You can see this play out in many postcolonial contexts including Malaysia as well. Although this is mediated through further contradictions (muslim-majority, claims of nativety/indigeneity, colonisation, large immigrant population).

This can be seen through the discourse surrounding the word Melayu or Malay in Malaysian (and also in Singaporean) society. Malay prior to 19th century referred to all inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago. It wasn’t a distinct racial or ethnic group marker. This came about later with Orientalist historiography in describing the people of southeast Asia.

An example of the complexity of “race” and “ethnicity” is the Peranakans, or Chitty Indians, or even Penang Malays, in which Indian muslims, Orang Asli, and varying ethnolinguistic Chinese groups form a sort of continuum between their respective groups and a “pure” Malay ethnic group.

How this relates to anti-communism generally is the juxtaposition that Communism was an imported ideology from Chinese immigrants and that Chinese people did not belong in the Malay Archipelago (even though the previously mentioned Peranakans had resided in archipelago for centuries if not millenia prior to colonisation). The state apparatus, for all intents and purposes remained a colonial institution even after independence meant that the state had to feign legitimacy through artificially building a unified “Malay” ethnicity in which Islam is their true religion. They (supposedly) represent the true natives against foreign influences.

Thus a narrative was constructed between the supposed indigenous Islamic Malays and the athiestic Communist Chinese. This was a convenient propaganda tool employed by the British during the Malayan Emergency. Any vaguely left-wing party was accused of being the fifth column of the Malaysian state during the Konfrontasi (Confrontation, between Malaysia, and Soekarno’s Indonesia). This is continued in the modern day accusing of marginally left-wing parties (centrist at best) at promoting Communism.

Despite their rhetoric, the ruling classes at independence were thoroughly westernised. In fact our first prime minister was known for drinking whiskey. Meanwhile currently, politicians fight over the selling of alcohol in malay-muslim majority constituencies.

Although the form may change, the content remains the same. They rely on eurocentric Western epistemologies in constructing and understanding Malaysian society. Alatas’ concept of the captive mind applies here. In trying to assert an Islamic Malaysia, Malay-muslim chauvinists fall into religious puritanism and difference that was never ever observed in precolonial feudal Malay society.

And in reality, communism wasn’t an imported ideology. It was brutally surpressed by the British and the newly born Malaysian nation-state. Communism involved numerous ethnic groups including the Malay-Muslims who envisaged an anti-colonial and anti-feudal society that threatened the ruling classes, and even allied themselves with radical Islamic groups, but that history is seemingly long forgotten.

My point is that ketuanan Melayu, or Malay supremacy, had inexplicably Western origins, and even if not, was fueled by colonisation and had a symbiotic relationship with white supremacy. The ruling classes at that time were primarily English educated, after all.

Anti-communism is inherently racialised, wherever you go.