plummeting, the middle class was starting to do well, and Mahathir began to invest on technology and infrastructure, especially the Multimedia Super Corridor. He was on his way to becoming another LKY.

But, his tenure had a very ugly face.

8/25

Besides being a wannabe LKY, Mahathir's premiership was also known for being authoritarian. For example, his Internal Security Act (ISA) was used to subject dissidents to "indefinite detention under the suspicion of being a threat to national security".

9/25

Detainees of the ISA were kept in small, dark cells while being subjected to physical x mental torture in the form of "interrogation" and "extracting confessions".

Examples of ISA victims include the 119 people arrested for "trying to start riots" during Operation Lalang.

10/25

Meanwhile, Mahathir's stance is something along the lines of "we don't like the West coz we want to be distant from the Western powers who colonised us before". His stance has been present in his stints, policies, and peepotalking remarks.

11/25

A small dispute between Malaysia and Britain over university tuition fees during Mahathir's early tenure, together with his pro-Malay stance post-independence, led to his "Buy British Last" campaign, in which he encouraged Malaysians to boycott British goods.

12/25

Mahathir pursued a "Look East Policy", in which he would encourage Malaysians to work and study at Japan, aiming for Kuala Lumpur to emulate the best practises that made Japan and Korea developed countries in the first place.

13/25

His "Look East Policy" seemed to be promising. Mahathir was about to experience his Park Chung-hee x LKY moment until...boom!!

The Asian Financial Crisis hit in 1997, and reality saw that Mahathir was actually indebted coz of the borrowing to finance the said policy.

14/25

Mahathir was tolerant of foreign investors to the point of asking Bill Gates and other "US big tech companies" to invest in his MSC project, but when the crisis hit, he started to go against foreign investors. He imposed anti-foreign investment currency controls and...

15/25

...then he "blamed George Soros for Malaysia's economic decline". Moreover, Mahathir's anti-West stance intensified that he arrested Anwar Ibrahim in 1998 for suggesting a pro-foreign x free-market approach. Protests broke out afterwards, which were suppressed by Mahathir.

16/25

Mahathir's book, the Malay Dilemma, received heavy flak for its racist themes favouring the Malays, anti-Semitic content, and providing a basis for his infamous "affirmative action policies", as well as his anti-West stances and peepotalking remarks.

17/25

Mahathir is also notorious for overseeing an "affirmative action policy", in which Malaysian economic policies would favour the "Malay race" or the "bumiputera".

Even during his second tenure from 2018-20, he said that the "policy would remain".

18/25

Mahathir is known for parroting anti-West and pro-Russia peepotalking.

After 9/11, Mahathir commented that "Arab Muslims are incapable of carrying out 9/11...", adding that "...if the US could make Avatar, they can make anything", while indicating that 9/11 was "staged".

19/25

When Russian forces downed MH17 in 2014, Mahathir "denounced the charges against Russia", suggesting that "it was just mere heresay", "there was insufficient evidence", and "Russia was scapegoated".

But, Bellingcat found evidence that Russia did the MH17 downing!

20/25

In 2014, Mahathir blamed the US for the "rise of ISIS in the Middle East", and then he accused the US for "wanting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and replace him with a Sunni Muslim government".

21/25

Mahathir did a "NATO expansion" peepotalking remark when he claimed that "NATO was forcing Warsaw Pact countries to join the bloc".

He called the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a "proxy war", claiming that "Ukraine was left to defend itself".



22/25

Then, one year after Russia invaded Ukraine in 02/24, Mahathir claimed that "The war in Ukraine was caused by Europeans' love of war".

This was followed by historically inaccurate rubbish from Mahathir favouring the Russian side.



23/25

Although Mahathir went against pro-China Malaysian PM Najib Razak and then scrapped his BRI projects, they were reinstated shortly.

Then, Mahathir went into pro-China rhetoric when he claimed that "the US is the one provoking things in Taiwan and Ukraine",...

24/25

...calling China as a "peacemaker" and suggesting that "Asian countries should move closer to China".

Mahathir is no LKY after all. He's just some autocrat embracing other autocrats like Putin and al-Assad. He once requested to open North Korea's embassy in Malaysia.

25/25

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Related entries:
Entry #52 (Pro-CCP peepotalking points) - https://t.co/0UwyfHrhZn

Entry #35 (Najib Razak) - https://t.co/jDFdH2nPIsbuymeacoffee.com/olliekarp

Related entries (cont.):
#vatniksoup entry #120 (Russian narratives) -

#vatniksoup entry #78 (NATO expansion) - https://t.co/c0hoeCAm2w

Entry #56 (East Coast Rail Link) - https://t.co/gYiU8JD6Ea

Related entries (cont.):
Entry #59 (Trans-Sabas Gas Pipeline) -

Entry #57 (Forest City) - https://t.co/LWyjpp1l4R

Entry #58 (Sultan Ibrahim Ismail) - https://t.co/3WKou4wRpf

This is Entry #70 of the #dailysoup.

Feel free to read the previous entries here 👇
bit.ly/thedailysoup

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