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Communism is history; let’s tell the losers’ tale

I am glad the Communist Party of Malaya lost the hearts and minds of Singaporeans during our nation’s early days. As it turned out, communism proved to be a flawed political system that collapsed eventually.

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Calvin Cheng Ern Lee

I am glad the Communist Party of Malaya lost the hearts and minds of Singaporeans during our nation’s early days. As it turned out, communism proved to be a flawed political system that collapsed eventually.

China is all but capitalist in name, and the two remaining communist countries, North Korea and Cuba, are all but failed states.

So utter was the defeat of communism that I fail to see how it could pose a security threat to present-day Singapore. Comintern, the Soviet-era organisation that was established to sow the seeds of communist revolution internationally, has long been relegated to the dustbin of history. The Malayan Communist Party is no more.

Also, unlike the political detainees of Operation Spectrum, some of whom are still young enough to be politically active, the exiles of the 1960s are mostly octogenarians with no hope of any political comeback.

The struggle against communism post-World War II was a global one; the defeat of Singaporean communists put us on the right side of history and was crucial to our development from Third World to First.

This is why the story of the losers in the film To Singapore, With Love deserves to be told (“Local film barred for ‘undermining national security’”; Sept 11). History may be written by the victors, but the what-if narrative of the losers is often what helps us appreciate the present.

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