The Malaysian Insight

MANUFACTURED outrage, as a wit said on Twitter, is probably Malaysia’s biggest business after services, manufacturing and tourism.

It doesn’t take much to manufacture outrage. Lights in the shape of a cross on a building in Penang. A wagyu beef dish that is mistaken for pork in a Malaysia Airlines inflight magazine. 

In both cases, it would seem that what you dislike is what you think you see in front of you. It might also seem silly but the reality is different. 

This is manufactured outrage, making a mountain out of something even more minute than a molehill to raise suspicion and doubt, incite hate and provoke trouble.

It doesn’t just happen in Malaysia, of course. In the United States this past week, a seemingly hostile confrontation between a Native American and a group of Catholic schoolboys wearing President Donald Trump’s election-taglined baseball cap – Make America Great Again – raised a social media furore.

The so-called clash turned out to be something else when a fuller picture emerged days later. Social media had just taken a slice of time without context and perspective, making something out of nothing at all.

So it is in the US as it is in Malaysia, the confrontation and clash between the conservatives and liberals, with a heavy dash of puritanism, supercilious behaviour and racial bigotry, that manufactures this outrage.

You can add state and private lawyers dancing with judges and politicians at a private dinner but video clips circulated far and wide into this business of manufacturing outrage. 

It doesn’t matter which side of the political or religious aisle you’re on, or that you even straddle the aisle. It is not kosher if done by people you don’t like. It isn’t right when done under a government you don’t support.

So we manufacture this outrage and incite hate, to shape and mould matters into something bigger that can profit us in the future.  As author Jonathan Swift first said it, falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after.

By then, it’s too late. Outrage takes momentum and you get a clamour for action, for apologies and such. Those who make up this outrage get the upper hand and are seen as the champions of the community or race.

It would be easy to ask people to be cautious. It would be easy to expect people to be smart about this. But outrage appeals to our base emotions and desires and pride in being part of the community, or mob.

We will see more of such manufactured outrage, even lies of a Trumpian level, such as asking the Orang Asli to hold on to their identity cards for fear the cards would be misused in the Cameron Highlands by-election.

Such speculation feeds into the manufacture of outrage, much like saying some 40,000 Bangladeshis voted in the 13th general election. So manufacturing outrage isn’t new in Malaysia.

But we need to call it out and end this rubbish now. 

Or we’ll never build a nation based on trust, equity and equality. We’ll just be a nation of thin-skinned people waiting to explode at the first flight of a lie. – January 23, 2019.

* Jahabar Sadiq runs The Malaysian Insight.