Dr Nicholas Chan1
1Australian National University, Australia
Biography:
Nicholas Chan is a research fellow in Asian security at the Strategic Defence & Studies Centre (SDSC) of the Australian National University. His research interests lie in the intersection of religion and politics, with a specific focus on the politics of recognition-seeking, religion and social media, and extremist politics. His publications has appeared in Foreign Policy Analysis, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Critical Asian Studies, and others.
Abstract:
Ideas about the ‘global’ far-right often operate under the assumption that it refers to a coalition of white nationalist movement that shares the same ideology and animus (in particular against Muslims). However, this paper shows that several conspiracy theories associated with the Anglo-European far-right, such as The Great Replacement Theory and The New World Order, can also be found within Muslim-majority Malaysia, albeit in a localised version. Tracing the revisionist history and geopolitical discourses propagated by analysts and activists associated with a right-wing Islamist movement in Malaysia, this paper uses these findings to theorize how far-right ideas and conspiracy theories travel, and how local adaptive strategies help break identity and ideological barriers that usually stymie the uptake of ‘Western’ ideas by anti-West actors. It will contextualise these narratives within local socio-political developments, as well as broader Malaysian Muslim anxieties about Southeast Asia’s geopolitical environment, great-power politics, and the state of the global order. This paper will discuss how, besides being a product of longstanding prejudices and a mind map for uncertain times, conspiracy theories also enable a globalised attack of the liberal international order through a common narrative of victimisers and victimhood.