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Thursday, April 28, 2016

Divining Sangeetha Thanapal's Motivations

A post that's been removed from Wake Up, Singapore:



"Dear Sangeetha, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

--------------------------------

As a self-proclaimed 'Anti Racism Social Media Activist', it is truly astounding how you turn away the very people who can remedy the situation you endlessly expound upon.

Sangeetha and her rants have been making their rounds around social media these days quite often. Yes, racism snd does exist to an extent it may even be institutionalised, but that is no excuse for slamming the majority - especially those like the person in the exchange below who is seeking to do their bit to remedy the situation.

Sangeetha, you argue that the majority of Singaporeans are racist. From your actions over the past years, I think you are no less racist then those who you accuse. It's simply ridiculous how you claim to be a 'social media activist' yet you expose your incredibly thin-skin whenever critics arise.

I don't know if what you want to achieve by shutting the conversation is simply some 'safe spaces' and/or circlejerk. If that's the case, you shouldn't be fronting these heated issues in the first place. If anything, you're a radical for not wanting to engage naysayers, not an activist.

Sangeetha, you're the epitome of a paradoxical creature. I thank you for raising some of these issues (although I highly doubt your claims that you were the first to surface them) but I think right now, you're doing way more harm then good for the cause. Ideally, you should be encouraging debates and not building echo chambers.

And, by the way, twisting facts won't get you anywhere too. (http://gssq.blogspot.sg/…/fact-checking-sangeetha-thanapals…)

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. And don't forget to take your SJW antics along with you on your way out too."


This was a response to a public thread on Sangeetha's Facebook.



And it is very telling:

Chee Siong Zhixiang: "what can be done about it?"

Sangeetha Thanapal: "Not coming here derailing and expecting minorities to come up with solutions for a problem u and ur ancestors created would be one way.

Like seriously, what kind of a person sees a minority expressing their pain and exhaustion at living here, and thinks THIS is a good time to parrot some bullshit about action. A person lacking in basic decency and compassion, that's who. This isn't a space for Chinese pple to come and mouth off. This is a space for minorities. If you don't know how to support us, shush and leave us alone."


A Chinese asks how he can help, and in return he gets flamed.

The allegedly racist state has now somehow become the fault of individual Chinese and their "ancestors". Since Sangeetha presumably doesn't know anything about Chee Siong Zhixiang (much less about his ancestors), it is telling that she is blaming him and his ancestors for everything that is wrong with this world. This certainly qualifies as racism on her part.

And given that Chee seems to be sympathetic to Sangeetha and wants to combat Chinese "racism" in Singapore, yet immediately gets tarred with this marvelously broad brush, this is a good example of the Contempt in which "Allies" are held by "Minorities".

Curiously, we note that for a self-proclaimed "Writer & Anti Racism Social Media Activist-Scholar engaged in anti-racism work in Singapore", she doesn't seem to want to do much activism or scholarship, and proclaims that "action" is "bullshit", instead preferring to wallow in her "pain".

Unsurprisingly, we see in this a perfect mirror of the Yale student who said that "I don't want to debate. I want to talk about my pain".

Sangeetha, like many SJWs (Social Justice Warriors), doesn't really want to change anything.

Instead, she just wants to revel in her victimhood and feel self-righteous and oppressed, with people cheering her along all the way. The dangerous allure of victim politics is an easy way to get into a cycle of self-indulgent emotional masturbation in a vacuum.


The original post also outlines Sangeetha's strategy for minorities:



"I have gotten to the point where I truly believe there is absolutely no point for any minority who isn't rich and desperate to assimilate into Chineseness to remain in Singapore. Minorities should be spending all their time, energy and effort on leaving.

It is the only option left for any of us who want to have any real shot at self-determination."

For a start, this betrays her political illiteracy for as Cornell advises us, self-determination is "the legal right of people to decide their own destiny in the international order".

So unless she sees "minorities" in Singapore as people who deserve their own states, she is (again) talking rubbish.

One possibility is that she is referring to the psychological theory of motivation which is "concerned with supporting our natural or intrinsic tendencies to behave in effective and healthy ways", but it would take a very charitable (and pro-active) reader to draw that link from her Facebook post which is ranting about political oppression and says little (at best) about healthy personal behavior.

Anyhow, we can see that Sangeetha doesn't believe in the ideal of Singapore as a multiracial state.

Interestingly, she is implicitly conceding that it should be a Chinese supremacist state (or at least that no one should bother trying to work against that).

Ironically, here she has much in common with the (possibly imaginary) Chinese supremacists that she so hates.

Finally, this is good news for other Singaporeans, since it looks like Singapore will be losing one of its most hateful, poisonous people in the near future.


PS: Adeline Koh likes Sangeetha's "bravery"

When an accusatory post on Facebook (and presumably accompanying comments trashing everyone you don't like) qualifies as "bravery", you know that we as a society are scraping the bottom of the barrel.


PPS: Someone approvingly talks about affirmative action in India and recommends it as "a good tool of empowerment of the marginalised people", perhaps not realising how disastrous it has been.


PPPS: "all those times they said we were family, they didn't mean you. They meant the Chinese and the Ang Moh, and even the token Malay, but not you"

I think this is called "inter-sectionality". And I suspect Alfian Sa'at might disagree.
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