Solidariti Anak Muda Malaysia: A noble organization BUT with one extremely UGLY Malaysian

Recently I had the 'pleasure' of getting to know a member of Solidariti Anak Muda Malaysia (SAMM). I have no personal experience with this group other than with this individual, but from their website and online research, I believe it is a noble organization working towards the betterment of Malaysia. According to their website, they are an NGO with no political affiliation (although some of their leaders are from political parties), training and developing young Malaysians of all races and religions to become leaders and build a better country. According to this person I met, he is part of this group who works on the ground in rural areas, educating rural Malay folks and changing mindsets for the better so in future they will know to vote more wisely for a new and better government. All this is of course a great thing, and in general, I would think it's great for any young person to take time off to be part of this group.

EXCEPT that I wouldn't recommend anyone I know to join them due to my experience with this one individual who turned out to be the single most horrible, arrogant, and UGLIEST Malaysian I have ever met in my life. And since he's a member of SAMM, he has severely marred my impression of what I would otherwise think is a very noble group. As a blogger, I write about my experiences,so this is about me making SAMM look bad since I do believe they are doing good work. This is about one little member of SAMM who made himself look bad, and I as a blogger, writing my experience. So I would hope that if any SAMM leaders ever get round to reading my infuriating experience, they would better educate their young members better, or at least this kid in particular, so no one else undergoes the same demeaning personal attacks like this rude young man did to me, which achieves nothing except give people a terrible impression of their young members whom I hope are nothing like him. And just so you don't wonder who I'm talking about, he goes by the name of Dennis Chow. It would be easy for me to link to his Facebook account so you know exactly who he is, but that would open him up to online attacks by others who read this, and I am not as mean as him to resort to or encourage such cyber bullying of strangers. Especially since he has a face only a mother could love, which makes a prime target for bullies.

Early this month, I wrote an article called "What the Chinese want and why we wouldn’t ‘balik’ China" which came out on FMT, and subsequently reposted on Lim Kit Siang's blog.  I wrote it as a response to a recent question from a certain UMNO politician who actually did ask what the Chinese want, as a consolidation of the jumbled responses and brickbats I read from fellow Malaysians online. And then, after much positive response, I subsequently wrote the Malay version for the better understanding of our less English-educated Malay friends, in what I hoped was just little effort to try and bridge the gap between the races and explain why Chinese always complain about the country.

Soon after, this Dennis Chow fella sends me an FB message and proceeds to ridicule my article because according to him there is no longer a need for such messages to the urban community because all urbanites are already aware of the real issue with our country's leadership, and the real work needs to be done on the group with the rural people, which is what he and his group (SAMM) are doing. Which for the most part, I can agree with, and believe SAMM's work is good. But the way he spoke to make his point was what riled me, and ironically, he displayed all the infuriarating characteristics of the country's bigoted leaders which he claimed that his group was working against. Allow me to list down and elaborate on those intolerable characteristics:

1) Judgemental of people's intentions and character
This Dennis Chow, whom I have never met in my life, made all sorts of assumptions and judgements about me. So much that I'm ready to face God now coz' whatever judgements I get from Him, can't be any more worse than what I got from this guy. Firstly, he accused me of being an attention seeker and 'keyboard warrior' only wishing to stoke my ego. From writing one measly opinion article? By that logic, I can say that writers like Mariam Mokhtar, Marina Mahathir, Raja Petra and any other famous writer with blogs who share their opinions about the state of Malaysia are also attention seekers and keyboard warriors. We should all then quit writing and just go down to the ground to do the noble work of SAMM, because according to this Dennis Chow, every single urbanite already fully understands the country's issues. SO we don't need any more opinion letters or writers who just want attention to stoke their own ego.
Secondly, he accused me of being an intolerant racist and not being a true Malaysian, under his assumption that I do not understand our Malay friends simply because I have less friends of different races than him and also because I did not attend as many Raya open houses as him. I'm sorry, I was not aware that there was a contest for being a true Malaysian, nor that stuffing my face at people's parties was one of the judging criterion. But while I am certainly no social butterfly for my own reasons, that is no justifiable reason to accuse anyone of being a racist. If there's anyone I'm prejudiced against, it's arrogant people who behave better than God by judging people they know nothing about, like this little Dennis the Menace.
He also assumed I was an 'ignorant kid' who was just out of college and knew nothing about politics. Which at least I can consider as compliment on my youthful looks, considering I left college like 12 years ago.
Isn't such judgemental behaviour reflective of the same leaders who recently misjudged the intentions of a Muslim dog trainer and Muslim resort owner, accusing them of insulting their own religion although this was not their intention?

2)  Lack of Understanding and Tolerance
After such personal attacks and being challenged to drop everything to join his 'noble cause' (which in Dennis Chow's world is the only way to change Malaysia while the little efforts and writings of little people like me make no difference whatsoever), I did the normal thing and attempted to explain who I really am and why joining him is not an option for me. Yes, it's true that I do not have many multiracial friends, and that's because I'm not an incredibly social person in general to anyone of any race due to my introverted nature and a number of personally negative experiences with people that have made me even more introverted. It's also true that I was happy about the positive response to my article, and that's because after my demotivating experiences, it was one of the first things that helped me feel better about myself. In addition, like most people, I have a family to help care for, including aging parents and 3 young nieces in a country with no welfare, price of tuition and tertiary education is exorbitant and cost of everything else is going up. Anyone who understands responsibilities to family understands this already make it impossible to 'drop everything' and go gallivanting in the villages to 'save Malaysia'.
However, instead of even trying to be understanding of my personality, my personal issues or even my family responsibilities, this ignoramus named Dennis Chow effectively poo-pooed on my 'lame excuses', called me selfish, sad and insecure, and telling me to just 'suck it up' coz' that's life. All this time, he preached to me about being 'tolerant'. I'm sorry again, but tolerance is not just about have many friends of different races. It's about trying to understand ALL people of different personalities and their problems without making baseless assumptions about them. Not making them out as weaklings because they have had personal difficulties, or assuming they are selfish when they have family responsiblities!
This is again a extreme lack of understanding of others, which is no different from the attitude of some of our countries' leaders who also have absolutely no understanding of the real needs of the 'rakyat', telling us to spend less while they splurge and spouting nonsense like how much RM500 can go a long way in helping us to survive....

3) No conscience and Provoking people to anger
I'm a not a person who swears easily, other than in my car when no one else is around and I come across an annoying driver. But after everything I was subjected by this annoying stranger, making assumptions of my life and poo-pooing my problems like it meant nothing, I simply snapped and unleased the worst string of horrendously foul words that no one else on the planet has heard me say or seen me write, because that's how furious he had made me. And even that had no effect. He did not care that he made me incredibly upset. Which was absolutely shocking to me coz' never in my life have I come across such an emotionally devoid person with no qualms of how his actions hurt others. Which on a side note, makes me quite thankful that everyone else I know actually has some capability of feeling bad about hurting others, unlike this little arrogant anomaly called Dennis Chow who seems to have no conscience whatsoever.
Again, this reminded me of certain leaders who provoke the little people on all sides into anger by stoking racial and religious tensions, and clearly not feeling any sort of remorse or guilt about it even though they profess to follow a noble religion that teaches good. Mind boggling!

4) Unforgiving of mistakes
Along our discussion, I made some pretty statements which displayed my lack of understanding of the country's parliamentary. Yes, that is embarassing and I admitted my mistake when he pointed it out. Of course, everyone makes mistakes and anyone who is truly tolerant would just correct my understanding nicely. And that's how different people of different race, religion, background, etc learn from each other and live in harmony. At least most people would think so.
However, in Dennis Chow's world, part of 'tolerance' apparently is ridiculing other's people's mistakes (even after they admit it) and lording over such mistakes to show off just how 'intelligent' he is compared to others. Coz' making strangers feel small, stupid and hanging them out to dry for it is a fine example of tolerance.
In comparison, a certain idiotic online couple named Alvivi were also persecuted by the authorities and hung out to dry for their 'crime'. Even though they made a very public apology. It doesn't make them any less stupid and insensitive for what they did, but at least they admitted their mistake, which is a lot better than the real crooks in power would ever do. YET no forgiveness or tolerance for them from the authorities either, for the sake of their own political milage.

5) Hypocritical
He preached tolerance, yet was being the most intolerant person I've ever known. He accused me of thinking I am better than everyone else, yet he made himself out to be better than, by saying that my little efforts were nothing to help the country compared to the work of his SAMM group. And several times throughout, I critisized him for wasting time and being silly, picking on an ordinary citizen supporting the same party he was when he should be using his time to go off and better the country like he claims he's doing. I challenged him to go spread his 'true Malaysian' message to more famous writers like Mariam Mokhtar, who by his logic waste a lot of time online critisizing leaders when all urbanites already are bad. Yet he didn't take up my challenge, I guess because picking on little people like me who wrote one measly article is more productive to making Malaysia a better place.
Finally, I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine and made hurtful assumptions about his life, saying his lack of understanding of my family responsibilites probably means his was orphaned, abandoned or abused and has no family of his own to support. And then he said that me making assumptions about his life was me being petty. Which at that point was just hilarious. Sooooo him making baseless assumptions and ridiculing my little efforts to help the country isn't petty, but when I do the same thing to him, then it becomes petty. Hypocrite!
I don't think I need a comparison to our country's ruling leaders. We all know how hypocritical they are and how they love picking on small fry while ignoring the big fish.


Well, it might also seem extremely 'petty' of me to dedicate a long post to some insolent young punk who really means nothing to me and is 'supposedly' doing something good for the country with his SAMM friends, but unlike his perception, I don't claim to be trying to save the country. And I'm not representing any group. I'm just a ordinary blogger, writing whatever pleases me, which reflects on no one except myself. So I will happily go 'keyboard warrior' on anyone who barrages into my life with his immature notions of being a 'true Malaysian' but has NO qualms moonlighting as a cyber bully, with all the characteristics of a BN cybertrooper, and making another Malaysian's life just that much more miserable, especially someone on the same camp! All we need is one smart aleck like this picking on a much younger blogger with lower self esteem, and we could very have our first case of Malaysian suicide due to cyber bullying, which studies show is also just another one of many issues in this country.

So while he cheekily admitted that he was going have a great time joking about this sad little blogger and her insecurity issues to his bunch of friends, I do what introverts do best and write. And by writing, the rest of the world who googles SAMM out of curiosity, might just come across this little story and know that within this incredibly noble group doing good work, there exists this one incredibly ugly Malaysian. And this story will be around for many, many years to come, way after Dennis the Menace and I have forgotten each other, unless something unexpected happens like him apologizing to me, in which case I'd be happy to delete this post. Because that's what real tolerance is about. Otherwise I'm even happier to keep it up. And whether my terrible experience of this one person puts them off joining SAMM or makes them discourage their children from joining, I don't know. Probably doesn't even matter. After all, I'm just one little Malaysian whose sad little efforts and writings can't possibly make an impact or impression to the rest of the country. At least, according to Dennis Chow.

As the old adage goes, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Especially if that women is a blogger.

And just because this is one of those few times I go all out to bitch, this is for all those annoying little smirky smiley faces he just loved to pepper in our very memorable conversation.

[Image source]

Solidariti Anak Muda Malaysia: A noble organization BUT with one extremely UGLY Malaysian