Fake M'sia News - the real unreal thing - Dean Johns

Everything the BN government and its media say - and even more significantly don’t say - about Malaysia is such a pack of lies I’d barely even believe the country existed if I hadn’t seen it for myself.

Not that I’m entirely convinced of its reality even after countless visits and several years living there.

Yes, I’m aware that it is shown in apparently reputable world atlases and on airport destination indicators, but since that most pathological of liars, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, has long claimed that he personally put Malaysia on the map, I’m far from convinced it’s really there at all.

Or, for that matter, whether Dr Mahathir himself isn’t a figure of virtual rather than actual reality. It was him, after all, or whoever or whatever purports to be him, who claimed that the US had faked the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre with the comment that “if they can make Avatar, they can fake anything.”

So, for all that I or any of us know, what we think of as ‘Malaysia’ may well be a cutting-edge computer-game, a highly-complex collection of holograms or just a figment of our fevered imaginations.

Such suspicions concerning the existence or non-existence of Malaysia are continuously raised by the clearly-evident fictionality, indeed outright fakery, of every reported utterance of the actors (or avatars) currently playing the lead roles in this psychodrama posing as a country or nation.

Like the recent statement by some character with the unlikely name of Muhyiddin Yassin (left), apparently deputy prime minister of some Malaysia that exists solely in his own disordered mind, that “claims that the government restricts media freedom have no basis.”

In blatant contradiction of the fact that the real Malaysia, whatever that may be, ranks equal-122nd out of 179 countries on the Reporters Without Borders press-freedom index along with Algeria and Tajikistan, one place below Zimbabwe.

But Muhyiddin’s fiction that the fake government he’s part of does nothing to restrict media freedom, but on the contrary is “pledged to always help create a conducive climate to allow journalists and media to continue playing their role in a democracy” was doubtless received at face value by his audience.

An audience that was apparently created by the same kind of special-effects as the illusion that a yahoo and yobbo like Muhyiddin could be not only a deputy prime minister but an education minister to boot, as it was composed of hundreds of paid liars who’d somehow managed to convince themselves they were journalists.  

‘Spin we can’

Journalists, or rather non-journalists, of the likes of Mohd Zaini Hassan, for example, deputy chief editor of non-newspaper Utusan Malaysia, who declared last week that “media practitioners are allowed to spin the facts to paint a ‘desired picture’ to the reader.”

Speaking at a forum staged by two highly-dubious organisations, Biro Tata Negara (BTN) and the 1Malaysia Social Media Convention Secretariat, Mohd Zaini (left) claimed that because opposition parties were “controlling public perception” to the point of causing the government to be “put on trial”, “spin we can; no matter how we spin a certain fact to be biased in our favour, that’s okay.”

But, having so far abandoned all pretence of journalistic independence, objectivity and integrity, he said the line should be drawn at lies.

“From the point of psychological warfare, let’s not follow blatant lies; let’s not write lies,” he lied, in the face of the stark reality that his own non-newspaper leads Malaysia’s mainstream-media pack when it comes to lying by both commission and omission.

And speaking of omission, the principle reason for my and many others’ doubts that Malaysia as we know or at least imagine it actually exists is that the mainstream non-news media routinely fail to mention, let alone further examine or investigate, cases of murder, massive fraud and other crimes committed by their Umno/BN paymasters.

In fact when it comes to news, there is 1Malaysia for the credulous masses, another Malaysia altogether for the regime, its relatives and cronies, and no Malaysia whatever, if this can possibly be arranged by hook or by crook, for critics of the festering facts behind the carefully media-crafted facade.

And it’s not just non-journalists who labour mightily in their hundreds if not thousands to spread the non-news about non-Malaysia.

These non-entities are supported by those spouting such ‘religious’ nonsense as head of Umno young ulama secretariat Fathul Bari Mat Jahaya, who recently urged pro-Umno/BN social-media practitioners to use deception in the “psychologcal war” against the opposition just as the Prophet Muhammad had used deception to fight his enemies.

Having regularly written what I hoped were scathing attacks on the depths of deception and perversions of perception to which Umno/BN and its minions have subjected Malaysia, I’d come to feel utterly defeated by seeing that the rot still goes on.

Fighting fire with fire

Until lately my hopes for a true Malaysia were rekindled by the appearance of a new site that doesn’t just criticise the kleptocrats and their kleptocrap news media, but actually fights fire with fire.

Or rather fake news with even more fantastically fake news. Because unlike the fake news in the BN-controlled media, which pretends to be true and is thus not to be trusted, www.fakemalaysianews.com publishes genuine, guaranteed, 100 percent utterly false fake news that you can absolutely rely on.

And in the process it’s making the mainstream media’s fake news look like a pale imitation of the real unreal thing.

Even the title of the site is nicely ambiguous, so that that it’s a toss-up whether it signifies fake news about Malaysia or news about a fake Malaysia, or both.

Naturally you’re wondering, as I was at first, who or what is behind this farrago of falsehood. PKR? The CIA? Dr Mahathir’s worldwide Jewish conspiracy? Those pesky Christian missionaries who’ve been trying to proselytise Malaysian Muslims with portable, hand-held, solar-powered talking Bibles?

But all I’ve been able to discover is that, whoever happens to be backing him, the front-man calls himself Adam. Which, given how genuine the site is in its falsehood, is almost certainly not his real name.

But alias or no, at least the ‘Adam’ moniker suggests to me that he and his partners-in-fakery consider that Malaysia could achieve its true promise, and turn-out to be the genuine Garden-of-Eden it was created to be, as soon as the snake-tongued Umno/BN regime and its nest of media serpents are finally forced to fork off.