Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An Intellectual Biography of Mahathir Mohamad

Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An Intellectual Biography of Mahathir Mohamad follows the nationalism and nativism that Mahathir promoted in thought and practice as he resumed his premiership. Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is 99, unelected, and continues to defy the Anwar Ibrahim government. When Paradoxes of Mahathirism was published in 1995, Mahathir was at the crest of his power. His decline came with the East Asian financial crisis and his persecution of Anwar Ibrahim. In 2018 a restive Mahathir came out of retirement to become the ‘7th Prime Minister’. Yet he resigned in 2020 and was defeated in the 2022 general election.

Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia since 1981 until his ‘abdication’ in 2003, is distinct among Third World leaders in several ways, not least in terms of his aspiration to galvanize the Malaysian nation to transcend its ‘developing’ status permanently and join the ranks of the industrialized states. An important theme in the panoply of Mahathir’s political techniques has been confrontation with the West—not so much in order to extract trade liberalization, favorable credit terms, technology transfer, etc., as to unify the diverse races of Malaysia through a shared conviction of external menace, the better to be able to achieve the rewards of hard work (Mahathir’s most typical prescription for international economic success and strategic credibility).

Still, the British observer of Anglo-Malaysian tensions across the years has also been challenged, methodologically, by the phenomenon of Mahathir’s apparent impulsiveness. Is he really a ‘philosopher,’ or just a man with a grudge who has been saved from the consequences of successive irrationalities by the persisting ethnic solidarity of the Malays; or by economic growth that has not been wholly due to state economic intervention; or by a personal genius for political survival, not unconnected with the ruthless application of authoritarian methods?