The Liberal War on Criticism

Okay. This is interesting. This woman named Munira Mustafa wrote a report about so called disinformation proliferating social media against Anwar Ibrahim involving so called conspiracy theories and domestic and foreign influences and potentially people who were paid to spread messages to undermine the government of Anwar. She mentions in her report that people on social media have accused Anwar of being a western asset, being a CIA plant, being a Zionist agent, and so on. And that they have accused him of being associated with and funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and other western liberal elitist institutions.

But here's the interesting thing. Munir Mustafa wrote this report for something called the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, which is an EU funded initiative, quote, backed by the Global Internet Forum to Counterterrorism, which is an independent but industry funded initiative for better understanding and counteracting terrorist use of technology. Terrorist? According to their website, they say, to be clear, GNet, who miss Mustafa works for, is only concerned with violent extremist behaviors and not with extremism per se. Our objective is to produce actionable outcomes based on rigorous evidence based research and robust academic methods.

Violent extremist behaviors? I mean, does it make you a violent extremist terrorist to point out that Pakistan Harappan received funding and technical assistance from the National Endowment for Democracy? Or to point out that the vice president of Anwar's PKR party and the current economy minister, Rafiz Ramli, founded Invoke, a big data and analytics firm, which is run by Andrew Claster, who is a former analytics officer for Barack Obama's reelection campaign. And he's also a man who's been involved in National Endowment for Democracy funded campaigns, for example, to undermine the administration of Pravesh Musharov in Pakistan during his time alongside the International Republican Institute, which is also a National Endowment for Democracy funded organization. Does it make you an extremist than a conspiracy theorist to point out the completely acknowledged and well known fact that the NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, funded and provided assistance and training to both PKR and PH for years, especially in the lead up to the last general election.

I mean, could go on. But would that make me an extremist? Would that make me a conspiracy theorist? Would that make me a terrorist? I'm not sure what is conspiracy theorist about any of this.

Much less how mentioning these facts could make you an extremist or a lot forbid a terrorist. These are all facts. Publicly known, acknowledged, recognized, documented. And these facts raise questions, and those are legitimate questions that deserve to be answered. And as for Mouniros Mustafa saying that people might be getting paid to spread this so called disinformation, Those are online rumors, and those are rumors that are so easy to start.

It's as easy as just commenting on someone's post or on their tweet or on a video. Who paid you to say this? Or how much did you get paid to say this? That happens to me all the time. That's an online rumor without any substance whatsoever.

However, we know that Munira Mustafa got paid to write her report. We know that someone paid Malaysha Kinney to write about her report in their paper. And essentially what they're being paid to tell you is that if you bring up inconvenient facts and raise uncomfortable questions, you can be branded an extremist. And then the inconvenient facts that you raise will never be addressed and the questions that you ask will never be answered. Now, there may be a benign explanation for all of this.

But if there is, then ideally, that explanation would simply be offered rather than having anyone who asks the questions being demonized and essentially threatened. Now again, let me just go back to this point. With regards to people being paid to raise these issues, these factual issues, let me just say, I work in PR, in public relations, what you can call propaganda. I work in that business. My work gets published every week in mainstream media all around the world.

My work gets published. My name does not and my face does not. That's how PR works. That's how effective PR works. You don't put your face on it.

You don't put your name on it. And then as for talking about foreign influence, well, mean, obviously, the National Endowment for Democracy is a foreign influence. But with regards to myself, yes, I'm foreign. So if you have it in your mind that because I'm not Malaysian, I shouldn't be talking about Malaysia. If that's what you think, then you are misunderstanding two very important things about what I do.

Number one, I'm a Muslim, and my concerns are primarily with the Muslims wherever they are. And secondly, I'm not actually talking about Malaysia. I'm talking about the modus operandi of Western power wherever it operates. Malaysia just happens to be one venue in which it operates, and it's not the only place that I talk about. Now let me also just say something about conspiracy theories and what that even means.

A conspiracy theory, I e a theory, a belief, a suspicion that a conspiracy is behind something happening. That implies secrecy. That implies that there is some sort of a plan by rogue individuals to circumvent the institutional structures that govern and influence society. We don't call it a conspiracy when institutions operate according to their explicit and understood purpose, And we wouldn't call it a theory to believe that they do so. Look, the National Endowment for Democracy explicitly states that their mission is to foster and cultivate dissent in foreign countries through providing funding and technical assistance.

That's what they do. It's not a secret, and it's not a theory. If they didn't do that, that would be strange. Or you could look at the World Economic Forum, which is another institution that Anwar Ibrahim is associated with. They state on their website that leading global companies are the driving force behind their programs for developing solutions to the world's greatest challenges.

They shape the future using their networks and experts to ensure strategic decision making on the most pressing world issues. Okay. That means unelected corporate owners pushing policies through government and civil society. Again, not a conspiracy, not a theory. It's the stated purpose of the institution.

One of the ways that they advance their agenda is by the recruitment and training of young political leaders like Emmanuel Macron or Justin Trudeau or Jacinta Arden. They handpicked recently, I don't know if was last year or the year before, Sayyid Sadek for their young leaders program, who was the youth minister under the PH government. Now does that mean that everyone who has ever progressed through the World Economic Forum machine is 100% aligned with their agenda? No. Obviously not.

But the affiliation raises questions about their independence, about their funding, and about their goals. The WEF, the World Economic Forum, has a stated corporate agenda that serves the interests of the owners and controllers of global financialized capital. That is their perspective, and anyone who is associated with them will have been groomed to follow suit. That's the whole unambiguous point of the institution. And when we look at, Anwar Ibrahim's script for a better Malaysia manifesto, throughout it, it conspicuously echoes World Economic Forum talking points, albeit with a Malay accent.

For example, instead of the new normal, Anwar talks about post normal society. It's the same thing. The whole booklet, the script book that Anwar put out is basically just a Malaysianization of the world economic forum agenda and vision. So yes, it's understandable that people would have a perception of Anwar Ibrahim that he is heavily influenced by western liberal elites. I mean, not to mention the highly deferential treatment and coverage that he's received from western media over the years.

It's conspicuous. So the question is, why is criticism of Anwar Ibrahim being researched by an EU funded so called terrorism and extremism expert? And why is the National Endowment for Democracy funded, Malaysiakini, writing about that research? I thought the whole idea was supposed to be for, you know, pluralism, freedom of expression, and greater tolerance for dissent. This sort of response to the criticism doesn't refute the criticism.

It doesn't answer the questions. It doesn't clarify the concerns that people have. In fact, does the exact opposite because this is precisely the sort of response that critics of Western liberal elites have always gotten. They're demonized. They're accused of being conspiracy theorists or puppets of Russia or whatever.

This response to criticism only increases skepticism because it is avoidance, it's evasion, it's deflection, and defamation of political critics. This is certainly not the best way to win the hearts and minds of the population. Suppression of dissent is always and has always been a very shortsighted strategy for holding on to power no matter who's backing you.