The Brader On Tocqueville

The Pakatan folks are crowing about  their  tokong  again. This time around their hero gave a speech at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club (FCC) and they are all salivating, Pavlovian style of course.  

You can read it here (its another one of their ‘let me kiss your b@tt’ Blogs).

There is also a  “COMMENT by Terence Netto” about their tokong’s speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club.  Terence Netto says :

• More significant and instructive about the political thinking of Anwar was his lauding, at the FCCM dinner, of the merits of ‘Democracy in America’, the classic work of the French diplomat and historian Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote the book in 1835 after a nine-month tour of America during which he learned about democracy from the experience of ordinary people.
• Anwar said he always recommended the book to the younger set of leaders in his party, PKR, for their edification.  Tocqueville’s central point was that democracy would sweep the world, though it has taken nearly two centuries for that to happen to most countries of the world.
• The reason the French noble said that democratic revolution would be inevitable in the world was the system’s conferment of equality on the people.
• There are several other points Tocqueville made in his seminal book, but the one about the ordinary people’s preference for equality was, he (Anwar) observed, strongly held.

Is that so Terence? Then Terence Netto espouses the wet dream of many frustrated and racially challenged folks :   

“If Anwar’s and his followers’ understanding of Tocqueville’s emphasis on equality is well founded, it would follow that a non-Malay leader of requisite calibre can become PM of Malaysia.”

Aiyyo Terence yennadey.   Since you will be among the racially challenged crowd which crows that all Malays come from Indonesia, then you will note that in Bali, the Malays there are predominantly Hindus.  In Bali there are Malay Hindu brahmins as well. And only Malay Hindu brahmins are allowed to become the priests in the temples in Bali.  Why is that? 

Terence, do you think they understand  “Tocqueville’s emphasis on equality”  in Bali? I know I am side tracking but I just thought you may need some focus.

Before I go further,  your tokong is well known for quoting books and authors that he has not read or which he has not understood.  I think the same applies for his un-understanding of Alexis de Tocqueville.

Your tokong once wrote that he recommended for Dr Mahathir to read a seminal book on Islam by Said Ramadan or someone. It turned out that the book he recommended  was current at the Islamic University when your tokong was almost in power.  What a coincidence?

The thin book (about 100 pages)  was a basic introduction to Islam for 1^st year students and sold for about RM7/=.  To him it was a ‘seminal’ work as well. Why? I think it was because the book was thin enough for him to read.

But saddest of all is the story of Mohamed - a short, fat and balding guy (whom I met at the Finance Ministry in 1997). Mohd’s table was always full of books, left open here and there. It was Mohd’s job to use colour highlighters to mark phrases and quips that his tokong would then include in his speeches – to make it appear that he was a book reading intellectual. 

That was why during those Budget speeches no one could understand what he was trying to say, including poor Mohd who highlighted the passages. 

After he was released from prison (where he was jailed for six years for the corrupt abuse of power of  ordering the Police to arrest and torture a young woman) your tokong told his admirers that he had read Shakespeare almost seven times. Of course the type of people who admire him may pronounce it as seks-spear. 

Shakespeare wrote over 40 plays, poems and over 150 sonnets. Easily more than 2000 pages of writing. Hamlet alone, Shakespeare’s longest play, has over 4042 lines (that’s about 250 pages?)  Your tokong expects us to believe that he read all these  almost seven times? Terence do you believe him? I bet he cannot tell you what is a sonnet?

So when you say :  “Anwar said he always recommended (Tocqueville’s) book to the younger set of leaders in his party, PKR, for their edification”  it does make me laugh.

Firstly I think he is just making these things up. I don’t think he said any such thing. Secondly even the foreign journalists at the Foreign Correspondents Club wont know who the hell was Alexis de Tocqueville.  

Imagine YB Bagel, Loh Go Burn or whoever going to Borders and asking the girl ‘You got Alexis Tokawil or not?’

Anyway here is some comment about Alexis de Tocqueville including about his “seminal” book “Democracy in America”.    This one here is by one  Jennifer Pitts, Department of Government, Harvard University  titled  “Liberalism and empire: Tocqueville on Algeria”  

(Wow, even I - who cannot be impressed - am still not impressed).  

First of all Jennifer Pitts quotes Tocqueville :  “I have no doubt that we can raise on the coast of Africa a great monument to the glory of our country” -  Alexis de Tocqueville, Second letter on Algeria (1837)

Then the Harvard scholar continues :

Tocqueville’s turn to Algerian colonization as a kind of solution for France’s domestic political crisis—a solution he clung to with sometimes desperate hope in spite of its clear moral and practical flaws—demonstrates his sense of crisis during the 1840s.   It also illustrates certain ill-known contours of his liberalism:

i.       its susceptibility to the notion of national glory as a substitute for political virtue;

ii.    its willing exclusion of unfamiliar peoples from moral consideration for the sake of national consolidation.

iii. Tocqueville’s commitment to the colonial project was typical of the period and was shared across an astonishingly broad political spectrum.

To both the Brader and Terence Netto, what the Harvard woman is saying was that Alexis Tocqueville was a raving colonialist. Don’t believe me?  Here, you can repeat this famous quote by Alexis de Tocqueville :

"I have no doubt that we can raise on the coast of Africa a great monument to the glory of our country -  Alexis de Tocqueville, Second letter on Algeria (1837)"

Tocqueville was writing about the need for the French butchering, murdering, slaughtering and pillaging Algeria. Someone should tell the Brader (as well as Terence Netto) that Alexis de Tocqueville was France’s biggest expert on Algeria at exactly the same period in history when the French decided to butcher the Arabs in Algeria.

Here is that Harvard University scholar on Tocqueville again :

• After his election to the Chamber of Deputies, Tocqueville came to be seen as the parliament’s greatest expert on the colony. 
• In 1841, the same year that the French began the total conquest and deliberate colonization of Algeria, he made the first of his two visits to the country, for he considered direct observation crucial for an understanding of the colonial project.
• The essay he wrote in 1841 upon returning from his first journey shows Tocqueville at his most ruthless.
• After defending the general goal of French domination of Algeria, Tocqueville defended the most violent means as well:
• ‘I have often heard men whom I respect, but with whom I do not agree, find it wrong that we burn harvests, that we empty silos, and finally that we seize unarmed men, women, and children’, he wrote.  
• ‘These, in my view, are unfortunate necessities, but ones to which any people who want to wage war on the Arabs are obliged to submit’.
• His visit had convinced him of the impossibility of racial integration; 
• he now believed that French relations with indigenous Algerians would consist largely of violence, 
• and he began to focus his energies on the legislation for, and administration of, the European colony.

Aiyyo Terence – what Tocqueville is saying is that it is better that only Malay Hindu brahmins become the priests at the temples in Bali. Orang lain semua tak boleh. And if you cannot accept that, then you can consider yourself “racially challenged”.  (I just coined this phrase lah – its past midnite and I just slept thru Tom Hanks ‘Angels & Demons’. It’s the sleep therapy.)

The Brader says he rcommends Tocqueville’s book “Democracy in America”  for 'the younger set of leaders in his party, PKR, for their edification'.

Here is another website  which quotes from Tocqueville’s book ‘Democracy in America”. 

Tocqueville visited America when slavery was still being practiced in the South. The North had abolished slavery. This was Tocqueville’s observation about slavery :

“In the South the master is not afraid to raise his slave to his own standing, because he knows that he can in a moment reduce him to the dust at pleasure. In the North the white no longer distinctly perceives the barrier that separates him from the degraded race, and he shuns the Negro with the more pertinacity since he fears lest they should some day be confounded together.”

Such kindly and loving language – “..not afraid to raise his slave to his own standing, because he knows that he can in a moment reduce him to the dust at pleasure”

Tocqueville was raising the racist Southerners to the same level as the anti-slavery Northeners.  Putting it another way Tocqueville was lowering the anti-slavery Northeners to the level of the racist Southerners.

There is more about Tocqueville’s racially challenged attitudes. Just search Google for ‘Alexis de Tocqueville’s racism’. See what pops up. Here is another  example :

Writing in 1841, Tocqueville promoted the suspension of all religious and political freedoms for native Algerians. 

Of such acts he wrote:  

• In France I have often heard people deplore [the army] burning harvests, emptying granaries and seizing unarmed men, women and children. 
• As I see it, these are unfortunate necessities that any people wishing to make war on the Arabs must accept... 
• I believe the laws of war entitle us to ravage the country and that we must do this, 
• either by destroying crops at harvest time, or all the time by making rapid incursions, known as raids, 
• the aim of which is to carry off men and flocks.

For Tocqueville, democracy was for the white man only.  Just like in Bali only the Malay Hindu brahmin can become priest of the temple.  I think this is very suitable reading for the Pakatan people. 

Remember what I have said many times, if the Pakatan comes to power, democracy will die in this country.