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Feb 16 • 109 tweets • 29 min read
Since this appears to be genuine, I'll reply without being snarky and in a way that even the uninformed from outside Malaysia can understand. The Patriots is a publishing company who release books and also post articles on social media

I've read their posts, their articles and a couple of their books for a few years, though I haven't really kept up during the past year. Nonetheless, my criticism of TP is not blind hatred and I have good reason to call them dangerous
By their own admission, TP is firmly right-wing (although they erroneously use this term interchangeably with "conservative"). Their founders and writers are entirely right-wing to varying degrees. The co-founder is a self-proclaimed Malay nationalist
Much of their material is not political in nature and is otherwise harmless. They write on a variety of topics ranging from science to pop culture in addition to right-wing opinion pieces and social media posts
An example would be this one where the writer rails against "liberals" and "deviant feminists" for questioning mainstream Islamic views on modesty, and opposing bigotry, monarchy,  & race-based privilege

thepatriots.asia/lihatlah-anak-…
Or their implicit and explicit blaming of minorities for somehow erasing or deemphasizing Malay history. As we'll see, it's the Malay alt-right themselves who are most guilty of neglecting and rewriting the community's own history
Before I get to their politics, what I really dislike about them is how they use their platform to spread misinformation under the guise of pseudo-academic literature, particularly when it comes to history and culture
In that sense they're the local equivalent of PragerU. Both brand themselves as serious educational institutions but are simply right-wing media outlets which their supporters regard as more authoritative than actual historians and archaeologists
Remember that TP members are invariably young. Every single one of them from top to bottom is younger than me. While there are some graduates among them, these are not authorities on the topics they write about
Mind you, they don't have to be. They're only meant to be a source of popular reading, and that's OK. TP fills the need for easily accessible Malay-language reading material. Their books and articles are written entirely in simple language, and this develops the reading habit
In fact, one of their stated goals is to lift Malays out of the fixation on conspiracy theories, an obsession borne largely from the lack of easy reading material in Malay. And from that perspective, TP has great potential. So where's the problem?
Some say TP first became controversial in 2018 when the right-wing ruling party BN lost the general election for the first time in Malaysian history. I say they've been problematic from even before that, especially if one reads between the lines
I don't wish at this time to scroll back to their early articles but you can see an example of what I mean in this piece on the myth of the lazy native, where they created a narrative entirely different from that of the author being cited

In their view, Malays were stereotyped as lazy because they were a proud race who refused to bow down easily to the demands of the colonists. Where does this leave other colonised peoples, you ask?
Well they popularised this quote from Sherard Osborn comparing Indians to dogs. The quote, of course, is not the fault of TP. But by reducing a complex multi-faceted issue to one of mere race, TP is indirectly (and deliberately) putting other races down by comparison
TP's bad historical takes have been refuted by scholars, most famously Prof Ahmat Adam whose repeated public criticism was too much for them to ignore. The rude insults hurled at the professor by TP and their supporters unmasked any feigned politeness

Another was Dr Azhar Ibrahim who addressed the frequent factual errors and supremacist bias in popular literature on local history, TP writers being among his examples

One of TP's responses to all this was to pretend that this is merely difference in opinion between experts, an arrogant claim coming from a group of young writers who aren't historians at all
Skewed views of history and closing an eye to historical facts is common among the global right-wing. TP has let their political ideology get in the way of facts a number of times. So what exactly is that ideology?
TP has repeatedly claimed to espouse Malay nationalism and conservatism. Now I need to clarify these terms here, and how they're commonly used
It's important to recognise that when English political jargon is borrowed directly into Malay, it's done with little context for those with a less-than-adequate command of English. So Malays often end up having distorted definitions for English words depending on who uses them
Examples include secular, enabler, even consent. The term conservative was recently adopted as an opposite to the dreaded "liberal", an abhorrent word in Malay socio-politics

It doesn't help that Americans today use "liberal" & "conservative" synonymously with the left and right. And with the Malay right-wing as Americanised as it is (apparent in their vocabulary like libtard and SJW), this naturally made its way into Malay

Politically (though not culturally) Malaysia is a very conservative country. Not as in right-wing but on issues like migrant workers and the rights of indigenous peoples, even the "left" outside twitter are rather callous

Outside leftist twitter, what's usually called the left in Malaysia are largely neo-liberal capitalist conservatives. The Malaysians who identify as "conservative" are generally the agressively homophobic and misogynistic far right nationalists
To the uninitiated, "nationalism" might have a positive sound to it, like patriotism and cultural pride. Heck, they even call themselves The Patriots just as American antivaxxers and Trump cultists do

As much as I dislike Wikipedia, I'm including this because it's correct and because I know some dumbass will just Google the words to defend TP. Note the difference between nationalism of oppressed and oppressor nations
As much as Malay nationalists might like to fancy themselves as Malcolm X or Palestinians, they have more in common with white nationalists in that they're a privileged majority group wishing to maintain and strengthen hegemony

Ethno-nationalism of this kind is also inseparable from chauvinism. Everyone aside from racists knows there's no practical difference between white nationalists (wanting a white ethnostate) and white supremacists (believing white people are superior)
So getting back to topic, TP believes in colour-coded Power Ranger-like races, just as white supremacists do. The brown Malay "race" of their imagination groups all Austronesian-speakers under the "Malay" label, which Prof Ahmat already countered

Malay nationalists generally draw a sharp divide between Austronesian and Austroasiatic-speakers, but strangely make an exception for Austroasiatic-speaking Orang Asli who they inexplicably categorise as Malay

But Malay nationalism is actually more inclusive than white nationalism. It allows assimilation into the in-group with the adoption of Islam, the Malay language, and specific socio-political views
One of their own writers, a Chinese Muslim convert who writes in Malay, is exemplary of their model minority, as opposed to the bad ones who make up the bulk of Malaysia's minorities

"We don't hate your race, we just wish you'd all be good Chinese like him"
It goes without saying that ethno-nationalism and its suspicion of the Other is the basis for Nazism and goes hand-in-hand with fascism. One of TP's big controversies was the accusation of their being Hitler supporters
This began with the co-founder making his infamous statement about wishing the Night of Broken Glass would happen in Malaysia. This wasn't a one-off instance either. He made it clear at the time that he wished for a local Nazi party

He later seems to have softened his views, which is good on him. I wouldn't fixate on his controversial statements from long ago if he changed. He may not identify as a nazi anymore, but the ideology is alive and well in TP

Instead, TP compares themselves favourably to the more blatant neo-nazis of FB. The "worse people exist" fallacy is often used by the western far-right, like when Tim Pool or Lauren Southern say "I can't be alt-right because the alt-right hates me"
Whats more, they even blame the existence of Malay fascists on urbanites who oppose theocracy, racial privilege & monarchy. These self-proclaimed pakar (experts) of geo-politics don't understand the factors leading to the global rise of the far-right, & choose to blame "liberals"
Note that the views they consider extremely liberal (secular democracy, racial equality, etc) aren't even particularly radical. This is normal centrist stuff, but for them it's going too far. Unlike those of us who admit to being far left, the far right think they're conservative
Now enough about ideology. How does all this affect their writing? Aside from the aforementioned race "science", their opinion pieces encourage American right-wing thinking, like this endorsement of MAGA

Or this rant against "political correctness", another concept they misinterpret. They believe that the deliberately symbolic casting of non-white actors in the musical Hamilton is to avoid offending minorities, and uses this as an example of political correctness gone too far
Did they not watch the musical? Did they not notice the concious decision to use music genres associated with African Americans like hip-hop and soul? Apparently TP writers are the types who see black people and call it woke nonsense

theatlantic.com/entertainment/…
They were strong supporters of Buy Muslim First, a divisive campaign to encourage Muslims to buy from fellow Muslims instead of non-Muslims, for the sake of penguasaan ekonomi (economic control)
One of their writers posed doing the C hand gesture to symbolise the Islamic crescent moon symbol. This was part of a campaign by the extremist group ISMA to have Malaysia declared an Islamic state and Malays recognised as the first inhabitants instead of the aboriginal groups
"But what about their distortions of history. Isn't that your main contention"

There're too many to go through individually. Considering the sheer amount of writing they've churned out, correcting them would fill entire books. So I'll look at these as broad categories
Malay race

As noted previously, TP believes in preserving the colonial concept of a "Malay race" that includes most Austronesian-speaking groups from the Indo-Malay archipelago, going far beyond the actual Malay ethnic group
As a result, they often describe non-Malay historical figures as Malay, like this article about Engku Puteri Raja Hamidah. By obscuring her Bugis identity, TP misses out on the Malay-Bugis conflict within the royal family

I believe that in more recent articles and posts, they've replaced the Malay race concept with "Austronesian" which is easier to defend. Even then, they still make the inaccurate claim that Orang Asli are Malays

Racial equality

As the Malaysian constitution grants certain privileges to native groups (Malay Muslims in particular), TP goes insane every time those privileges are questioned
In this thread, they defend racial segregation because "it's what was agreed upon" and does so in an extremely insulting manner. If this doesn't seem racist to you, I can't help you. And would segregation be OK in the US if there was prior agreement?
I won't get into whether those privileges are justified. It's not the point of this thread, and I talk about it often enough anyway. But in defending Malay privilege, TP repeats a popular Umno-BN narrative of history which I've countered here

Malay World

The concept of the Malay world (Alam Melayu) in academia may be slightly different depending on who you ask, but it generally means the Malay kingdoms specifically. These were in what are now peninsular Malaysia, southern Thailand, Sumatra, Riau, and Brunei
Some extend it further, including the native sea people (orang laut) or even places like Champa. For the average Malaysian though, "Malay world" means the entire Austronesian-speaking world

Ironically enough, terms like Malay Peninsula, Malay Archipelago, etc were English before they were translated into Malay, a fact that nationalists deny. There was never a location called "Malay world"

Related to this is the misunderstood term Tanah Melayu (Malay land) which nationalists today use to mean the Malay peninsula. Its original meaning was very different and had an entirely unrelated political connotation

TP writers, as with other supremacists online, regularly bring up these terms and their inclusion of the word Malay/Melayu as proof that the entire region is Malay land by right. Such a concept would be unrecognisable to historical Malays

Most of those terms (other than Tanah Melayu) aren't particularly old, nor were they originally native Malay concepts. None of them justify Malay supremacy. Their use of the word "Malay" has more to do with European unfamiliarity with our local ethnicities
In fact, we have the same thing in the Malay language. India and Indians were referred to as Keling, but most Indians aren't from Kalinga. We used the word perenggi or ferenggi for all Europeans but the term should properly mean Frankish
This is how exonyms work. Imagine how bizarre it would be to say all of Europe is now French because Asians use a word derived from Frankia for Europeans in general. That's how you sound when you shout "these are the Malay islands!" just cuz Europeans named it that
Indonesians don't count

One of the main motivations behind the Malay world concept in Malaysian socio-politics is to pretend that local Chinese citizens are outsiders but first-generation Indonesian immigrants are native
The reason is that most local "Malay" families often have at least some recent non-Malay ancestry from Indonesia, but the supremacists need to justify how they can call themselves sons of the soil despite being ethnically "impure", so to speak
So their logic is that Malaysia and Indonesia are modern constructs, but any migration within the archipelago is just "natural". I already countered this in the thread here

If you come to the Johor empire from Majapahit, you're an immigrant. If you come to Malaya from Java, you're an immigrant. To deny this because muh Malay archipelago, as in our previous analogy, would be like saying French people are native to every part of Europe because farang
To be fair, I do feel it's overly simplistic to say that Malays as a whole are not native or were "immigrants from Indonesia", and I did another thread on that here

"Malays are immigrants" began as a response to nativists insulting minorities as immigrants. If TP is offended by it, they should counter that misconception. Let people know that Chinese and Indians have always had a place here and aren't immigrants
But no, as we've seen earlier, TP perpetuates the narrative of minorities as a colonial imposition on Malays. And as a response to that, I feel it's perfectly OK for Malays to be reminded of everyone's mixed heritage, including Indonesian immigration. Deal with it
Also note that at the end of this post, he compares Malay progressives to the fascists, which would put TP in the centre as the reasonable middle. Framing themselves this way is a tactic that extremists use to deny being extreme
Denial of Indian influence

TP's frequent reference to "geng Chola" is actually racism disguised as correcting pseudo-history. The term itself refers to a conspiracy theory which I've debunked previously

The actual Chola conspiracy began as a response to Malay nationalists denying the place of Indians in pre-colonial Malay history. The way to counter this would be for TP to bring attention to Indian influence on Malay culture and pre-colonial Indian presence in the peninsula
But no, they choose to downplay Indian influence and deny Indian presence, like this article claiming that there was no Indian influence in pre-Islamic Terengganu

And let me tell you, TP writers and readers are absolutely obsessed with Chola. I think they say Chola more times in a month than most Tamil nationalists do through their whole lives
The joke is that he claims Malays are "relaxed" and "steady" about the fact the pre-Islamic past. This is total bullshit. TP writers themselves won't even admit that there were Indians here before colonisation, or that Indian religions existed in Terengganu
It's actually exceedingly common for young Malays to deny or downplay Indian religions in our history. Some pretend only the upper class were Hindu-Buddhist, some think Malays were never Hindu-Buddhist at all

In fairness, the co-founder has actually countered this conspiracy theory before, but not nearly enough considering how widespread it is. The imbalance goes without saying, since they whine about "Chola" every five minutes
Also if anyone's guilty of equating race with religion, it would be pan-Islamists more so than any other group, like assuming every Islamic influence came through Arabs

Overstating religion

As Malay nationalism is linked to Islamic identity, TP has the habit of exaggerating the influence and presence of Islam in Malay history. An example would be their belief that Melaka sacrificed itself to save Mecca
Their basis for this is a misunderstanding of the colonial intention for invading Melaka. As you can see here, the purpose was to end the Muslim monopoly of the Indian Ocean spice trade and put it in Portuguese hands
TP instead interprets this as some sort of "Muslim world" solidarity, and that their motivation was religious. I've already addressed the topic here

Another example would be their insistence that Malay women have always observed specific rules of modesty, particularly that of covering the body and the hair, a ridiculously controversial topic in Malaysia which gets brought up regularly
There is no evidence that pre-colonial Malay Muslim women followed Arab conventions of acceptable dress, and much evidence to the contrary. TP's bias and dishonesty can be seen here

Foreigners and younger Malaysians like the writers of TP often aren't aware that Malay women dressed more revealingly within living memory. Even more so if we go further back in history. Look at this description of (Muslim) Malay clothing and wine production
It would've been totally reasonable for TP to say "our ancestors didn't cover their hair, but we choose to do so today". Nothing wrong with that right? Yet they need to believe that today's Malay-Muslim neo-conservatism has a long history. Why?
You see, TP is unconsciously  following two of the characteristics of ur-fascism, the cult of tradition and the rejection of modernity. In this case, an invented tradition
Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with tradition, and I consider myself something of an anti-modernist. But TP needs to believe that what they think and practice today is the way things have always been
This is evident when they push modern concepts of a Malay monolith back in time. It's also supposed to set them apart from what they consider modern, like social justice and political correctness. They can't accept that their views are not old
Like Dr Azhar's example of kesempurnaan ilmu claims, fascists believe perfection or something near it has already been achieved (perhaps at Medina or Melaka) before that utopian state was spoiled like a lost paradise
Everything in the time since then must be viewed as a perversion of that prior state. So when TP sees unveiled Malay women or irreligious/unorthodox Muslims, it must be blamed on liberalism and westernisation rather than accepting that this is how things have always been
Now I know someone will misinterpret that and say "but TP never said the past was utopian". That's not the point. They created a fictional version of the past to compare to the present and justify their politics
Malay origins

I'm gonna admit that this is a debatable topic with a couple of competing theories. What Malay nationalists have done is build a mythology around one of these theories, specifically the Sundaland origin
TP regularly brings up some headlines about a study on Malay genetics. This study was backed by a RM1.4 mil grant, and its results were presented in a forum and then carelessly reported by irresponsible news outlets

dailyrakyat.com/kajian-penyeli…
The political motive behind this study and the "researchers" involved is not even hidden, with the then-DPM opening the Malay origins conference and the former PM launching a book on the topic

Stephen Oppenheimer, the geneticist whose work provided the basis for the nationalists' extrapolations, has himself clarified some of his findings on Malay origins, which are quite different from what the supremacists claim

m.malaysiakini.com/news/187435
TP however would like to believe that the disagreements between Malay supremacists and experts like Dr Oppenheimer are just regular scholarly debates instead of admitting what it really is: state-sponsored pseudo-archeology aimed at undermining the place of minorities
Some of the concerns of these claims are brought up by Southeast Asian Archaeology here

southeastasianarchaeology.com/2012/01/20/the…
And some screenshots for those too lazy to use the link
Some might say TP is meant to be introductory reading to get young people interested in history and other such topics. From there, they'll eventually be lead to more authoritative sources. But that's not how it works
TP writers and readers do not care about facts. They brushed off the criticisms of Ahmat Adam and Azhar Ibrahim. They directly contradict Farish Noor, Khoo Kay Kim, and every other person besides the frauds Zaharah Sulaiman and Zafarina Zainuddin
They laughed at the perfectly valid theory of the kebaya's Chinese origin. They balked at the likelihood of the word Melayu having Indian roots. They don't want history, they want validation of their ideology and political beliefs
In other words, if 1+1=2 is agreed on by mathematicians and can be proven with evidence but TP claims 1+1=4, their readers would either take their side in believing 1+1=4 or would take the "middle ground" by assuming it's a debatable topic
It's comparable to the controversy over an Atlantis documentary where conspiracy theorists claimed it would give people a "sense of wonder". The folly of this reasoning was explained by @FlintDibble here

This is also the reason why TP is able to write factually accurate books on topics like Rome by simply looking at proper sources. Because Rome, Korea and Mongolia are generally unconnected to their nationalistic agenda

While their bad history is the main reason I reject TP, their socio-political views make them bad enough on principle. As ethno-religious nationalists with a heavy MAGA influence, they're everything you'd expect from a far-right youth group
Putting the neo-nazism and fascism aside, they support the Taliban, they're openly and firmly anti-LGBT, they think non-Malay citizens should shut up and be grateful, they think Muslim husbands don't need their wife's consent for sex, etc
TP is aware that their readership ranges from centre-right to extreme right. And though they aren't accountable for the views and actions of their readers, they can be blamed for justifying and mainstreaming those views
I don't wish to doxx any TP writers or reveal the scandals of their personal lives, as that isn't relevant to this thread. But even a quick look at the comments they attract reveals what kind of people they're associated with
One TP reader I was acquainted with angrily told me that there's no need to consult proper sources because as long as you're Malay enough, knowledge of history comes naturally through your blood. So much for studying history then
The now defunct FB page Conservative Melayuball was run by an ardent TP supporter (and contributor I think) and Hitler sympathiser who'd regularly make absolutely racist statements like "Chinese and Indians can't call Malaysia their country"
So whether it's on principle or for their inaccurate history, TP should be avoided. Like I said, I understand the need for information like this to be easily accessible in Malay, but surely supporting a fascist publisher does more harm than good
Even their article on Malay slavery, though mostly factual, still won't admit that the "Malay traditions" JWW Birch disrespected were in fact.. slave raids and debt slavery. Did you think it's just because he was "rude"?

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