There is a tendency to dismiss Dr Akmal Saleh’s vow to “fight DAP to the end” as reckless bravado. That might be a mistake. Whether one agrees with him or not, it is possible that his move is grounded in a hard-nosed reading of how politics actually functions.
At its most elemental level, politics revolves around two things: identity and victory.
Politics is not primarily a moral enterprise. It is a struggle over who people believe they are, who they believe threatens them, and who they trust to defend them. Those who can shape identity and convert it into collective action gain power. Those who cannot are swept aside.
When a shared identity takes hold, unity follows. Individuals subordinate personal considerations to the group and act as part of a collective whole. That surrender of the individual to the group is what produces political force.
But unity is often misunderstood. It is not, by default, noble or humane. People do not unite because they suddenly become virtuous. Unity is rarely born from generosity or compassion. More often, it emerges from fear of loss, anger at perceived injustice, and hostility toward an identified enemy.
A community begins to cohere politically when it believes something vital is under threat: status, dignity, power, faith, or future. Fear sharpens emotions, anger provides momentum, and hatred supplies direction. Once these emotions reach a certain intensity, unity is achieved. This is not a moral claim. It is a recurring historical pattern.
History offers no shortage of examples. Hitler unified Germany by channeling fear and hatred toward Jews and rival powers. Gandhi unified India by mobilising anger and resentment against British rule. The moral distance between the two could not be greater, but the political mechanics are strikingly similar. Mandela, Mao, Napoleon and countless others relied on the same emotional fuel. The cause may differ; the machinery does not.
Civilisations, movements and parties are rarely built with goodwill as their binding agent. They are more often cemented with fear and grievance. As the ancient metaphor goes, great structures are not always held together by virtue. They are often held together “with slime as mortar.”
This does not mean such unity is automatically evil. When people are humiliated, exploited or marginalised, appeals to love and restraint may sound noble but often lack traction. For most societies, resistance is powered not by saintly virtue but by shared resentment and collective anger.
This is the context in which Akmal’s decision must be read.
By resigning as a Melaka executive councillor while retaining his position as Umno Youth chief, Akmal is making a deliberate political choice. He is stepping away from the restraints of governance and repositioning himself as a frontline combatant. The message is clear: he wishes to speak as a representative of grassroots anger rather than as a functionary bound by coalition discipline.
His claim that dignity and the voice of the grassroots matter more than office is not incidental rhetoric. It is an attempt to reclaim moral and emotional authority from within the system by placing himself outside its formal comforts.
From a purely strategic perspective, his focus on DAP as the object of Malay political hostility is not surprising. In Malaysia’s racialised political ecosystem, unity is most easily forged by identifying a clear adversary. DAP, fairly or unfairly, has long occupied that symbolic role in Malay political consciousness..
The crucial question, however, is not whether fear and anger can unite Malays. History suggests they can. The real questions are more difficult.
Is DAP the most effective focal point for such unity? Is the intensity of emotion Akmal is invoking sufficient, excessive, or misdirected? And above all, can he convert emotional unity into concrete political gains?
While it is generally true that fear, anger, and hatred are necessary ingredients for unity, this is far easier to state in theory than to execute in practice.
To say that all one needs to do to unite a people is to invoke fear and hatred is like saying that all one needs to do to win a football match is to score more goals than the opponent. The theory is simple; the execution is not.
Winning demands organisation, discipline, timing, alliances and strategy. Emotion alone is volatile. Unmanaged, it either dissipates, explodes, or turns inward.
History again offers warnings. The passions unleashed by Hitler ultimately destroyed Germany. The unity Gandhi mobilised against colonial rule fractured the subcontinent once the external enemy disappeared. Even in Malaysia, the emotional residue of anti-colonial unity later manifested as internal racial tension.
Unity is a dangerous force. Summoning it is difficult; controlling it is harder still..
Revolutions, afterall, are not unknown to eat their own children.
By declaring total war on DAP, Akmal has crossed a point of no return. He has cast the die, crossed the Rubicon. If he retreats now, he has nowhere to go but political oblivion.
From here, only a few outcomes are possible. He may succeed and emerge strengthened by the unity he forges. If this be the case, then he can also individually rejoice, for his ability to forge unity amongst his identity group will likely be appreciated, with status, authority and position. But there is also a chance that he may fail and be destroyed by the forces he stirred. Or he may succeed in generating unity without being able to channel it, deepening divisions within the Malays and destabilising the broader political landscape.
Politics rewards clarity, but it punishes hubris.
We are about to find out which applies here.
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