The West is the White man, White once he is conscious of his past, his conquest, his plunder, his god and whatever else he is conscious of. This coloured self-consciousness surfaces in the mirror of his thoughts. It used to happen once he leaves England or Scotland or Amsterdam, arriving thus in Africa or in Goa or Malacca or Macau. Such consciousness requires, hence, a reflection, another person to posit the self – a kind of Cartesian, geometric self which requires two points on a plane to establish a location. That other point, or reflection, is called the “Other”. The White man need not go far today to find his self nor the Other. With the Internet, he need not even go anywhere. But who is the Other in, say, London or Los Angeles? What is it that the White man sees in the mirror of his consciousness, now versus the distant past?
Salman Rushdie lives in London, Manjit Bhatia in Australia. Consider, then, the Other.
What’s common between the Salman Rushdies and the Malaysiakini types, the Josh Hongs of Malaysia and the Manjits in Australia? Below, excerpt of an article in The Hindu equally applicable to Malaysia as it is India; only substitute those exotic names with the Joshes, the Premeshes, the Nathaniels, the Manjits:
After a very short period of looking around, the West has increasingly turned its gaze onto itself in recent years. There it stands in front of gilded mirrors, gazing at itself in admiration. What it sees is no longer the whiteness it saw in the far past. What it sees now is multi-hued, variously dressed, many voiced. For, the Western self, particularly in literary and cultural circles, has long accepted the fact of being creolised. Even the opponents of multiculturalism cannot see themselves (thank god for small mercies) as snow white. When the West gazes into its mirrors, it sees its own new post-war multicultural self. It sees Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Hari Kunzru, Zadie Smith. And it likes to pretend that it is seeing the Other. …
They are not the Other. They are not even different, really. They are the West today. …
If the West likes to look into gilded mirrors and admire itself in the guise of novels about multi-cultural London, or poems written in chapatti English (or is it paratha, for a fair bit of butter seems to have been applied?), or stories about the Raj and its off-springs, the West also likes to look into gilded mirrors and admire itself in the guise of “global” literature. Perhaps these are the same mirrors. Perhaps they are different. Who knows? For, their existence has not been faced up to. …
They constitute, to repeat the article’s author Tabish Khair, not just another face of the West: they are the West, fighting Western causes, taking their money, chest-full of their “democracy” medals, then make pretend they are more virtuous than those whom the White multiculturalists despise for refusing to convert to the Western cause. This raises a question of ethics: if Malaysiakini, Bersih, et al, would take American (taxpayers) money, and preaching political pieties while doing so, what’s wrong with the Makkal Sathi party (even if) taking Umno or Barisan money while shouting freedom? Some say it is whoring, but are not the Malaysiakini editors and their cohorts also whoring? Only different causes, another audience.
In the end, it means all people whore all the time; the difference is, who is master, who has the pulpit – control of the Press in order to make one look biblical. It also means the West doesn’t mind a little mass subversion, some destabilization here and there, to bring round people to their convictions they sell like evangelical tickets to heaven. They don’t even have to leave their chairs in London or Washington or take with them their guns and their god. The Malaysiakini types are not above taking American money, especially since democracy, human rights, Press freedom, etc, make for a nice, dandy job description, even as cover.
It used to be just some banana republics in America’s backyard, but now in more than 70 countries. Friends of Taiwan’s Chen Shui-bian qualified for such American “assistance” – it’s for the advance of democracy, you see. But after the ex-president and his entire family were found out to have stolen billions, those friends have disappeared back to America no longer shouting “Freedom!”. And the NED, after helping to hand over to Taiwan a family of thieves, quietly puts it into the backburner. China has been set up instead for special “attention”, that is, subversion; Malaysia remains on its target list.
The serious-sounding, almost scholarly named National Endowment for Democracy, NED, makes overt what used to be covert by the CIA. For what the NED does today, funding so called “democrats” and the M’kinis of the Third World, they do so thumbing their noses at brown and yellow peoples, saying so what? It is for “freedom”, you see, it’s legal, and it’s backed by the US Congress. (Outside America, US legislators talk pious of “free speech”; yet, they have never allowed Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Doris Lessing, and countless others to speak to Americans, not even if it is only to sell books.) Here is a short, schematic idea into the American political job creation programme the NED has spawned among the Other:
The Malaysian friends of NED (recall NEP, NDP?) make for a long list, only click on malaysiakini.com to know them. What NED manages to do, through Malaysiakini the last 10 years is to engender, to foment, to stir, and to saturate poison in an already poisoned atmosphere: who kills who, who is plotting against who, who is vile, who is saint, who lies, who cheats, who scandalizes. Malaysia, to judge by the news and views that matter, is an insane place.
The Other who the White man sees in the mirror, before and now, is still a barbarian: long ago no god, no civilization, no guns; today, no money, no democracy, no freedom. Still the White man’s burden (that was from Kipling).
