How could you justify inaction in the face of hate?!

Hello everyone. It's time for a rant. I was quite shocked and upset earlier this evening when I came across a post on Facebook by my friend Hirzi Zuklifie. In case you don't know, he is one of Singapore's most talented comedians who has a highly popular Youtube channel with 23.2 million views and he has had his own show on Suria. He is articulate, funny, creative and ambitious and today ... well, I think perhaps it's better for him to tell you in his own words:

It is not just the government that censors, but society as well.

"Today I had the worst case of a hater. Today, some stranger SPAT COFFEE IN MY FACE. I was standing at the traffic light waiting for it to turn green. And the lane nearest to me had cars lined up trying to make a turn to the right. Each car passed me to turn right but I was a little too engrossed with my phone. That was until one car, lowered his driver's window and in one swift motion spat coffee directly towards my face. Shocked, I wiped my face first before turning to look again. This time his windows wind up. It happened so quick I did not see his face nor did I get a glimpse of his license plate.

I have been hurled insults to my face. I have received death threats. But never have I ever been physically harassed like this before. I understand the nature of my art is controversial. I accept that what I do can harbour hate for a conservative society. But this, this was enough to tell me, I need to go and get out. Singapore I feel sad for you, because I loved every little bit of you. That is why I cared enough to talk about things no one else dared to raise. This is why I cared enough to represent marginalized communities in our society. I was hoping it would get people to talk and people to think. But today I feel very sad. That was classless for a first world country. And I say all this with pride. I don't need your threats, your insults and your harassment to validate my value as a person and artiste. I know my own worth, and fuck I am a champion more than half these haters ever will be. Still tougher than you. Today Singapore, I am scarred by you."

Of course, there was a huge outpouring of support for him from his friends. Then I noticed that there were also some people who were telling him that things could be far worse elsewhere, that perhaps it wasn't such a big deal. Let me cut and paste some of these comments. 

"Somewhere else someone may spit for another reason, race/religion/colour/manner of speech/ clothes you wear. 
stay HIRZI, stay."

"It's just a start hirzi,I'm sure other place might b worse? To think back its just a coffee,what abt other place that is legal with guns? sabar k setiap yg berlaku pasti Ade hikmah nye.inshallah"

Now firstly, there is no excuse for the way my friend Hirzi was treated. It was a disgrace that people cannot bring themselves to disagree with an entertainer and has taken it upon themselves to assault them like that to voice their disapproval. What next? I will tell you what is next: last month in Paris, there was a massacre at the Charlie Hebdo office because some guys didn't like what the magazine was publishing. So they went into the office and shot the people in there. This is what intolerance is about - you don't like what someone is doing so you attack them physically. There is no room for this kind of behaviour in a civilized society and I am shocked that this has happened in Singapore. I had always assumed that Singaporeans are too meek and docile to pull off something like that. 

However, I am very irked by the way two of Hirzi's friends on Facebook simply assumed that he would have suffered the exact same assault elsewhere (such as in America) and that he should be content with the kind of treatment he is. I simply don't agree with that sentiment. Now I don't deny that there is some racism in the West and I did explore the correlation between racism and wealth in a recent post. I don't know how many times I have to say this to you Singaporeans: I am from Ang Mo Kio, I look ethnically Chinese. I live in Angmohland, in London - I work amongst white people, live amongst them and no, I don't suffer from racism and I don't worry about racism at all. If it happens, then fine I will deal with it if I do encounter it (and believe you me, I won't let anyone get away with racism) - otherwise, it is not a problem at all. To tell Hirzi (or anyone in his position) that the situation in Singapore is somehow justifiable is wrong, because you are condoning the kind of bigotry he has encountered. If you say he should put up with this, what else do you think he should put up with? How can you even begin to justify this kind of logic? 

This is what pisses me off about a lot of Singaporeans. They know that things aren't perfect in Singapore, they are aware of the problems: but what is their knee-jerk reaction every time they encounter a problem? They point out that things could be worse in other countries rather than try to deal with the problem at hand. Why do they do that? What is behind this mindset? It is easier for them to deflect blame and point at others rather than accept the fact that there is a problem at hand and it does affect them (and that they really ought to do something to improve the situation). It is the coward's way of dancing around a problem. So, let me give you an analogy from my primary school days.

There was a naughty girl in my class - let's call her Lakshmi. She was always misbehaving and one day, she broke a window during recess. It seems that some of the kids were playing a silly game: they had places an empty drink can on a canteen table and were trying to hit it by throwing stones at it. Instead of hitting the empty drink can, Lakshmi threw a rather large rock right into a window of a storeroom, shattering the glass instantly. A teacher showed up instantly upon hearing the glass smashing and asked, "who did this?" Everyone pointed at Lakshmi and she started crying. When her mother came to pick Lakshmi up after school, the teacher summoned the mother to the school office to explain what had happened. Lakshmi spoke to her mother in Tamil, giving her mother her side of the story.

The teacher had led Lakshmi's mother to the canteen to show her the broken window as evidence of her daughter's action. Was Lakshmi's mother apologetic when presented the sight of a shattered window? Quite the opposite. "She was not the only one playing then, there were so many other kids who were trying to throw stones to hit that empty drink can, so why are you singling out my daughter to punish? Any one of the other kids who were playing could have just as easily broken that window as well, but you are picking on my girl to punish? Why is she being made a scapegoat? She was not the only one who was playing silly games - all children play silly games all the time. Are you claiming that my daughter was the only child who misbehaved in the school today? Why wasn't there a teacher in the canteen during recess to keep an eye on the children and what they got up to? Why were they even allowed to play a game like that, unsupervised by any teacher? Shouldn't the teachers bear responsibility for what happened?"

You get the idea - she went out of her way to deflect blame from her daughter despite totally accepting that it was her daughter who did throw that large rock at the window, breaking it. If she had accepted any blame or responsibility for her daughter's actions, that meant that she had failed as a mother and that the onus fell on her to do something about Lakshmi's behaviour.  Given the way Lakshmi's behaviour was, it seems that her mother would always let her get away with anything and everything. So rather than accept that she really needed to deal with her daughter's behaviour, Lakshmi's mother simply deflected blame to the other children in the school who were also badly behaved. Likewise, I'm sure Hirzi's two friends were appalled by what happened to him - but like Lakshmi's mother, they had no desire to try to improve the situation in Singapore by challenging this kind of behaviour and were effectively telling Hirzi suffer in silence. No, you all have a collective responsibility to speak up against this kind of bigotry and attacks whenever you hear of it, otherwise you are silently condoning the situation and adding to the problem.

But back to my friend Hirzi: he is pretty convinced that he was targeted because of his brand of comedy which has offended many Singaporeans. In his own words, he has had verbal insults and received death threats and there is definitely a correlation between his fame as a comedian and what happened today. Was this a random assault or was the assault brought upon by Hirzi's comedy? Can we conclude that Hirzi was attacked because of his brand of comedy?  Well, to be honest, we can't be 100% sure unless we catch that culprit, but let's explore the possibility that the person who spat coffee at Hirzi was someone who was very offended by Hirzi's brand of comedy. 

Here's the thing about Hirzi's comedy. It is available on his Youtube channel. He has also been in a number of local TV programmes. If you don't like Hirzi as an entertainer, I have a very simple solution for you: don't watch it lah. It's that simple. Nobody forced you to sit through all his Beyonce parodies on Youtube. In his words, "you click it, you lick it." This is what I don't get - even when I click on a video on Youtube that I dislike, I simply cut my losses and close the window. I don't get so worked up about it that I go assault the person behind that Youtube video. I don't even bother leaving a comment on the Youtube video because I really don't see the point - why bother when I know I am not in a position to influence the other party? I have better things to do with my time, so I choose to just move on. 

This was brought home to me by one reader recently who took it upon himself/herself to launch a tirade at me in the comments section of two of my most recent posts - s/he wanted me to change the way I blog because I have not managed to please him/her with my recent articles. And I thought, I don't even know anything about you, I don't even know your gender - why should I even take your comments half-seriously? So I made it clear to this reader that s/he has yet to win my trust, respect and friendship, thus s/he was not in a position to influence me. That pissed him/her off - it's not the first time I've had a troll on social media. But perhaps it is the nature of social media these days that some people actually believe that they can wield some influence over the content they come across on the internet. 

Clearly, some people have more influence than others in this aspect. Katy Perry has the most number of followers on Twitter - currently she has about 65 million followers on Twitter (though that number grows all the time) so if Katy Perry wanted to spread a message, all she has to do is compose a tweet and boom. Instantly, 65 million followers read her tweet and it will be retweeted millions of times within a matter of minutes. Heck, Katy Perry has even more followers than people like Barrack Obama and Bill Gates on Twitter so of course she wields an incredible amount of influence on millions of people. But if you are an anonymous nobody who hasn't achieved any kind of success on any social media platform, then you have virtually no influence. You would be the total opposite of Katy Perry on social media. Most people who have no influence on social media are quite content to simply sit back and be passive consumers of social media - there are however, a few who will take to trolling to try to assert some influence as a last resort. Others may even resort to more extreme, drastic measures, such as the murder of John Lennon. This is a matter which concerns our freedom of speech, our freedom of expression. Comedians like Hirzi shouldn't feel the need to censor his work out of fear of being attacked randomly in the street like that. If you don't like the work of a comedian, you have the right to respond with words, not violence. Such is the mark of a civilized, mature society - where people can live without fear to be themselves and express themselves. 

So, I hear you asking. Would Hirzi encounter the same kind of response if he relocates to London and does his comedy on the streets of London? It would be extremely unlikely for the simple reason that what Hirzi does will not be considered controversial in the West at all. Hirzi's success in Singapore is because there are very few comedians who have the guts to do what he does - his comedy is controversial, he pushes the boundaries in a conservative society and thus that makes him stand out. London however, is already an extremely liberal city - we have comedians on BBC prime time TV programmes dealing with controversial topics and swearing on live TV. Oh yeah, we have everything from full frontal nudity to comedians lampooning royalty and politicians - nothing is sacred, nothing is off limits. Such is British media for you. Thus within that context, Hirzi would be just another comedian who is somewhat controversial but not so unusual that he would stand out for courting controversy. I'd like to think that he would flourish in such a liberal environment and he would be a lot happier here. Certainly, very few British people would even bat an eyelid at the contents of his Youtube videos. The challenge would be for him to capture the public's attention in a city crowded with many controversial comedians all jostling for your attention but I'm sure he will find a way to pull that off!

So that's it from me on this topic. I would love to hear what you think about this topic. How do you feel about a local comedian being attacked like that? What should be the collective response from Singaporeans when they hear about incidents like that? Please leave a comment below and send Hirzi loads of love. Thanks so much for reading!