Lessons from Counterinsurgency from Malaya to Palestine with Fadiah Nadwa Fikri

Jared Ball: all right welcome everybody to millennials are killing capitalism live it's great to be with you today please take a minute and like share subscribe support the patreon um but most importantly just share the conversation make sure people have a chance to see it this should be really good if anybody is into the conversations that we've had on counterinsurgency over the years uh malaya comes up a lot right um it's a really important honestly like there's debates and i will talk about this a little bit about what what constitutes the beginning of counterinsurgency and and you know where does sort of colonialism because counterinsurgency comes out of colonialism it comes out of colonial warfare um and so like trying to cite a beginning is a difficult thing um you know i know dylan rodriguez really looks at the philippines and the u.s occupation uh of the philippines as kind of his jumping off point but a lot of people you know, cite the so-called Malaya Emergency, which is really, I guess, for Great Britain, kind of a starting point, which is, I mean, for the UK, I guess I should say, or the British Empire probably would be the more accurate way to say it. is really the starting point, which is strange, obviously, because British colonialism is a long thing and they were always fighting against colonized subjects. So we'll get into all of that. But nonetheless, regardless of where we think about that origin point, It is really important in terms of the development of counterinsurgency tactics and like discourses and books around counterinsurgency. So we'll talk about all of that, but I'm really excited because it's not something that we've ever talked about in any detail before. And I saw this piece a couple of weeks ago. People probably saw it or some of you may have seen it. White supremacy and anti-communism as counterinsurgency lessons from British imperialism in Malaya. The author, Fadia Nadwa Fikri, is going to join us today to discuss it. She is a lawyer and scholar of Southeast Asian Studies. Her work examines the intellectual history of decolonization, Malay radical politics, and the British racializing project with a focus on Malaya and Singapore. So without further ado, Fadia, it's good to be with you. Thank you for joining us today. Looking forward to this conversation.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: Thank you so much for having me.

Jared Ball: Awesome. We have, uh, somebody watching from, uh, Sumatera, Indonesia right now. Good to see you. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm excited. I know that we do have people who tune into us from that region and it's one of the regions that we have discussed the least historically. So looking forward to this very much. Um, so just to start, like it's your first time on the show, really honored to have you. We have mutual friends, shout out to our friend Louie all day. I wondered if upfront you could just start with kind of like a little bit of a brief introduction of yourself if there's anything you want to add beyond the, you know, sentence that I read.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: Thank you so much, Jared. Since we're going to talk about counterinsurgency, I think I have to share a little bit about my involvement in the NGO human rights industrial complex. I was a human rights lawyer before I started my PhD at the National University of Singapore. Yeah, I was in that field for almost 10 years. And I even co-founded an organization, a lawyer organization, for human rights and the funding came from the NED and also the OSI and of course you know at the time everyone who was involved in this industrial complex you know they didn't feel like something was wrong about that, about getting funding from the US. And we see a lot of leaders, like NGO leaders, for example, getting awards from the United States. I was also part of that movement. And then, of course, because of a lot of fragments of consciousness that I had throughout my career as a human rights lawyer, I started questioning a lot of things. having seen people for example in court I did a lot of legal aid cases back then and you know seeing poor people getting denied representation seeing people getting charged under the Sedition Act that we inherited from the British and then seeing people getting evicted like workers plantation workers particularly so that kind of opened my eyes to what I was doing at the time I then realized that I didn't want to be complicit anymore in perpetuating this idea that the world can change by getting involved in the NGO human rights industrial complex because it's very limiting and I've seen how human rights also has been used as a weapon to really justify aggression and war against a lot of people. So yeah, so I decided, I mean, it felt almost like a moment of redemption when I decided that I wanted to put a stop to this and I wanted to study the history that was completely erased from our collective memory, the anti-colonial struggle in Malaya and Singapore. Singapore cannot be divorced from Malaya because we have always been one entity, like pre-colonial entity. And also Indonesia, of course, in that relation. We're going to talk about that later more. And yeah, so here I am. So I just defended my thesis two months ago.

Jared Ball: congratulations thank you so much thank you so much so yeah i'm looking forward to talking more about country insurgency and also my research yeah no look forward to that i mean i will say as somebody who spent 15 years in the non-profit industrial complex myself too it's it's yeah it's it's it's tough when you're in it and then and then you look back on it and you think about gosh like I was, I was so naive, but at the same time, like, these are the things that you're like, you know, we're, we're channeled into these tracks. And so anyway, I appreciate you sharing that upfront and just being like, you know, open about it. And I think that, yeah, it's, it's important. And a lot, I mean, any of us, I think that are involved in like the nonprofit world or the legal world around human rights or stuff like that like just very challenging because of the limited channels that people have to do good work and what you're encouraged and told is like the good work to do is very often you know based in counterinsurgency so um yeah anyway appreciate that and really looking forward to this discussion as i said so So you start your piece talking about the prescription of Palestine action. And I do want to say, because we just recently added it to the schedule, that in about two and a half hours, we're going to have a conversation with a couple of people associated with that to talk about the hunger strikes that are going on. We're going to have uh on the show Francesca Nadine and Kala Walsh is going to join us as well to talk about uh prisoners for Palestine hunger strike which is those those hunger strikers so you begin kind of talking about this process which has played out over the last six months or so where Palestine action has been you know prescribed by the United Kingdom as a terrorist organization for engaging in direct action against weapons manufacturers and the shock of many within the UK, you know, have felt that their country has become, you know, as you put in quotes, unrecognizable and authoritarian. And so I love to, as you talk about in the piece, how these reactions struck you and, you know, then taking us back to this history of the Malaya emergency. So yeah, if you could start there.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: yeah um when i was reading news about the prescription of palestine action obviously you know i saw a lot of people you know in in the united kingdom saying stuff like oh i've not recognized this country anymore i think what and reached me was this idea that you know how a lot of people in the imperial core they have the luxury of not learning about their own history even after witnessing what happened in Gaza and It's just I think it also reminded me of the time that I spent in the UK. I did my master's degree in international human rights law in England in 2016, 2017. So I still remember my experience confronting the imperial court. for this course I mean this program particularly it was designed many years ago to really get people you know from the human rights field to advance their career basically so we have judges we have people working for the for UN institutions you know enrolling in this program and also the instructors who were basically at the time like judges and also prosecutors. And I remember they assigned as this book written by Adam Hochschild. It's called The Ghost of King Leopold. It's about the crimes committed in Belgium sorry, in the Congo by the Belgian king. And when they asked us to talk about the book, so I still remember my first class and they were like, okay, what do you think about the book? So I said something about the book and I mentioned imperialism and colonialism and the instructor, the lecturer actually told me that, you know what? We're not interested in talking about imperialism or colonialism. Let's just focus on the human rights violations. And I was so enraged. I was questioning myself, like my own existence there. Like, what am I doing? Like, what am I perpetuating? They're not interested at all in dismantling systems that are creating all this misery and mass death and suffering and terror and of course you know when I read you know now I think people are still like oh you know this is not Britain or this is not the United Kingdom this is not the US I'm like what do you mean when you talk about that I feel like they're still internalizing they're still trying to defend this idea of the empire they're still trying to feel or to convince themselves that the empire is benevolent, that the empire is doing whatever it can to civilize the rest of the world. They feel like they're defending the free world. And I feel like this is something that we have to confront because I don't think we can still talk about this because people are dying, people are being incinerated alive as we speak, and you can still somehow feel like, oh, you know, you don't have to educate yourself, you don't even have to, like, pay more attention to the rest of the world, you know, we are now, for example, witnessing the imminent war in Venezuela, and, I mean, don't you feel anything, right? So, That's why I feel seeing all these reactions made me feel so angry. So the anger, I think, it comes from having to confront this reality, you know, about how we descendants of the colonized, you know, how, you know, colonization or this system that oppresses us all is basically emptying us out of our own soul. You know, that, you know, they're trying to say that we are... a people that does not have our own history we are not capable of participating in the conception of the world you know we don't have we don't have that that radical history where we want to liberate ourselves from from imperialist oppression so yeah i mean and i feel like what's happening is also interesting because at the same time you see palestine action you know you see all these people putting their lives on the line and their liberty on the line, trying to stop or disrupt the imperial capitalist machine. And you also have the rest in the imperial court still trying to somehow rehabilitate this idea about the empire. So yeah.

Jared Ball: Yeah, no, it's true. And it's also a... Yeah, there's a big displacement that goes on with, you know, just putting everything on the Zionist entity, right? Or Israel, right? Is this like, oh, like... And I mean... It's hard not to in some ways, right? Because this is where you see like the fullest expression of this genocidal violence unfolding, right? But there's a way that people want to, yeah, distance themselves or feel like we're not the one, like obviously we, but like our state and our country aren't the ones that are doing that, right? Our tax dollars aren't paying for that, all of those kinds of things. and the weapons that are being used aren't flowing from our manufacturers and stuff like that. And yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you could have, as a group like Palestine Action was all focused on exposing the complicity of, and trying to end the complicity of, you know, Great Britain from, you know, this, you know, from Zionist genocide and everything that you would have, you know, people still saying, oh, this isn't us, you know, and at the same time, it's quite interesting. So, Moving into your piece a little bit more, you write about the importance of Malaya to the British Empire, particularly on the heels of World War II, in terms of reconfiguring its foothold in Southeast Asia, but also the role specifically for capital accumulation within the empire. So could you talk a little bit about those elements and how the logic of accumulation exposed the liberal regime. And so I want you to explain that a little bit too, because obviously there's some changes in how the British Empire manages this colonial relationship in this period as well.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: Yeah, so after the Second World War, because the empire lost India and also Burma so they decided to how do we reconfigure our position in Southeast Asia so they saw Malaya as this place where they could rebuild their dominance in the region particularly and of course because Malaya was extremely wealthy Malaya was the largest dollar earners for Britain due to its lucrative tin and rubber production. And we have British Lords in Parliament saying stuff like, oh, Malaya is actually the greatest prize in Southeast Asia. So we have to defend Malaya because of that. And also, it's very interesting to see how Malaya, because of its wealth, It's also something that the British needed at the time to ensure its effective participation in NATO. And the US actually acknowledged the fact that Without Britain, without the wealth in Malaya, we could never strengthen this organization. So I would like to just share what a report released in 1951 by the CIA on the significance of Malaya to both US imperialism and also British imperialism. So the report states that the loss of Malaya's dollar earnings would be a severe blow to the US. the consequent maladjustment that would be created in the strategic material and in the balance of payment position of the nato countries could result in a serious setback in the rate of nato remandment so it shows that at the time they needed to ensure that malaya the wealth that malaya had would not fall to the hands of the communists Because at the time they saw what was happening in Vietnam and they said and they believed that if Vietnam falls at the time, this is what they said, you know, they were discussing the condition at the time. particularly in vietnam if vietnam falls to the hands of the communists malaya would be next so malaya would succumb to the same fate so they were so scared they have this fear that communism would spread all over southeast asia so they decided to use malaya as an anti-communist arc to ensure that communism cannot be spread in Southeast Asia. And of course they understood that Malaya too would not easily give up the struggle for national liberation because of that close relationship, for example, that the communism Malaya had with uh vietnamese communists so ho chi minh was instrumental actually in the formation of the malayan communist party so he came to malaya in 1930 1931 to help um you know build the foundation for the party and also it's very interesting how the communists in Indonesia were also working closely with not just the communists from the NCB, but also the nationalists, the Malay nationalists at the time, because they were trying to implement this policy by Comintern, where they have to indigenize communism in Southeast Asia. So it's very interesting to see how all these close relationships that the nationalists, the Islamists in Indonesia, in Malaya particularly, that they had these relationships where they were training each other, you know, not just militarily, but also in terms of knowledge production. So I remember, you know, doing a lot of work about how the Malayan communists and also nationalists and Islamists were collaborating with a lot of Indonesian communists. So they set up this school called the Maksi School of Malaya, where all nationalists from the Malay Nationalist Party, they had to attend the course. And of course, the course would be led by a lot of radicals from Indonesia. So it's very interesting how all these connections were forged at the time. And of course, the British, they were paying a lot of attention to all these possibilities of having a socialist project, a communist project in Malaya and also in Indonesia. And of course, it was also already happening in Vietnam. So yeah, I hope I answered your question regarding the significance that Malaya had at the time to both British imperialism and also US imperialism.

Jared Ball: Yeah, one of the things you mentioned too in the piece is because of the role that Japan had in World War II, also destabilizing British imperialism in the region to some degree. Could you just share that a little bit?

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: So when Britain got defeated by Japan, Japan ruled Malaya for almost two years. And during that period, it's actually interesting because that period somehow created some kind of space for a lot of nationalists, a lot of Islamists and also a lot of communists in Malaya to start talking about politics openly because i think the japanese you know they tried to forge an alliance with a lot of the malays at the time because they they felt like if we you know we we go too hard against these people they're going to just rebel and we cannot afford to to lose this war so we're going to just cooperate with them so they they allow you know they allow a lot of uh newspapers you know published by all these different groups you know to just talk about this idea of national liberation. And of course, you know, they thought that that would, all these people would support, you know, Japanese rule. And of course, you know, they were wrong and they decided, I mean, they started realizing that, oh no, I mean, they're just using this space that we're giving them to strengthen the national liberation struggle. So they're going to just kick us out, just like how they have always wanted to kick the British out. So, of course, that changed a lot of things in Malaya at the time in terms of organizing and their sudden defeat. somehow um you know make the British feel like okay all right we have to come back to Malaya and ensure that you know this space is no longer available and we have to try and crack down as soon as possible because of course you know at the time um Indonesia was on the verge of getting their own independence and they know how close the Indonesians were with Malayan nationalists and also communists and they felt like okay we have to just ensure that malaya would not get independence at the time you know after the japanese surrendered so they came back and they started talking about okay we're not going to recolonize you we're just here to prepare you for self-government so that is the narrative that they use at the time to justify their recolonization of malaya because of course you know at the time they were talking about this idea of human rights and self-determination so they have to act like they care about the people's right to self-determination so they're here just to facilitate they're here to just ensure that you know they are protected from from from other forces that would stop them from getting self-government but the radicals at the time the malay radicals you know the communists understood that nope this is just a different way of trying to recolonize Malaya and we're not going to allow that to happen. So, of course, at the time, the British felt like, okay, all right, this is not going to hold because a lot of these people are very organized right now and we have to do something about that because the period during the Japanese occupation allowed them to have that kind of space to really strengthened the national liberation movement and yeah and and they started thinking about you know okay all right we're gonna have to start preparing malaya you know so that it could serve as an anti-communist arc to stop what was going on in vietnam at the time and also to stop what was going on in indonesia at the time so yeah so you know in 1947 you see all this formation of anti-colonial groups and also the formation of the first multi-ethnic anti-colonial left-wing united front called the Putra-EMCJ coalition. So this coalition was the first in Malaya actually and it managed to unite both the Malay left and also the non-Malay left and the British. And of course, you know, this coalition, they were very vocal about, you know, their opposition to the British plan to come back and, you know, prepare the people of Malaya for self-government because they understood that that's just you know you know that's not that's not the reality because they needed Malaya at the time because of the wealth that Malaya had so yeah and of course you know like 1947 the first multi-ethnic united front was formed and 1948 the declaration of emergency was put in place. And this coalition of the Malay left and also the non-Malay left was completely wiped out. All of them, all the different organizations that were part of that coalition were proscribed. And most of the people who managed to resist arrest, to escape, they joined the MCP in the forest to take up arms and start the Revolutionary War against the British at the time.

Jared Ball: Thank you for all of that. So, you know, this piece obviously talks about divide and conquer tactics, which are really, I mean, this is like fundamental to warfare, really, in all kinds. But, you know, particularly within counterinsurgency doctrine, there's a lot of emphasis on trying to find ways to divide up coalitions along religious, ethnic, racial, gender, and ideological lines, right? So this is also why Just as an aside, things like the human rights realm and stuff like that can be useful because you get people working on issue-based activism that seems progressive because you're like, hey, we want to expand rights in this particular area or in this particular area, etc. But the totality isn't really taken into consideration. One of the reasons that the counterinsurgency war in Malaya is still taught within counterinsurgency doctrine is because of its effectiveness in manipulating these divisions. So you write in the piece kind of discussing how this is done or how it was done. Would you mind kind of sharing some of the methods that were used?

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: um i think to just explain a little bit about you know what malaya was at the time so malaya was actually a muslim majority country so and also when we talk about communism in malaya it's you know and also the history of communism in in indonesia i'm always reminded by what my friend in indonesia used to tell me she said that You know, you cannot talk about communism in Indonesia without talking about the fact that it came out of the womb of Islam. So that's very interesting. I think that is something that a lot of people in the West, in the imperial core, are struggling to understand, you know, this relationship between communism and Islam. And of course, because of that, because of that context, because of how intrinsically linked communism and Islam and also the cultural ties that a lot of Malayans have with Indonesia, because those ties were not just ties that we shared during the anti-colonial struggle, but also pre-colonial ties that we shared by sharing this cultural zone or the same civilization. So the civilization that was defined by Hindu-Buddhist influences and also later by Islamicate civilization. So that is how tied the question of Islam and the question of communism in Indonesia and Malaya because people in Malaya see Indonesia as part of the same cultural zones. That means we share that cultural tie that, you know, of course, you know, we cannot, we cannot, when we talk about Islam, we also talk about, you know, this idea that everything that is happening around us is very much connected. So the joint struggle has always been in the consciousness of a lot of people in Indonesia and Malaysia. That's why they had this idea to forge this alliance called the Greater Malay or the Greater, um, Indonesia political project, you know, it's basically to say that, you know, we cannot be independent without Indonesia and as Malayans, and Malayans cannot be independent without Indonesia. So it's very similar to the idea of Pan-Africanism because of that cultural tie that you share, you know, based on the civilization that define, you know, your peoples. So because of that, I think, you know, The British saw that as something that they could exploit, something that they could use to divide the communists and the nationalists who are Muslim. So they started saying things like, you know, communism does not have a place in Malaya because it is anti-God and we are here to protect. the Malay Muslim population. So that has always been the narrative that they've used even before the Second World War when they were ruling over Malaya indirectly. So under indirect rule, so the British said that we're just here to advise the king or the Malay sultans who are the head of the Malay people and we're not going to even touch islamic affairs so we're just going to let the king or the sultans decide you know how islam is supposed to be administered in the country but it what what that i mean that is what they did they tried to portray to show that you know we are not going to like when it comes to Islamic affairs. But what they did to Islam at the time was actually they bureaucratized Islam by using the Malay rulers, giving them this position in the state as the head of the religion. And they started forming a lot of institutions where they would pay salaries to religious figures to administer Islam. the kind of Islam that they would approve of. So that is how they sever the ties between Muslims and also what the religion was all about at the time, because before the bureaucratization of Islam in Malaya, Islam was actually practiced quite democratically, I would say, because you have religious leaders, so they would just you know, talk about how they would administer their own Islamic laws or rights, for example, without any interference, even from the king. So the king, you know, they feel like, okay, all right. So the kings would say things like, okay, you can just talk about all these matters without, you know, involving me because we have all these different people, you know, who have authority, like, you know, scholars, like imams, for example, to resolve, for example, if you want to talk about inheritance, for example, you can just go to these people. So Islam has always been something that a lot of people have direct contact with. But when the British came and started bureaucratizing Islam, that was when the Malay kings had that monopoly over what Islam should look like and of course they were paid salaries by the British and of course you know they started to understand that you know if we go against the British you know we would lose out in this whole thing because you know they also understand that at the time there were a lot of people talking about independence you know they were a lot of people like the Malay left particularly talking about feudalism and they felt threatened and they feel like okay we need to forge alliance with the British so that is how intrinsic Islam was you know to Malayness or the Malay people so when communism came to Malaya Of course, you know, they saw that as something that was imported from China. And of course, the MCP, the majority of MCP members were Chinese. So they were using that, you know, to show that, see, this threat coming from China, this ideology called communism is going to just... create chaos in this country that belongs to the Malays who are Muslim. And of course, you know, that is not right because, I mean, that kind of narrative is not right because we know a lot of Malay Muslims who identified as communists. And it's very interesting to see how a lot of the communist leaders like the Malay Muslim communist leaders are actually religious teachers. So they were very much connected to the religion and they see that communism and Islam are not at all in opposition to each other. So it's very interesting also because they have always been influenced not in a bad way but they have always had this interaction right with Indonesian communists and Indonesian communists at the time were also some of them were residing in Malaya so they were talking about working together trying to to to build the national liberation movement that that saw all these different alliances between you know Islamist communists nationalists and also how that is not just the case in Malaya but also in Indonesia and also in a lot of other places. It's very interesting that this is the reality at the time where people have no problem identifying as Muslim and also as communist. So they see that as an opportunity to create divisions between the communists and also the Muslims who are also identifying as nationalists. So that is one thing that they did to really break that coalition or the alliances forged by all these different political actors. And also, they would use Islamic rituals to get the communists, the communists who are Muslims, to denounce communism publicly. So during the counterinsurgency period, they actually managed to get many people who are so scared of being persecuted to, you know, go to see the Sultan to say that we are denouncing communism and they would have to perform some kind of Islamic prayers to show that they have repented, you know, that we have repented. denounce this ideology and we are now true Muslims because you know we are no longer associated with it so this is something that of course is sponsored by the British you know and and you know because of their collaboration with the Malay rulers at the time so we see you know how this anti-God sentiment is very powerful at the time you know to ensure that a lot of people distance themselves from communism yeah

Jared Ball: awesome yeah i'm gonna even add some related conversations in the show description as you're talking um but one that comes up to my mind especially as a lot of people in the chat are you know sort of thinking through this relationship between communism islam and and also anarchism and socialism um that We had a really good conversation a few years ago with Nazia Qazi and her work is like part of her work at least is really about how like the US, for instance, the CIA and everything, that they have deliberately funded and promoted certain variants, certain political trajectories of Islam that are more right-wing, that are more nationalistic, but also reactionary in a lot of ways, and not left-wing, not socialist, not democratic, not anarchistic, etc., and i think you know and she also talked about the inverse of like in malaya and indonesia and in other places how they you know not just the us obviously the british empire as well but how these you know ruling western powers actually really very much um funded and well not funded they they attacked right the the communists and the more left-wing versions of islam you know very viciously and often their promotion of the right wing was directly kind of for that purpose as well. And so, you know, I mean, obviously people know, you know, the kind of history of the United States with Osama bin Laden and all of that kind of stuff. But it's a much... like larger political project that the west has engaged in over uh decades it's not just like you know one or two instances of it so anyways really appreciated that the other thing too that came to mind is um we had a conversation with miriam kashani a couple years ago and she talked a lot even within the u.s context about how you know you have and people know you know we just um you know may rest in peace um you know a trap brown you know known as jamil abdullah abdul uh el amin um you know just passed away but uh you know many people from like the black liberation army or the black panthers you know, and other people in the sort of black left from the 60s, 70s and onward, you know, became Muslims, right? And so I just think that, yeah, it's important for people to understand that you know, this image that people have of Islam as a kind of, you know, right wing or something like that, that it certainly doesn't have to be that way at all. And yeah, and people brought up Malcolm, of course, Malcolm X, right, who's very important to Khashoggi's book as well. But anyways, I appreciate you sharing some of that context from Malaya. All right. My next question is know you talk about the use of the civilizing mission and this notion of the colonial forces being there as you know protectors and draw parallels here to palestine and the demonization of armed resistance forces you write about the philippines in this piece as well uh oh sorry you don't you don't write about the philippines in this piece as well but you mentioned this to me recently And I wonder if you saw parallels there as well in terms of You know, the way that I guess, you know, thinking about armed resistance and how these groups are demonized, as well as how the imperial forces promote themselves as protectors against these armed forces. And yeah, just some of the ways that the civilizing mission explanations look in the context of counterinsurgency campaigns.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: Yeah, I think when we talk about counterinsurgency, it's important to bear in mind that it's not just about killing insurgents. It's also about pacifying populations or subjugated, colonized populations. It's also about trying to win their hearts and soul and mind, right? by showing that you are protecting them from threats of communism, for example, so that somehow reinforces this idea that we are here to protect you. And just in the case of Malaya, for example, they use that over and over again to justify the fact that we are here to protect the Malays against the Chinese. We are here to protect you against the Malays against communism. And of course, they have to create that idea that they are there you know, in good faith in trying to really make people feel like, oh, you know, because communism is anti-God, because communism is just going to just, you know, destroy religion. So that's why we have to really pledge allegiance to imperialism and also their collaborators, because these are the only people that would protect us from all these threats. So, and of course, you know, this is something that I see particularly in Malaysia recently, because our prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, you know, he's ranked as the 10th most influential Muslim leaders recently by Saudi Arabia. And last year, it was only last year, so when the genocide in Gaza was still unfolding, he signed an agreement with Lockheed Martin where we had to pay 80,000 USD to buy weapons from Lockheed Martin. And a lot of Malaysians, you know, we are purportedly pro-Palestine as a country, but a lot of Malaysians defended that agreement that our prime minister signed with Lockheed Martin by saying that we still need to defend our country, right? So we need US weapons. We need all these weapons produced by all these Western companies to protect us. And it's really interesting because, you know, no one is asking the question, like, protect us from whom? And this is the same narrative that you see in the Philippines, you know, because they feel like because the Philippines, they have all these military bases, U.S. military bases. And a lot of people feel like, yeah, we need all these bases. We need U.S. presence because they would protect us from China because China would come and colonize us if the U.S. uh you know left this country or if the military bases were dismantled so of course you know this is something that that we see a lot in southeast asia and of course it has a lot to do with normalization with israel and also the us you see in indonesia indonesia is the largest muslim majority country in the world and you see Prabowo, the current president, you know, trying to justify having good relations with Israel and also the US. And we know that Malaysia also, as this anti-communist art contributed or paved the way for the anti-communist massacres in 1965 and that was why Sukarno at the time you know after the formation of Malaysia in 1963 he started this military operation called Konfrontasi because he knew what the US and Britain were up to at the time. He understood that Malaya was being used as an anti-communist art to contain communism in the region and also stop communism from spreading in the Philippines and also in Indonesia. And we saw that violence inflicted on hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia. I have a friend, a comrade of mine from Indonesia. She told me that when that happened, she was 10 years old. So she woke up one day, she wanted to go to school. And when she got out of the house, she saw severed heads in her village. And she is still here to tell us this story. So this is the kind of violence that is very much still recent, I would say. But it's just sad that even in Indonesia, a lot of people have forgotten about this history. They have forgotten about the socialist project that they used to have and how Indonesia too, just like Malaysia, just like Thailand, just like Burma, the discourse about mobilization, about mass organizing is also centered on the idea of human rights, never about political or economic sovereignty, never about how US imperialism continues to be the primary contradiction that is causing a lot of suffering in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. And of course, Malaysia, a lot of people would argue that we are not You know, we are not suffering as much because, you know, we are a developing country. Yes, but we continue to play that role, you know, because everyone looks up to Malaysia and they feel like, oh, Malaysia is leading, particularly, you know, in relation to Indonesia, because we also... because we are also a Muslim majority country, and they want to become like Malaysia, like Indonesians now. They're like, oh, look at Malaysia, look at Anwar Ibrahim. I mean, we should talk more about progress in that sense. So, you know, what enrages me all the time is the fact that colonialism or imperialism, both, right, they... You know, the erasure, the silencing of our own radical histories in the region make us somehow feel like you know there's no need to even talk about what's going on in the world because we are not affected by that so a lot of malaysians feel that way because they feel like you know we are we are okay you know and we we can become like singapore if we pay more attention to progress if we you know have good relationships with capitalist countries like the US um yeah it's of course because of forgetting it's of course because of that collective amnesia that we have been suffering for so long um and this is this is something that you know we still have to grapple with I would say and also it's funny because I still you know, learning about the history, the radical history in Malaya. We're learning about our own radical ancestors and some of them are still alive and I have the opportunity to sometimes to be in their company, you know, to listen to their stories, to learn from them and at the same time you see, you know, how counterinsurgency has been so successful that people don't even think for a while about the connection between what is happening in palestine for example and the state of our country because yeah we we are so we have been defined you know any revolutionary potential that we had back then you know had been defined for so long and now we're just confused we don't even know who we are it's it's like you know when fernand talks about the racialized aspect of colonialism it's about you know how the self is gone. We don't even know what the self is really. Yeah, because of course counterinsurgency plays a big role in erasing that history of ours that we that our ancestors have always been part of that history they have always been the makers of that history it's just that now we don't even know where to begin you know to continue that struggle so i went to the philippines really to meet with my comrades and just talk about what do we do about our region because our people have completely forgotten about their own radical histories. And how do we revive that anti-colonial transnational solidarity that we used to have? Remember Bandung in 1955. That happened when the counterinsurgency war in Malaya was unfolding, but people were still trying to find ways to give clarity on how the struggle should be advanced and what we can do collectively to really resist imperialism not just in the region but also elsewhere now all over the colonized world so yeah I just it just difficult I think you know for me to grapple with this question because I'm also somehow got affected by this collective amnesia that that was imposed back then you know during the emergency and it continues to be perpetuated in all these different strategies you know to defang us to demobilize us when it comes to thinking about how do we continue the struggle that our ancestors waged before us?

Jared Ball: Yeah, I think everybody's trying to answer that question in some way or another, but I recognize it's specific, you know, to your context and to, you know, always have the specific elements of it. So I'll come back to some other stuff related to this, but I wanted to kind of ask you your thoughts on, you know, kind of how you understand counterinsurgency as a form of war emerging, because you probably heard me in the in the intro kind of you know, thinking out loud about this. And, you know, there probably will be people in the chat, people who have done this before when I've talked about it, of saying, you know, we shouldn't even use the term counterinsurgency. We should talk about counterrevolution or we should say colonial war, right? Which, like, to me, those are synonyms in a lot of ways. And it was interesting. I think it was in your piece, actually, that somebody said, you know, that actually they didn't you know the folks that were engaged in the counterinsurgency in malaya didn't even want to refer to um you know the communists as insurgents because they felt actually like that legitimated them in a certain way that they didn't want to uh which i thought was interesting in itself because i've heard that i've heard the counter argument to that as well of saying you know calling ourselves insurgent or whatever is actually using the state's term right which is you know connected to terrorists and all these other things so i'm just i guess my question for you more specifically is are there specific features of counterinsurgency that you feel like differentiated a little bit from older tactics of colonial rule? Or is there a specific utility for you to look at the war in Malaya through this lens of counterinsurgency?

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: I mean, that is a very good question, actually. And I don't know if I have the answer to that question right now, but I see counterinsurgency as a technology of power or a modality through which colonialism and imperialism are legitimized. I just see how I feel like it is part of the broader war imperialist war waged against colonized people and i mean i'm reminded of what fanon wrote in the ratchet of the earth he actually he noted how fidel castro when he went to the un and spoke at the un he was in military uniform he said that that demonstrates Fidel's consciousness of the continuing existence of the rule of I feel like country insurgency is just another tool used by imperialists to really strengthen imperialism and of course the broader war that they waged against colonized people is something that is continuing of course and It is something that we have to confront by thinking about how to deal with this question of counterinsurgency, right, that has defanged and demobilized a lot of movements to resist capitalism, to resist imperialism, to resist racism. So I feel like counterinsurgency, just like race, is just another tool used by imperialist powers to

Jared Ball: strengthen their grip on the colonised world.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: And of course, you know, when we talk about countries, and I've mentioned this earlier, that it's not just about physical violence, I think it's also about epistemic violence enacted against the colonised people. So they kill people who were resisting against them, yes. But at the same time, they also tried to erase the histories of those people. They tried to erase the radicalism embodied in their movements. They tried to instill a lot of suspicions amongst the general populations about the legitimacy and the genuineness of the liberation struggles that these freedom fighters were leading at the time. So I feel like that is something that continues to be used today uh they're not killing insurgents anymore as much as they did before i would say like even in southeast asia as a region but they're just using all these narratives about anti-communism they're just using narratives that all these movements against imperialism are communist controlled are unpopular are also disunited and and we see this you know how they employ the same narrative against the axis of resistance in the case of Palestine and how you know it's really interesting to see how that manifests itself in real life when we see a lot of people who identify as Marxist saying things like, oh, I support the PFLP, but not Hamas. Because Hamas, you know, they're Islamist, and I don't think, you know, they're going to be democratic when they, when, you know, they manage to get what they want. So this is the same narrative that we see, you know, being employed and also perpetuated by a lot of people who don't realize that this is part of counterinsurgency. It has been used for so long to delegitimize all this legitimate struggles for liberation, particularly I think the case of Palestine is something that is so glaring that we cannot really escape. We have to look at it and look at how, you know, a lot of people are still trying, I mean, particularly people in the imperial core and in the West, they're still trying to like, how do we, how do we position our support when it comes to armed resistance. Because Hamas, they're Islamists, so they cannot be legitimate Actors, you know, political actors. And yeah, I mean, you see this, I cannot remember his full name, Gordon, Lewis Gordon, this scholar who wrote, I mean, he built his own, I mean, his entire career on the legacy of Fanon. And he was... basically saying that the resistance in Palestine is basically nothing but terrorism, trying to really show how it is not at all in line with what Fanon said in The Wretched of the Earth. It's quite ironic to me because Fanon was involved in the Algerian liberation movement you know he was he was there and he's not just talking writing about anti-colonial struggles he was part of that movement so I think for a lot of people who claim to care about the struggle for liberation really no investigation no right to speak I mean we have to understand that right so if you know nothing about the situation on the ground, if you're not at the forefront of the struggle, I don't think you have a right to condemn people who are confronting imperialist violence head on. So yeah.

Jared Ball: Absolutely. That was great. I appreciate it. So another thing, and you've already kind of alluded to this, is the question of alliances. And you talk about how in the UK currently there are progressives who are both citing the so-called benevolence, we talked about this a little bit earlier, of the UK, presumably in opposition to the barbarity of Israel, right? and seeking alliances with white supremacists. And we have the same thing here in the United States. And you reference that it's both white and non-white folks in your piece. And yeah, I mean, it can be folks who are even just part of the Palestinian solidarity movement. you know we posted some videos and there's clips like we had conversations with steven salida and louis all day recently and it wasn't the focus but i kind of asked them both this question um steven because He lost his job because of right-wing forces along with Zionists in the United States. And so some of the very same people like Tucker Carlson that people are saying, oh, well, maybe we should listen to him now because he's taking a critical line on the U.S. relationship with Israel right now. His publications and his networks were key to what promoted the attack campaign on somebody like Steven Salida. So anyways, they both kind of talked in their own ways about the dangers from their views of aligning with people like Tucker Carlson or Candace Owen or Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, sorry. And, you know, Louis pointed out in his view that, there's likely a more nefarious you know kind of count i'm i'm putting words in his mouth a little bit but i'm reading between the lines too of what i think that he was getting at right is that um kind of nefarious counter-insurgent plan behind the promotion of ostensibly pro-palestine or anti-zionist politics within these far-right spheres right saying that he doesn't think that i mean he did say that the grifter element is part of it probably but that there's also probably something much more coordinated in terms of these right-wing um you know well-funded well-connected um you know millions of followers often you know, influencers basically, right, or media representatives, them taking this line, you know, in this time. And so, you know, I know this was one of the kind of phenomenon, because we talked a little bit before we started, that you were thinking about and addressing of people you know, making these arguments of Palestine, you know, folks who are pro-Palestinian in this moment should align with the right, right? The right seems to be more interested in, you know, cutting ties with Israel in the UK or in the US than the left. And part of the problem, which I recognize, is that liberals don't seem interested in it at all, right? And so this is part of where it gets... I think tricky for folks in answering this question is that when you look at something like Labor or the Democratic Party, I think you can unfortunately make an argument that it looks like they're more willing to support Israel to the hilt than maybe some of these right wing actors are. Of course, we see what Trump is doing, right? So it's also like when you look at the Republican administration, it's not any better, certainly. But what do you think about these relationships? Because this is part of what you're talking about in the piece, too, is this question of the right and anti-colonial movements and international solidarity, really.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: Yeah. When I wrote that piece, I was actually referring to the discourse on Twitter that had been going on for almost a week about how people who, in the UK particularly, they call themselves progressive, right? And they were calling for alliances to be forged with white supremacists because they felt like Britain is under attack. because Israel is controlling Britain. So that is where they're coming from, actually. It's funny because they're like, oh, we have to free Palestine and we have to free Britain. It's like Britain is being colonized by the Jews, by the Zionists. For me, it's just bizarre to see this kind of discourse particularly coming from people who claim to care about the Palestinian cause. What do you mean when you say that you want to align with white supremacists? I mean, I'm trying to extend the benefit of the doubt because some of these people are being persecuted by the state. Some of them have lost their jobs because of their opinions on Palestine, because of their support for Palestine. But at the same time, when you are saying things like we have to save Britain from Jewish supremacy, what are you talking about? Are you, because for me, it is clear that you're trying to normalize the idea of empire. You're trying to normalize this idea of white supremacy, this ideology that has caused so much pain and suffering around the world, the ideology that justifies colonialism and imperialism, the ideology that justifies violence and war and aggression. It's just because, oh, I am in the Imperial Corps. I can't, you know, I can't, I can't help but think that this is something that you are okay with because of your positionality, because you are in the Imperial Corps. You benefit from the Imperial Corps. You benefit from the wealth that was stolen from the colonized world right so that's why you feel like yeah it's okay for me to defend my country because you are a citizen of the united kingdom for me it's just bizarre that you would make that kind of argument while saying that you know we care about palestine because um have you not seen what the white supremacists have done have you not seen what white supremacy has caused you know when we talk about palestine you know white supremacy jewish supremacy is just another branch of white supremacy it comes from that ideology that racial supremacist ideology and it's not just I mean, it's not just unique to the question of Palestine or the question of Jewish supremacy. We in Malaya, the British gave birth to this ethno-colonial state. They used Malayness and Islam to justify Malay supremacy as a tool for the neo-colonial Malay ethno-state to be used as a tool to inflict so much suffering and pain on other people around us and not just other people around us and also on the Malayan people who were resisting US imperialism and also British imperialism at the time because we have to remember in the 60s, you know, the US was actually already in place in Southeast Asia, because what they wanted to do with Britain at the time to turn Malaya into this anti-communist arc, they have achieved that in 1960 after the emergency came to an end. And when you say that, oh we have to align with white supremacists this is what what you are legitimizing you are basically ignoring the fact that colonized peoples all over the world have always upheld this idea of joint struggle. You know, we've always tried to forge anti-colonial transnational solidarity. We have always tried to give clarity on the nature, the barbaric nature of US imperialism, US-led imperialism right now. And what's happening in Palestine is just another example of how this bloodthirsty empire has been doing things. So I think it's because you don't feel the urgency to think about others, right? You feel like this question, the Jewish question or Jewish at no state is something that is so unique that Other people just don't matter anymore. And it's so funny because if you look at people at the forefront of the struggle, you know, the PFLP, the people in the axis of resistance, people who are taking up arms, putting their lives on the line to defend Palestine, they have always stressed the need for internationalism. They have always made that connection clear that we can never be free as long as US-led imperialism is still haunting the colonized world. So I don't know. It's just I'm still struggling to understand where these people are coming from. it's just i feel like our duty right now is to really start thinking about how all these narratives all these discourses are legitimizing us imperialism like us-led imperialism and that is not going to help our cause at all you know that is not going to help us understand that the primary contradiction that is causing so much pain and suffering in this world is the us so It's just, I don't, I don't know if I answered your question because I'm so struggling to understand, you know, like what is the logic that governs this sort of thinking to feel that Israel as a political project is so unique. You know, it's something that has never happened before, you know, in, in the history of the world, it's just. misleading, I would say, to also divorce the question of US imperialism from Zionism. Because if you read the works of people who are at the forefront of the struggle, you can see how clear they are about showing the connection between Zionism and US imperialism. So US imperialism needs Zionism to continue to dominate the world, to continue to

Jared Ball: to to strengthen the hegemony to continue to get legitimacy to ensure that they can exist in perpetuity so yeah yeah um I mean that that's a great answer I think the there's two elements of it that you know I'm thinking about one is I mean one I don't know if you said like maybe we should say a little bit more about how the, One, people asked about Singapore and Brunei in the chat as well. And I know that's something that your piece talks about a little bit and is an important part of this history as well in terms of carving up the region, which is a part of counterinsurgency. And you referenced in that discussion this concept of Malay supremacy as well. And so maybe that... maybe we could talk a little bit about that element of the kind of counterinsurgent campaign or the you know colonial management there the other thing too based on what you said is just that i mean i really think that the the big question or the big issue that I see more than anything in these forms of alliances, I mean, obviously there's the one you talk about, what you're talking about, which is true in terms of, you know, it becomes a way to kind of, you know, a scapegoat and to, you know, not question empire and imperialism and your state's own role or to suggest that your state is only doing the things that it's doing because it has to be controlled by, you know, Israelis or whatever, right? Rather than, you know, it actually understands, you know, uh its own interests in the world and is trying to manage based on how it understands its own interests which then means you have to have a bigger discussion about how do you transform you know the way that your society constructs those things um but also like And I think this is connection to the counterinsurgency campaign as well. And to, you know, US histories or UK histories of these things, right, is to understand that the right is anti-immigrant it is anti-muslim it is um you know for ultimately you know in the long term an ethno state of its own always try i mean the united states right now they're trying to undermine birthright citizenship right so that they can actually denaturalize people like that is part of the goal um to be able to deport folks and things like this and or to be able to you know remove rights from people as citizens And I think that that, like, to think that a movement which has to be based upon, you know, connections to, you know, communities that are displaced and, you know, people who are Muslim, right? Like, all of these things. To think that your political alliance would be to sort of join or promote people who, I mean, literally on the same shows, these folks, it'll be like, you know, they're talking about whatever, like, you know, how Christians in Palestine are under attack and we should be supporting them as Christians or whatever. And then it'll be like, hey, like, you know, commercial time, right? Come watch my documentary about how the cartel in your neighborhood is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, right? Or like the next thing is like, I have a plastic weapon that you can take into cities to defend yourself against, you know, scary black and brown folks that might come up to you. Like, so it's like it's literally in the same content a lot of times. And I feel like people make these arguments like a lot of times. I don't know if they're just watching clips that people say where they seem like emotionally vulnerable. you know moved or upset or whatever and they think like i want to see that energy from other people on a big platform and stuff like that um or if they're actually watching the whole content and then if they are like i don't know how they reconcile everything that's going on in their head so sorry i know i kind of went all over there in the response but maybe i mean anything you want to say in response to that but also the piece around malaya you know and then singapore and and that kind of piece as well

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: yeah i mean that that is actually a great question so when i remember i mentioned about the formation of malaysia in 19 1963 that was actually also another attempt to curb communism in what the british called at the time borneo so borneo consists of three states, Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei. So I recently, like a few months ago, actually went to visit veterans of the North Kalimantan Communist Party. It's really, really interesting to learn about the people's uprising in what they call North Kalimantan. So basically Sabah, Sarawak and also Brunei. So Malaysia, so knowing that, you know, there's this movement or this uprising led by the NKCP at the time, the Communist Party of North Kalimantan. Of course, they were working with people in Brunei. Again, Brunei is a majority Muslim country, and also Sabah and Sarawak, how the Aboriginal people, they were also part of that movement. This is something that I should also note because one of the strategies in counterinsurgency is also trying to use the Aboriginal peoples against the communists because they would also, you know, of course there are Aboriginal peoples who serve as informants and they would use all these accounts by all these informants to say that, oh, the communists terrorized us when they were in the jungle, you know, in the forests of Malaya. But it's very interesting if you look at the works done by a lot of people who are working closely with aboriginal peoples in malaya you would hear stories of how you know they were so fond of the communists you know how they they really tried their best to support them you know by providing food you know by providing information for example oh you know we we saw the police force here. So please, you know, and go and hide something. And when I went to, to Sarawak recently, two months ago to visit the veterans of the NKCP, the same thing. And I saw the same thing, you know, which is, you know, this, how deeply involved the Aboriginal people in the struggle for national liberation movements in Brunei and Sarawak and also in Sabah. And of course, they documented a lot of things that they did with the Aboriginal people. The Aboriginal people not just supported them in terms of food supply, stuff like that, but they were also part of the movement. So it's really interesting that all these Chinese uncles and aunties, you know, bring us to visit the graves of Muslims, like Malay Muslims, you know, from Brunei, you know, from other parts of Borneo who fought against the British and were executed. So for me, it's like, wow, that's really interesting. And also they showed me how they develop, you know, political education programs while they were in the forest and they had their own dictionary like Chinese and Iban language dictionary to show you know how intrinsic the involvement of the Aboriginal peoples in the struggle against imperialism in Borneo so that's why you know because because of this uprising that was happening in Borneo at the time The British, of course, you know, they felt like, okay, we need to curb that also from happening in Malaya because we also have to deal with Indonesia and the uprising in Brunei and in Sabah and Sarawak was also supported by the PKI or the Partai Komunis Indonesia, the Communist Party of Indonesia, because they shared the same border, right, with Belimantan also. the Borneo stakes. And of course, they wanted to suppress the uprising in Borneo by incorporating them into Malaysia. So you suppressed and then you included them in this country called Malaysia in 1963 so that you can have this coordinated campaign that would decimate the whole movement in Borneo and of course Singapore was also included at the time in 1963 because Singapore too was able to suppress a lot of movements that wanted national liberation, that wanted to reunify with Malaya and of course at the time the British didn't want that kind of reunification because that would mess up this whole you know like the Malays were the majority right in Malaya if you added Singapore at the time that would just They would have to deal with the question that the Malays are no longer the majority. But the National Liberation Movement in Malaya wanted to include Singapore when they were fighting for liberation of Malaya because that was how they tried to subvert the racializing project that the British wanted to put in place. So you just see how things just change. according to the political imperatives at the time because of the suppression of the uprising in Borneo they felt like okay now it's safe you know to just incorporate Borneo into Malaysia and also Singapore into Malaysia but Singapore somehow got out of Malaysia like two years after the incorporation of that country because of course you know there's this internal conflict between Singapore and Malaya because the ruling class in Malaya wanted to retain Malay supremacy but Singapore of course you know they're like oh we are majority Chinese and you know we also want to have that kind of dominance you know when talking about how do we manage all these different racial categories, right? Like the Malays, the Chinese. So, okay, might as well just separate. So we don't have to deal about that question, the race question. And also because Singapore has also suppressed all radical movements. So the British, they were, I mean, the, you know, US imperialism and also British imperialism, they were cool with that. They were cool with Singapore not being part of Malaya anymore because, you know, I mean, you can... serve our interests, then that's fine. But Malaysia, you know, the incorporation of Malaysia is important because we still have to deal with the threat of communism coming from Indonesia. And we saw that, you know, the Konfrontasi episode, you know, explained how Yeah, Malaysia basically managed to also facilitate that process of the elimination of the Pekai or the Communist Party of Indonesia. So yeah, and it's very interesting, I mean, because we talked a little bit about the Philippines, right? So when I met my comrade recently in the Philippines, I was talking about this, about, you know, the suppression of the national liberation movements in Malaya, in Singapore, in Borneo, and also in Brunei, and she said that the British and the US were focusing really at the time on Malaya, trying to really ensure that Malaya became the anti-communist arc to contain communism in the country. So they paid less attention to the Philippines. And during that time, you could see how the people's army, the new people's army under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines managed to recruit a lot of people and they were really expanding their movement. And that to me is very interesting, something that we can always learn because they were, of course, they were also caught in the whole thing, right? But at the same time, the imperialists were like paying attention to something else, so they used that space to really reconsolidate and strengthen the people's movement, the people's uprising. So I feel, of course, you know, it's very bleak to talk about the region right now because of how entrenched anti-communism is, but the Philippines somehow gives me hope because they are still there. They're still trying to strengthen their movement. The People's Army is still very much you know, there, you know, trying to really strengthen that national liberation movement. And there's a lot that we can learn from them, really, you know, how they manage above ground formations and also how they manage underground formations. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's all I have to say about, you know, how Southeast Asia had to deal with this question of imperialism, anti-communism.

Jared Ball: Yeah. Yeah, no, thank you. So there's like a couple more things I wanted to get to. And then if you have a little time, we might be able to do some things from the chat. But you referenced it briefly. More, I think you referenced it in the context of Indonesia, but it's also very true for Malaya. Like, I went on to public domain images to look for pictures to create for the graphic for this. a lot of them I just didn't want to use because a lot of the images were severed heads, right? Like that was a lot of what you saw, right? And I bring this up not because I want to sort of rehash all of the gory details, but kind of for the same reason that you started with in terms of British citizens talking about this isn't us or we're, you know, this is authoritarian that we're you know um suppressing Palestine action or all of that which of course it is right but that this is like the idea that this is something new or that we're being turned into something unrecognizable right um and you know we see that frequently of these kind of analyses that suggest even by like U.S military folks I've seen this you know of You know, I mean, there was the image just last week where, you know, there was that video that came out that showed, you know, IOF troops, like, shooting a couple of captured, you know, young men, basically. They were captives and they just shot them, right, in broad daylight. And obviously, like, you know, we can... we should recoil at this. Like it is horrific. Right. But at the same time, there are these discourses that try to say, well, like that would never happen if it was the U S or, you know, the UK would never do that and things like that. And so I think that, um, like in the malaya emergency there are these you know all these images in you it's interesting too just in terms of counterinsurgency because a lot of it when you read it as doctrine they will talk of course about how um you know, you have to eliminate the enemy, right? Like this kind of stuff. Like they're not opposed to kind of euphemistically being quite clear that there is direct violence involved in counterinsurgency. But most of what they talk about are kind of what we've talked about in terms of you know, you try to develop support among different indigenous groups. You try to, you know, create propaganda against the communists or the nationalists as being controlled by China or these kinds of things, right? So that you can create, a lot of it is about like narratives and propaganda and kind of these divide and conquer and also stuff interestingly about, getting people involved in democratic spaces where they can talk about their rights and, like, what they want for their society and stuff like that, right? And... But the other side of it is this brutality, right? Is the degree of violence and how the violence is... very much a part of how these campaigns are waged um and i mean that like obviously literally but also on a level of um you know when you when you walk out you talk about somebody walking out and seeing severed heads in their village like that does something to you psychologically it is designed to do something to you psychologically right and obviously we see the same thing if we talk about gaza right of the kinds of things that um you know israel supported by western imperialism does in order like knowing that these are war crimes right but it's sending a message right so um yeah i wanted to bring it up because obviously you know we're talking about a war here that was conducted in the second half of the 20th century so this is not like ancient history or you know a long time ago um and led by western civilization right in a post-world war context also after much of this happens after the ratification of the geneva convention as well and so you know i just didn't know if there's anything additional that you kind of wanted to talk about in this context

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: I'm just reminded of what my comrade from the Philippines said. It was only recently, I think, maybe two, three years ago, like people from the People's Army, the New People's Army, their bodies were mutilated. And she was telling me about this and I thought it was like, oh, maybe it was in the 70s or the 80s. And she was like, no, that was 2023. And I just felt like, oh, wow, this campaign of mass terror that we saw in Indonesia in 1965 is still very much alive. Like in the Philippines, you know, you see this. It's just that we don't talk about it enough. It's just that even the Filipinos themselves, you know, don't see that reality because, of course, you know, because of propaganda, because of anti-communist propaganda, you know, people don't see these people as human beings anymore, right? They're terrorists. I mean, they deserve to be treated that way. It's just, it's so, I don't know, I mean, even though we didn't live in the 60s and the 70s, right? I mean, millennials, we millennials were only born in the 80s. But for me, it's just, you know, when you talk to people who lived through that period, when you talk to people who survived that violent episode, you know, because I have that opportunity, you know, to still have this conversation with the veterans of the Communist Party in Sarawak, you know, in Malaya and also other countries in Southeast Asia. It's just when they tell you stories about the struggle in the forest, right? Of course, we listen to that story and we think about their resilience, you know, about their sacrifice, about the strength that they had to continue on, you know, in the forest. But at the same time, I think it's also about the oppressiveness of being forced to fight under the harshest conditions, because the Malayan forests, you know, the forests in this part of the world in Southeast Asia are quite unforgiving. I mean, I love hiking, but when I go hiking in Malaysian forests, it's just You know, I always am reminded of, oh, my God, you know, I would die if I had to live in the forest and, you know, fight in the forest and yet just hear stories of all these people learning how to treat the wounded, for example. So I was assisting this one woman, a member of the Communist Party of Malaya. She was stateless up until last year. so she she couldn't you know make her own passport so she couldn't travel because she doesn't have that citizenship because you know they were considered aliens right when they were involved in the in the struggle but after the peace agreements were signed the government of malaysia actually promised that okay we would give you citizenship and she didn't get her citizenship until last year and she was telling me about how no she went to england to study medicine and then she heard about what was going on in malaya and she came back to join the communist party and then she went to vietnam and she learned how to treat the wounded because the doctors in vietnam were teaching her how to do that it's really amazing because she she told me that you know she spent maybe 10 12 years in the forest with the the the regimen that she was assigned to and I asked her this question I asked why did you join the MCB and she said I just want to help poor people and I thought that was so profound and also the violence enacted on them is just incomprehensible you know how they are treated just because they want to fight for the poor, just because they want the basic things to be accorded to human beings. And I found that very profound because I was like, I just want to help poor people. And she put her life on the line because she believed that that's how she could achieve that objective. So yeah, I mean, you know, violence, of course, you know, we severed heads, mutilated bodies, but also the violence inflicted on these people. You know, it's just, I just cannot imagine how do you live your life, you know, in the forest, you know, you don't have enough food, you have to confront a lot of threats, you know, not just from weapons, but also from like wild animals. They were telling me about, you know, having to fight tigers, for example. I'm like, oh my God, it's just, I cannot comprehend that really. And they're still alive to tell all these stories. And I'm, yeah, it just makes me feel like, I mean, for us, what do we do, right? The duty is really on us to think about how do we advance the struggle? And they have sacrificed a lot for us. And of course the world has not changed, but it could change. It's just that we have to have the humility, I think, you know, having watched the discourse unfolding on social media, I feel like we have to be serious about committing ourselves to the cause. We have to be serious about deep study. We have to be serious about choosing silence and start reevaluating the things that we believe in, the things that we perpetuate, you know, the narratives that we internalize, if we really care about the movement.

Jared Ball: No, that's absolutely appreciated. Alright, so I'm going to bring in a couple things from the chat. But I do want to say before we kind of close up, and it's timely, I did not actually plan this, it just worked out this way. But yeah, so in about little so 50 minutes a little less than an hour at 12 30 p.m eastern time in the us um we'll have a conversation with a couple of people uh from prisoners for palestine which I never know who I can say what around based on what laws there are in what countries they're in. But they are the hunger strikers who are part of or associated with these Palestine action cases, right? That's what the struggle of these folks come out of. So you referenced their hunger strikes and just their activism as kind of a context through which you were also writing this piece. I didn't know if there's anything that you wanted to say just regard to that struggle right now.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: Yeah, I think we have to support them. We have to amplify their voices, really, because I know that it's not just here in Southeast Asia that the militant aspects or the militant elements of the struggle are always sidelined or isolated or ignored. And I think it happens there too, like in the imperial core, and how a lot of people try to distance themselves from all these militants, right? Because, of course, civility, this idea of non-violence, you know, you have to do things according to the law, you have to do things according to the framework provided by the state, you know, you have to get police permit or, you know, stuff like that. And, of course, Palestine Action, all these hunger strikers, they... prioritized humanity they prioritize the urgency to dismantle the imperial capitalist machine and that's the reason why they're now behind bars they have to use their bodies to really push for change to happen. And I think it is our responsibility to respond to them. It is our responsibility to think about how to escalate this movement because they have done their part and they have sacrificed their life And yeah, I mean, what do we do, right? This is the least actually you need to talk about the applied, but really something that we need to talk about is how do we advance the struggle? How do we inflict real damage to US-led imperialism? They have shown the way and of course the fight is far from over and it is for us to really continue that struggle because we have to honour what they have done for us. And I don't know what's going to happen to them really because the law is really arbitrary and you know that, you know, the state has control over it, right? So they can always use national security as justification to continue detaining these people. And look at what's happening in the US too, like Mumia Abu-Jamal is still behind bars, incarcerated. And the plight of political prisoners is not something that's new also. When you read closely the history of anti-colonial struggles all over the world, you see you know, how political prisoners, you know, behind prisons, you know, they too are also struggling to advance the struggle. So, and they cannot do that alone. We have to also be a part of that struggle. Yeah.

Jared Ball: Beautifully said. Yes. right so i have some comments on the chat so i'm gonna just pull some of them in so uh don't forget about british counterinsurgency efforts against uh land and freedom army in kenya which many people would know as the mao mao right um the africans dealt with british military and armed british colonial citizens so one thing i just wanted to say with respect to this is there are i mean So Frank Kitson, who I did a two-part discussion with Orosami Burton about, I think it might have been his first, but one of his earliest deployments was to Malaya. And so he was a part of the Malaya emergency counterinsurgency efforts. He went from there to Kenya and was a part of that counterinsurgency. The British imperialism, the military, they used Kenyan fighters in the Malaya counterinsurgency as well. And they may have even done vice versa in Kenya. I don't know. So there's really several links between those struggles. And I think obviously we can see... you know how that legacy is ongoing if you think about for instance uh you know kenyan i guess they were police or soldiers that were used in um you know the recent multinational campaign in haiti which also is much like what um is being proposed although it's not clear yet who would actually do it in gaza um in terms of these you know, you get the UN Security Council to approve something that's not actually a UN mission. And so then they approve some other group of, you know, multinational forces to do these things. And then countries have to, you know, basically volunteer or be coerced, you know, to play those roles. That's kind of like the new technology of this older thing, which would used to just be, you know, that because they were under British colonial rule, you know they could i don't did they conscript people i mean how did i guess they probably did right or just coerced them to be involved in these you know wars um if you i don't know if you have any thoughts you wanted to add on that but i can just move to other comments too

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: Oh, yeah, I mean, of course, you know, the connection is always there, right? And also, I think I didn't mention the fact that British policing in Palestine was imported from Palestine to Malaya in June 1948 when they declared the emergency. And that was one month after the British mandate was concluded. So in it to see how our oppression is very much linked and that's why our struggle against it is also something that cannot be separated. Yeah.

Jared Ball: yeah i found that a really interesting point in the piece and i meant to actually bring it up and forgot to but just that the 1948 connection there um between um palestine and malaya is yeah uh important um I don't. Yes. So this you can also add this like in the comments or something like that afterwards of the stream or if you have any off the top of your head. But yeah, I mean, books and sites and links, I think, specific probably to Malaya and the struggle, you know, in the history we've talked about, but First of all, shout out to Vox. I forgot to give them that. They published this piece. People should read it. And we've had other conversations and will continue to do more on the work that they publish. So yeah, I appreciate their work a lot.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: Oh, I would recommend the memoir of Chin Peng. So Chin Peng was leader of the Malayan Communist Party. He was the British Empire's enemy number one. So he wrote a memoir focusing particularly on the emergency. I wrote a review of that memoir. on liberated texts so people can just find it there on that website and I'll share more readings on the Malayan emergency in particular and the other book that I would recommend would be The Ark of Containment that was published two three years ago about how Malaya became the anti-communist arc to contain communism in Southeast Asia and also to isolate China. Yeah, there are a lot of, I think I would really encourage people to read memoirs and autobiographies of people involved in the movement because I feel like academia also is not that different from the NGO human rights. industrial complex. I haven't spent like five years in academia, I've seen that, really. So if you really want to learn about the dialectics of liberation, or the struggle, you have to learn from the people who were involved in the struggle, then only you can you can understand what the struggle entails and what actually happens at the time. So yeah.

Jared Ball: Absolutely. Yeah, much appreciated. All right, where did I go? Somebody said, Alexander, I think one of the most successful strategies of the system was to establish peaceful protests that appeals to shared values in the form of begging a favor from higher powers as only acceptable. Yeah, only acceptable probably means of struggle or whatever, right? But that is, I mean... it's literally in the counterinsurgency field manuals like they're just like hey like get people to go to town halls and to talk about what they need and you know figure out which of their demands that you can you know develop policies around and support to get them invested in the local democratic process like that's that's like exactly what they want to do and yeah i mean the you know this this idea of peaceful protest i mean there's so much work that goes into um you know the dissemination of this and i mean i think it's so it's so insidious because you know you could think about something like palestine action like everything they did was peaceful protests like and here they are they're now branded as terrorists by the uk why well because they actually are doing peaceful protests in ways that you know cost money to the war machine and gum up the works right and so um you know if you if you are effective enough at doing uh you know peaceful i mean peaceful is about wrong word but if you're effective enough that doing non-violent tactics that are the you know that people would say is what you should do then they'll go oh no you can't do it like that like you have to you have to no we just mean get the permit go march in the circle and go home and that's there you go um all right

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: Yeah, you can never win, you know, so this emphasis on non-violent protests, right, like peaceful protests, when we keep emphasizing that aspect of the protest, what are we legitimizing, really? We are really demonizing violence as another tactic that can be used to really dismantle the suppressive systems that we live under. So, yeah.

Jared Ball: Yeah. good to see somebody from malaysia in the chat uh my grandfather was a part of the communist party uh back in the day in malaya so that's awesome wonderful to thank you for joining us um right there's a couple other these are kind of so where do the spiritual and material worlds coincide for equality and liberation this may have been a rhetorical question but um i don't know if you had any thoughts on this you know thinking about that history of you know islam and communism within malaysia and some of those connections I like this question, actually.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: It's just, I feel like, you know, the spiritual, right? I mean, a lot of people feel like, oh, we're not being materialistic to talk about the spiritual. And I feel like when Che Guevara spoke about revolutionary love, somehow I feel like that's deeply spiritual to me. I feel like you know, the self, right? It's about subjugating the self to the collective. It's about you know, revolutionary sacrifice or revolutionary suicide that Fred Hampton spoke about. It's just, for me, that is something that we have to talk about more when we talk about being part of this struggle for liberation. Of course, you know, we are all products of historical processes, but at the same time, we are also human beings, right? And when people talk about humanity, when people talk about how we should relate to each other how we should feel the pain of others you know i think about malcolm x also um he was actually my my many years ago when i was struggling to relate to a lot of people around me he became that militant and spiritual teacher of mine actually so i learned a lot actually from Malcolm X and to see how the spiritual is very much embedded in his politics is something that is very liberating I would say because I also found that when reading the works of Che Guevara so it's just you know yeah so that's why I feel like when you talk about Marxism in this part of the world like in Southeast Asia in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia it is something that is almost natural for people to relate because it speaks to that self, you know, that, you know, it sounds almost like Sufism, I would say, like the self, you know, how you have to subjugate the self so that you can be helpful and you can be useful for the struggle. You know, it's no longer about the self, right? It's about using your body using your mind and your soul for the cause so it's no longer about the ego it's all about you trying to find the best way possible to be of service really so when i see people on social media particularly insisting on holding on to opinions that are challenged severely challenged for example you know this whole discourse about what we should align with white supremacy it's been going on for so long i mean i wrote that article last month i think it's still going on now you know you see how the PFLP, for example, is now, according to all these people, is control opposition. I'm like, wow. Have you read what happened to Ghassan Khanafani, for example? Have you read what happened to all the people that you know, that were part of the party and also who are still now part of the party. Like, how can you say something like that without even causing when people point out that you are wrong? You know, I think that's the ego speaking, really. You know, if you really care about the movement, if you really care about the people that you claim that you care about, you should have the humility, really, to just... pause and think and maybe talk to people around you and, you know, have this kind of conversation that we are having now. I think that is something that is really missing. You know, when we talk about advancing the movement, there's a lot of liberal individualist tendencies that we have to confront, really. And if we don't, you know, we yeah, we will risk doing the work for the imperialists. And that is really heartbreaking and dangerous at the same time.

Jared Ball: Absolutely. And I think that's a perfect place for us to close up. This has been great. I'm sure it won't be the last time that we get together and talk. This has been really good. Yeah, just appreciate it. Appreciate the work. Look forward to reading other things that you write and other stuff you do. Is there anything that you want to connect people to, you know, social media or website or anything like that? Or yeah, anything you want to say in closing?

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: I'm on X and also Instagram. I just recreated my Instagram account, really, because I feel like, okay, you know, I should use the medium, even though I hate Instagram sometimes, like social media in general. But I just want people to follow your podcast and also Vox UMA. And there are a lot of new anti-imperialist media platforms out there on X, on Instagram. Please follow them because... You know, as Fidel said, we are in this battle of ideas and it is imperative that we clarify the direction of the struggle. It is imperative that we do all the work needed to give clarity to the masses and also provide leadership and direction so that we can get more organized. As Malcolm said, our enemy is super organized, and we cannot be out organized. So yeah.

Jared Ball: Absolutely. Thank you so much. This was great. I appreciate it. And just a note again to folks here that in 30 minutes, we'll be back live again to talk about Prisoners for Palestine and the ongoing hunger strikes, which have been going on for weeks at this point. So yeah, thank you so much.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri: Thank you so much.