Dear reader,
In case you missed the news, Charmaine Poh, Jom’s co-founder, has been named Deutsche Bank’s “Artist of the Year” for 2025. Exciting! For those lucky enough to travel to Berlin next fall, try and catch her exhibition there.
Print. Last chance for those holiday orders of our new print magazine issue No. 2. Buy it by Sunday December 15th to get it next week. Orders made from Monday onwards will likely reach you early next year.
“Singapore This Week”. In our weekly digest, we discuss the Mainland Chinese national (and Singapore PR) who was living freely here despite being on the Interpol Red List; Elon Musk’s declaration that Singapore is “going extinct”; the difficulties with reintegrating ex-offenders into society; a new theatre fellowship in honour of the late Shahid Nasheer; Carousell’s layoffs; and coral reef rehabilitation.
Essay: “Keep an open mind: the political significance of conspiracy theory beliefs in Singapore”. Pradeep Krishnan, a PhD researcher at the University of St. Gallen, has today published his third essay for Jom. Pradeep has a knack for unravelling the complexities and power behind particular political words and ideas. His first piece looked at “resilience”, and his second, co-authored with Brian Charles, at “political legitimacy”.
This week, he looks at conspiracy theories. Is it true that George Goh was a government plant to ensure credible (though not too credible) “opposition” to Tharman in last year’s presidential election? Were the 1961 Bukit Ho Swee fires manufactured, in order to quell resistance towards the government’s relocation efforts? Do ISD agents spy on every company and HDB building to monitor discussions of opposition politics?
We could go on. But Pradeep isn’t here to explore any of these individual theories. Instead, he assesses the socio-political environment that may foster their emergence.
“In casual settings, most people I’ve spoken to hold a rather poor impression of conspiracy theory believers: ‘lunatics’, ‘Trump supporters’, ‘anti-establishmentarians’, ‘crazy’, are among terms I hear bandied about.
Though understandable, this impression—and perhaps more precisely, its universalism—is a little unfair, and should be challenged…Singapore is a great place to interrogate the assumptions these rest on. A study published in 2022 (more on it shortly) found that GDP per capita correlates with lower levels of conspiratorial thinking. Yet, Singapore is an outlier, with higher levels of such thinking than its high income might suggest. Why?”
In an era when Singaporean society is grappling with a host of pernicious lies—scams, vaccine misinformation, and so on—Pradeep’s analysis of the structural conditions that may promote their spread is incisive. More important is the idea that we should neither dismiss them nor the people who spread them, for there may be a higher purpose. Read it now.
Jom siasat,
Sudhir Vadaketh
Editor-in-chief, Jom
Behind Jom’s art, with Charmaine Poh
The stereotypical image of a conspiracy theorist–tinfoil hat and all–has come largely from American media culture. But what is the nature of conspiracy theories in Singapore, where rational thinking and pragmatism is prized? Artist Diva Agar localises the contexts in which one may question the veracity of events; his references range from the 1987 Marxist Conspiracy to Malaysian chicken supply. Diva paints a more sympathetic picture of this oft-dismissed character in our society. In an information-poor environment, the conspiracy theorist may not be so conspiratorial after all.
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