The Daily Whine

Recently there was some hooha in Singapore over a Malay man who was arrested after returning from Pakistan for Jihadist training with an Al Qaeda-linked group. What got his front-page coverage was the fact that he was a self-radicalized Jihadist through fundamentalist Internet websites. In other words, he became a self-help terrorist (The Straits Times labeled him a terrorist, and to be honest, I’m not in opposition to this view).

Interestingly, the man was a Law School graduate with an elite-school background in Singapore. This did not fit the profile of most terrorist trainees, who conventional wisdom places to be living beneath the poverty line and poorly educated at the same time. This got the government worried because it suggested that Singapore, with a relatively large educated class, could potentially become a breeding pond for fairly big numbers of smart Jihadists waging war with our pro-American government.

I bring all this up because I heard a very interesting dialog between two young Chinese on my way home. They were talking about the likelihood of a self-radicalized army [poetic license] of Jihadists surfacing in Singapore, and one of them said something to the effect of "I find it so hard to believe that anyone can be radicalized without help from anybody else."

Really? Because I would like to present Exhibit A — my parents.

My parents are not Jihadists (or at least not that I’m aware of). They are, however, overwhelming supporters of the KMT (Kuomintang) party in Taiwan, and fervently  follow Ma Ying Jiu’s pot-holed campaign for the presidency. They have rallied along with other KMT supporters in front of the KMT HQ in Taipei (I have a photo of them grinning like groupies at the rally). They have flags of the KMT stashed somewhere in the store-room. They engage in spirited discussion with anyone who cares, about why outgoing president Chen Shui Bian of the Democratic People’s Party is the devil incarnate. And they shake their fists with conviction when they tell me that Taiwan needs the KMT to take them forward.

Ignore for the moment the fact that neither my father nor mother are remotely Taiwanese. Never mind that they aren’t even Chinese (of Chinese descent, yes; Chinese, no). Let’s also forget that they both live in Singapore. What is just so amazing about my parents’ pro-KMT fervor is that neither of them has any friends or acquaintances in the KMT (or any other Taiwanese party, for that matter). In other words, how they became KMT supporters is almost as interesting as the fact that the KMT agenda has absolutely nothing to do with them.

My parents lived in Taipei for about a year and a half, when my sister and bro-in-law were working there. As far as I can tell, most of their time spent indoors was in front of the TV with one of the Taiwanese cable news channels on. They watched Taiwanese news like political analysts, eagerly calling out developments and making sharp commentary to each other as the news unfolded. This wouldn’t be all that amazing if not for the fact that prior to this period, my parents probably didn’t speak 500 chinese words between them. They didn’t read the newspapers, and they didn’t meet with other sofa analysts for coffee and debate. The TV was their only source of interaction (unidirectional as it was) with Taiwanese politics.

There are 3 significant conclusions to draw from this.

Firstly, if ever we needed proof of the power of the media to form opinion and shape views, this was it.

Secondly, you don’t need any other interaction to self-radicalize as long as your propaganda content is easily understood, easily accessible, and easily reinforced.

Thirdly, senior citizens and retirees with cable television represent a large untapped market for Jihad.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 8:28 am and is filed under Fine Whines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.