of agendas, red herrings and red flags
"fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice shame on me" so the saying goes. i wonder what does it say if we get fooled more than twice.
i have stayed away from writing about the upcoming elections (and writing in general for my blog) largely because i am really tied up with academic work for my last semester. however, recent events compel me to write because i have done some research on the topic and have presented a paper on politics and conservative Christianity in Singapore before. i do not have time to cover a lot but i will attempt to cover some areas where i see history repeating itself.
1. astroturfing
what is happening in the social media, as this post points out, is that fake accounts are being created in facebook (and even on youtube) to propagate certain ideas / ideologies to sway public opinion. i investigated two accounts that posted on Vivian Balakrishnan's fan page today before the comments got deleted. i will hesitate to call these accounts i saw fake. it takes quite a lot of effort to post comments all over - on The Online Citizen facebook page, on The Temasek Review's facebook page, as well as several political parties' facebook page. while many of us do comment on these pages, facebook for us is a social media where our social lives, our political views, our different interests (like farmville) intersect. these accounts, in my opinion, have another purpose - they are the new form of astroturfing.
it is not difficult to spot these accounts. first, their profile pictures are a dead giveaway. second, like multiple accounts created for games such as farmville where all you see on that profile are game-related posts, you will notice that virtually every post on these profiles are related to politics. scarily, the few that are not, are related to religion - specifically Christianity. before anyone starts getting riled up and start yelling "fundies," i think it is not helpful to demonize these people. i honestly believe they have good intentions. but we all know about good intentions and where the road they pave leads to. this is what they believe is the right thing to do. getting engaged in a yelling contest will not get us anywhere - look at the situation in the United States.
this is not something new. remember the takeover of AWARE in March 2009? remember the so-called “Christian backlash” in 2003 when the Christian community was mobilized to write in to the newspapers to voice their disapproval the then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong’s statement in Time magazine that homosexuals could be employed in sensitive positions in the civil service?
2. red herrings and whose agenda is it anyway?
i do not think that the incumbent party (since they are no longer the government after parliament has been dissolved) is behind these astroturfing attempts - but like all savvy politicians, they know a lightning rod issue when they see one. so to draw attention away from other issues, they take advantage of the situation and throw in a red herring.
we have seen this before. in April 2003, Minister Mentor brought up the question of homosexuality, saying that Singapore has to "take a practical, pragmatic approach to what I see is an inevitable force of time and circumstance" when posed a question during a dialogue session with the Young PAP on 21 April 2007 at St James Power Station. (see this article from Alex Au) like all shrewd politicians - he answered not the question being asked, but the question he wanted to be asked. the question is why?
if we investigate what was dominating the headlines prior to this issue, it was about the increase in ministerial pay (see another article from Alex Au). once the issue about homosexuality "caught fire" in the media, everything about ministerial pay increase disappeared from the media. just. like. that.
i think the term "gay agenda" is very misleading, because the discourse in Singapore around this issue has never been in the hands of the LGBT community, but rather been initiated and deployed by the media and by the government. all they need to do, is to sit back, and watch the religious conservatives take the bait, and we lose sight of the issues we were discussion about.
are we getting distracted again this time round? will we take the bait and move away from talking about HDB prices, cost of living, our ministers' accountability to the people, the over-budget and under-marketed YOG, and Mas Selamat's escape?
3. red flags
there are just some words that act as red flags for me that immediately sets off alarm bells in my head. again, pedophilia has emerged in the mud slinging and gutter politics that PAP has employed. Siew Kum Hong wrote a great piece (and you can read it here), pointing out that:
"The PAP can try all it wants, but the objective here is transparently clear to everyone: to tell the world that Vincent Wijeysingha is gay, and thereby win the votes of that part of the population that will vote based on just this single wedge issue, regardless of any other issue.
The rest of the statement -- in particular the allusion to an alleged discussion about "sex with boys and whether the age of consent for boys should be 14 years of age" -- is just outright unjustified mudslinging insinuation that seems designed to imply a linkage between Vincent Wijeysingha and that discussion. If you watch the video in question, you will find that:
(a) Vincent Wijeysingha does not talk about sex with boys or lowering the age of consent for boys.
(b) only M. Ravi talked about that, and he also does not advocate lowering the age of consent for boys. Instead, he seemed to be talking about the age of consent for boys in the context of making a more general point (it's hard to tell precisely what the point is, because the clip has been edited -- perhaps deliberately -- such that what went on before is not shown)."
every time pedophilia is brought up in discourse around LGBT rights, it is the deployment of the rhetoric of fear and misinformation. this has been perpetuated so it can use fear to rally people against LGBT people. it is ingrained in our human nature (and i would argue in other animals as well) to protect our young - so threatening the young is a sure-fire way to motivate people into action, and in this case, vote against Vincent Wijeysingha.
the power of the media is in the hands of the incumbent party - they have the access to get this message of fear disseminated across Singapore. they are using "the gay agenda" and "pedophila" as a way to work into the minds of the people. in a way, they are saying, if you vote for Vincent Wijeysingha, you are putting your children at risk. that is absolute rubbish. but the problem is that we do not have the same reach to counter and rebut them.
i remember i wrote a letter to the Straits Times, pointing out the fallacies of Dr Alan Chin Yew Liang's letter published in the Straits Times Forum section on 8th May 2007. my letter was only published on the online version on 10th May 2007. this discrepancy means that those who only read Dr Chin's letter will not have read my response. will the same case happen? how many people who have not read Siew Kum Hong's article will be left with the idea that Vincent Wijeysingha talked about "sex with boys and whether the age of consent for boys should be 14 years of age."
even though a letter written by Lisa Li Shi-En (you can read it here) was published on TodayOnline, how many people read it, compared to how many who read the headlines of the New Paper?
4. politics, politics, politics
we have seen it happen before. minorities were played up as the boogieman to drum up support during elections. Islamophobia was deployed last year in the United States during the election, particularly around the construction of the Islamic Center in New York City. see Justin Elliot's articles "How the "Ground Zero Mosque" Fear Mongering Began" and "Whatever Happened to the "Ground Zero Mosque"?"
now, homophobia is deployed. this is politics at its worst. what i fear, though, is that these underhanded tactics will work.
i have stayed away from writing about the upcoming elections (and writing in general for my blog) largely because i am really tied up with academic work for my last semester. however, recent events compel me to write because i have done some research on the topic and have presented a paper on politics and conservative Christianity in Singapore before. i do not have time to cover a lot but i will attempt to cover some areas where i see history repeating itself.
1. astroturfing
what is happening in the social media, as this post points out, is that fake accounts are being created in facebook (and even on youtube) to propagate certain ideas / ideologies to sway public opinion. i investigated two accounts that posted on Vivian Balakrishnan's fan page today before the comments got deleted. i will hesitate to call these accounts i saw fake. it takes quite a lot of effort to post comments all over - on The Online Citizen facebook page, on The Temasek Review's facebook page, as well as several political parties' facebook page. while many of us do comment on these pages, facebook for us is a social media where our social lives, our political views, our different interests (like farmville) intersect. these accounts, in my opinion, have another purpose - they are the new form of astroturfing.
it is not difficult to spot these accounts. first, their profile pictures are a dead giveaway. second, like multiple accounts created for games such as farmville where all you see on that profile are game-related posts, you will notice that virtually every post on these profiles are related to politics. scarily, the few that are not, are related to religion - specifically Christianity. before anyone starts getting riled up and start yelling "fundies," i think it is not helpful to demonize these people. i honestly believe they have good intentions. but we all know about good intentions and where the road they pave leads to. this is what they believe is the right thing to do. getting engaged in a yelling contest will not get us anywhere - look at the situation in the United States.
this is not something new. remember the takeover of AWARE in March 2009? remember the so-called “Christian backlash” in 2003 when the Christian community was mobilized to write in to the newspapers to voice their disapproval the then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong’s statement in Time magazine that homosexuals could be employed in sensitive positions in the civil service?
2. red herrings and whose agenda is it anyway?
i do not think that the incumbent party (since they are no longer the government after parliament has been dissolved) is behind these astroturfing attempts - but like all savvy politicians, they know a lightning rod issue when they see one. so to draw attention away from other issues, they take advantage of the situation and throw in a red herring.
we have seen this before. in April 2003, Minister Mentor brought up the question of homosexuality, saying that Singapore has to "take a practical, pragmatic approach to what I see is an inevitable force of time and circumstance" when posed a question during a dialogue session with the Young PAP on 21 April 2007 at St James Power Station. (see this article from Alex Au) like all shrewd politicians - he answered not the question being asked, but the question he wanted to be asked. the question is why?
if we investigate what was dominating the headlines prior to this issue, it was about the increase in ministerial pay (see another article from Alex Au). once the issue about homosexuality "caught fire" in the media, everything about ministerial pay increase disappeared from the media. just. like. that.
i think the term "gay agenda" is very misleading, because the discourse in Singapore around this issue has never been in the hands of the LGBT community, but rather been initiated and deployed by the media and by the government. all they need to do, is to sit back, and watch the religious conservatives take the bait, and we lose sight of the issues we were discussion about.
are we getting distracted again this time round? will we take the bait and move away from talking about HDB prices, cost of living, our ministers' accountability to the people, the over-budget and under-marketed YOG, and Mas Selamat's escape?
3. red flags
there are just some words that act as red flags for me that immediately sets off alarm bells in my head. again, pedophilia has emerged in the mud slinging and gutter politics that PAP has employed. Siew Kum Hong wrote a great piece (and you can read it here), pointing out that:
"The PAP can try all it wants, but the objective here is transparently clear to everyone: to tell the world that Vincent Wijeysingha is gay, and thereby win the votes of that part of the population that will vote based on just this single wedge issue, regardless of any other issue.
The rest of the statement -- in particular the allusion to an alleged discussion about "sex with boys and whether the age of consent for boys should be 14 years of age" -- is just outright unjustified mudslinging insinuation that seems designed to imply a linkage between Vincent Wijeysingha and that discussion. If you watch the video in question, you will find that:
(a) Vincent Wijeysingha does not talk about sex with boys or lowering the age of consent for boys.
(b) only M. Ravi talked about that, and he also does not advocate lowering the age of consent for boys. Instead, he seemed to be talking about the age of consent for boys in the context of making a more general point (it's hard to tell precisely what the point is, because the clip has been edited -- perhaps deliberately -- such that what went on before is not shown)."
every time pedophilia is brought up in discourse around LGBT rights, it is the deployment of the rhetoric of fear and misinformation. this has been perpetuated so it can use fear to rally people against LGBT people. it is ingrained in our human nature (and i would argue in other animals as well) to protect our young - so threatening the young is a sure-fire way to motivate people into action, and in this case, vote against Vincent Wijeysingha.
the power of the media is in the hands of the incumbent party - they have the access to get this message of fear disseminated across Singapore. they are using "the gay agenda" and "pedophila" as a way to work into the minds of the people. in a way, they are saying, if you vote for Vincent Wijeysingha, you are putting your children at risk. that is absolute rubbish. but the problem is that we do not have the same reach to counter and rebut them.
i remember i wrote a letter to the Straits Times, pointing out the fallacies of Dr Alan Chin Yew Liang's letter published in the Straits Times Forum section on 8th May 2007. my letter was only published on the online version on 10th May 2007. this discrepancy means that those who only read Dr Chin's letter will not have read my response. will the same case happen? how many people who have not read Siew Kum Hong's article will be left with the idea that Vincent Wijeysingha talked about "sex with boys and whether the age of consent for boys should be 14 years of age."
even though a letter written by Lisa Li Shi-En (you can read it here) was published on TodayOnline, how many people read it, compared to how many who read the headlines of the New Paper?
4. politics, politics, politics
we have seen it happen before. minorities were played up as the boogieman to drum up support during elections. Islamophobia was deployed last year in the United States during the election, particularly around the construction of the Islamic Center in New York City. see Justin Elliot's articles "How the "Ground Zero Mosque" Fear Mongering Began" and "Whatever Happened to the "Ground Zero Mosque"?"
now, homophobia is deployed. this is politics at its worst. what i fear, though, is that these underhanded tactics will work.