KUCHING, Malaysia—Anti-imperialist youth in Malaysia are ramping up demonstrations aimed at U.S. and Israeli foreign policy in anticipation of President Donald Trump’s attendance at the 46th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit with Dialogue Partners to be held in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur Oct. 26-28.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim recently dismissed calls from political rivals to disinvite Trump on the basis of U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Anwar has instead stuck to messaging that, as this year’s chair of ASEAN, Malaysia and the association are in a unique position to pressure Trump on Gaza and navigate a more favorable trade arrangement for ASEAN’s member states, which have been targets of the Trump regime’s retaliatory tariff policies.
Malaysia does not formally recognize Israel, and its administration recently reaffirmed that position in an Oct. 4 statement on the recent detention and release of Malaysian activists participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla:
“While the flotilla was prevented from reaching Gaza, the mission succeeded in raising further international awareness about the illegal blockade by the Israeli Zionist regime. The participation in the mission reaffirmed the commitment of Malaysians in standing for the Palestinian cause and in strongly opposing the ongoing genocide, starvation, tragic humanitarian catastrophe, and destruction in Gaza.” 
PM Anwar has insisted that economic blocs such as ASEAN and the Gulf Cooperation Council can strategically pressure action against Israel’s slaughter.
Since its founding in 1967, ASEAN has grown from the founding members of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand to today include Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Described by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations as a bulwark against the expansion of communism in Asia, ASEAN’s founding must be understood in the milieu of mid-20th-century Western anti-communism and Global South decolonization.
The 1960s were a monumental decade for each of these countries.
Indonesia’s President Sukarno was overthrown in a CIA-facilitated military coup, leading to the murder of upwards of one million communists and allies, a strategy today hauntingly known as “the Jakarta method.”
Malaysia was created from the former British colonies of Malaya, Sarawak, and North Borneo (Sabah) in a maneuver to appease decolonial sentiments at home and abroad while installing a friendly Malay government more than willing to assist in the British anti-communist crusades dubbed the “Malayan Emergencies.”
Disunity between the two young countries was stoked in the Konfrontasi standoff in Borneo, in which a nationalist Indonesian aspiration to unite the whole Malay Archipelago by its shared history of culture and colonial subjugation was rejected by an anti-communist Malaysian officialdom.
The former British naval outpost of Singapore was originally included in the 1963 formation of Malaysia but left two years later. Brunei authorities opted not to join the new Malaysian state but did eventually become an ASEAN member.
In 1965, notorious Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos gained power, inspiring decades of communist and Islamic strife and struggle against his rule. Thailand during this time was, of course, serving as a valuable ally to the United States in its war on Vietnam.
The states of ASEAN, which were then socialist and/or embroiled in U.S. antagonistic actions—Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar (then Burma)—tellingly only joined after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
As for the upcoming summit, Malaysians (and other ASEAN peoples, for that matter) have many reasons to decry Trump’s visit. There are the collaborationist histories of many of the association’s founding member states in service of British and U.S. imperialism and neoliberalism, and their people’s ongoing victimization by colonial and neocolonial relations and contemporary U.S. economic policies, which have sent ASEAN states scrambling to salvage their trade.
And while many Muslim Malaysians are inspired by the Islamic concept of Ummah—that all Muslims are united by faith above all else—there also exists a general sentiment opposing Western intervention in and attempts to dominate the Global South.
A number of organizations in Malaysia that began as Palestine solidarity groups—such as GEGAR, or Gerakan Gabungan Anti-Imperialis (Joint Anti-Imperialist Movement)—extend their analysis and action beyond the particular issue of genocide in Gaza and assert that imperialism—especially U.S. imperialism—is the root of such egregious crimes against humanity.
In the spirit of the university encampments across the United States and Europe in the early days of this genocide, GEGAR’s “Gegar Amerika” (“Shake America”) initiative organized encampments, sit-ins, and petitions aimed at the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur to “pressure the United States of America, [condemn] U.S. imperialism and U.S. interventionist aggression across the Global South” and “demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and to halt all weapons sales to Israel.”
With Trump’s attendance at the 46th ASEAN Summit with Dialogue Partners looming at the end of the month, GEGAR and other groups are getting details sorted for their next major demonstration.
GEGAR is calling for an end to Malaysian military cooperation with the United States in the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Exercise and Malaysia’s Exercise Keris Strike, a reduction in foreign direct investment and loans, a boycott of weapons manufacturers and mercenary contractors profiting from genocide, the expulsion of U.S. Ambassador Edgard Kagan and MAGA nominee Nick Adams, and an acceleration toward a just energy transition.
The message is clear from the United States to Malaysia: U.S. fascism has got to go.
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