A Singaporean’s unhappy experience with the PRCs of yesteryear

The following article, published by Temasek Review, entitled, 'A Singapore Man's Unhappy Experience with a PRC Lady', and featured by Transitioning.org, yet again demonises China nationals working in Singapore. It starts off with an editor’s note,

"The below email has been circulating around in cyberspace and was forwarded to us for publication. For those of you who knows the identity of the author, please keep it strictly confidential."

This directs one to take the article as true, and therefore, the need to keep the identity of the author ‘confidential’. There is no reason to not deem this ‘email’ a malicious fascist and racist piece of propaganda, just as TR is. Their strategy is the same as most fascists and racists, (a2ed has been, and is, engaged in the study of such organisations in the UK, i.e. the National Front and the British National Party) will tend to pair an appeal to one’s economic pragmatism with the demonising of difference. I’ve personally had to put up with the demonisation of difference in the local context, but seeing foreigners suffering the same fate, if not consequence, is just about the last straw. The final statement,

"Please, my dear Singaporeans, look around you, what has happened to our country? Where have all these pests come from? Think about your loved ones and your other Singaporean friends. Forward this story and make sure that
they know what to do when the same thing happens to them."


The statement, 'Please, my dear Singaporeans,.....where have all these pests come from?' pens all these PRCs or 'FTs' in the same group and demonises the entirety by alluding to some examples. The same thing happened to the Afro-Americans whom were cast as delinquent in orientation where statistics, however, proved that the 'whites' committed more crimes than the 'blacks'. I can recount many instances of bad behaviour by the local chinese, but I suppose, to fascists, it is 'like that one lorr' or 'everywhere in the world also like that one' ('that's the way it is', 'it's the same everywhere else in the world') when we do it.

The following is a comment which i attempted to publish in Transitioning.org, but it was blocked for some reason.

*

Well, perhaps we ought to make more efforts to help the PRCs get a better economic foothold in singapore so that they might not see the need to resort to such methods of earning a living.

The same applied to quite a few of the forefathers of 'SGCs' who made their money from gambling, prostitution rackets, extortion, triad societies, syndicates, working with them whilst holding respectable professions, et cetera did it not. You can still see them sitting at coffeeshops throughout singapore. I've known, know, and get along very well with quite a few of them, many whom are ‘old timers’ now, personally, i.e, members of ‘Lo Guan’, ‘Ang Kun’, ‘Kun Tong’, ‘Ang Soon Tong’, ‘Sam Chuan’, 969, 369, 108, 08, 21, etc, etc, etc. Do these sound ‘Malay‘ or ‘Indian‘ to you? And I personally witnessed a gathering of the Toa Payoh 'Ang Soon Tong' at a neighbourhood coffeeshop a couple of weeks ago to celebrate the Chinese New Year, and had the opportunity to shake hands with the national head of the Ang Soon Tong himself when he came by my table to say hello to members of other gangs whom were sitting there before inviting us to ‘come eat, come eat’ - I had a bit...delicious stuff. To be honest, he came across as very humble and decent and i would never have guessed his other ‘profession’. And by the way, don’t ask me to identify this man as he has such a ‘normal‘ face and appearance that’s easy to forget - a very good qualification for such a post if you ask me;).

If you want to talk about ‘social problems with foreigners’, take a look at your own history and try a little empathy. ‘Getting whacked’ when you go into another’s ‘kampung’ by ‘pai kia’; Toa Payoh being considered Singapore’s ‘Chicago’ because of the pervasiveness of Chinese triads there; Lion and Dragon dance troupes being affiliated with different ‘numbers’; other races and even many Chinese steering clear of neighbourhoods, or observing a self-imposed curfew to avoid having their teeth kicked in by ‘pai kia’, and so on an so forth, these are not myths but realities that came about when the PRC population of yesteryear hit percentages of higher figures than the present. I’m forced to wonder how this might have contributed to the riots of the past, but it were the locals of yesteryear who were then marginalised. Perhaps Temasek Review should publish an article entitled, ‘A Singaporean’s unhappy experience with the PRCs of yesteryear’. Now how would that sound?

Let's not pretend that the PRCs are the first 'foreigners' to be ruthless and self-serving. Perhaps, if they had access to SAP schools; a racist policy that favours them as the preferred majority; enough apathy in the face of discrimination by them; have their children impressed upon by the media that they are more capable than others; have their culture celebrated with greater pomp than all others; etc, etc, etc, then, overtime, they might stop availing themselves of such strategies for ‘survival‘ and become as empathetic, compassionate, caring, and law-abiding as SGCs. What good for the goose must be good for the gander too right?;)

It's quite typical of people who've been used to their relatively advantaged status to miss the above points and be prone to demonising all others just as they've previously ignored all others because they aren't the 'majority what!'. In other words, people who’ve been trained to ignore difference will naturally move on to taking issue with ‘foreigners’ in such a demonising manner as well. Isn’t that just a more socially acceptable form of the ‘gang’ mentality? From ‘Kun Tong kia’ to ‘singaporean’. One gang to another, demonising or ignoring another because they aren’t a part of the clan.

To the 'SGCs', and, of course, the fascist and racist opposition, you've got a lot of critical introspection to do. Then, perhaps, you might adopt a different strategy when it comes to making sense of reality.



a2,


ed

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