opinion

Admittedly, Malaysians are still divided politically over many political and economic issues, among them the case of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim. In the general elections held in late 1999, while a majority of of the eligible voters cast their votes in favour of the Barisan Nasional a significant minority supported the Barisan Alternatif.

However, it is rather self-evident that all Malaysians, irrespective of religion, ethnic background and political inclination, love our land and support the system of constitutional monarchy based on parliamentary democracy.

Thus, while some Malaysians preferred to gather at official functions to celebrate the recent National Day, others chose to express their love for our country in their own peaceful and cultured ways. The patriotic intention was the same and only the individual's outlook, ways and means differed.

In politically normal societies where democracy, the respect for universal human rights and creative plurality prevail as a secular culture of modernity, different expressions of patriotism are welcomed, encouraged and protected by fair laws.

But this is not so in politically abnormal Malaysia where the ruling elite, however educated and technical-minded they appear to be, are still living in a pre-modern political culture with feudal mindsets.

This explains why a group of Malaysians who chose to express their love for their country unofficially at the Dataran Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur on Aug 31 were ordered to disperse by the police, who were backed up by the anti-riot Federal Reserved Unit (FRU) equipped with armoured vehicles and water cannons.

According to a news report, the police even confiscated their Jalur Gemilang (national flag), thus infringing not only human rights but also the principle of private property.

Compulsive-obsessive

The action of the police is a clear reflection that the ruling elite of this country see only themselves and their supporters as 'the nation'. Correspondingly, the police act as if they are occupation forces not unlike like the Soviet Red Army in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1954 and 1968 respectively.

Analysing the mindsets of the neurotically narcissistic elite, it is not surprising that all those who hold different opinions are often openly slandered through the unthinking and uncritical mainstream media as 'foreign agents', 'Islamic fanatics', 'Chinese chauvinists' and 'communists'.

The compulsive-obsessive trait and paranoid outcry against 'external enemies' and 'internal traitors' certainly reveals an ultra-strong urge to control, command and mould others plus an utter lack of intellectual and spiritual capacity for rational persuasion.

Indeed, if history is any guide, it could be argued that both national socialism during the inter-war period in Europe and Mahathirism in the post-Asian financial crisis epoch, derive their psychic strength not from universal values that teach justice, humility, reciprocity, mercy and compassion, but from a Hobbesian and Machiavellian worship of the state.

In this void of intellectuality and spirituality, national strength has therefore to be contrived, manufactured and marketed seasonally by psychological warfare operations, advertising techniques and the Pravda -like mass media.

Here, national strength and national resilience is not premised upon the inner intellectuality and spirituality of individuals, but only by the collective and external display of national flags, secularly pompous symbols and opulent icons.

Muscular, capricious, insolent and irrational powers have also to be projected onto the weak and the timid, to derive sadistic satisfaction or to reaffirm a sense of self-worth. In this understanding of national strength and resilience, the worship of earthly leaders and secular parties in the name of patriotism replaces the self-critical submission to divinity and universal values.

Psychic root

Reflecting on the collective madness of one-dimensional patriotism in Europe that led to the outbreak of the First World War, and later to the rise of national socialism, French cultural critic, Julien Benda (1867-1956) condemned secular dogma that taught 'even if our country is wrong, we must think of it as in the right'.

In his book published in 1927, The Treason of Intellectuals , he pointed out that the proclamation of 'my country, right or wrong' not only does not pursue justice or truth, but also intensifies hatred among nations, classes and groups.

Three years later, Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) published The Revolt of the Masses , in which he discerned the psychic root of fascism:

'Under fascism, there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions. This is the new thing: the right not to be reasonable, 'the reason of unreason'.

'Hence, I see the most palpable manifestation of the new mentality of the masses due to their having decided to rule society without the capacity for doing so.'

In 1946, a German philosopher in the tradition of enlightenment, Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) published The Myth of the State , in which he argued that the myths of the race, the leader, the party and the state 'disoriented the intellect'.

According to Cassirer, the Germans who embraced these myths surrendered their capacity for independent judgement, leaving themselves vulnerable to propagandistic manipulation.

Not personal sentiment

While Julien Benda, Jose Ortega y Gasset and Ernst Cassirer advocated reason as a countervailing mental force against fascism and one-dimensional patriotism, religious thinkers like Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) and Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) stressed spiritual faith as an psychic antidote.

Maritain, a leading French Catholic thinker, argued that spiritual faith can be harmonised with secular reason, and that modern and secular democracy needs to be infused with 'love and compassion' and premised on the notion of 'the natural equality of all men, children of the same God ... and the inalienable dignity of every soul fashioned in the image of God'.

Dawson, an English Catholic thinker, further argued in 1933 that:

'If our civilisation is to recover its vitality, or even to survive, it must cease to neglect its spiritual roots and must realise that religion is not a matter of personal sentiment which has nothing to do with the objective realities of society, but is, on the contrary the very heart of social life and the root of every living culture'.

JAMES WONG WING ON, chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia , is a former Member of Parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew , he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.