A Singapore politician has thrown in his resignation papers after a controversial post sparked backlash.
Brad Bowyer, 54, former election candidate under the Progress Singapore Party, or PSP, will step down from the party after he was assailed online for comparing the country’s COVID-19 response to the Holocaust. His die-hard fans, however, are urging him to continue voicing his controversial opinions.
“[Y]ou have always been clear that these are your thoughts and it does not represent the views of [PSP]. [C]ontinue to use this platform and audience that you have to speak and make [S]ingapore better,” a fan named Alex Lee wrote to him online.
“The only sin you did and you are guilty of is speaking your truth, your beliefs and what many many of us shudder to even whisper. I get where you are coming from,” another named Francesca Drose wrote.
Bowyer, who contested as a member of the party led by political veteran Tan Cheng Bock last year, broke the news yesterday, just a day after he published a controversial post that contained a picture of what looked like a Nazi concentration camp superimposed with a quote that said the Holocaust was caused by actions of a party that was “controlling” the media, message and causing divide among citizens. In the caption, he said: “Singapore is now us and them… God help our nation!”
Bowyer has explained that the motive of that post was to compare similar patterns he claimed he identified between the Holocaust, which killed around 6 million Jews, and Singapore’s COVID-19 response, which recently included different restrictions for those who have taken the vaccine. Close to 70% of Singaporeans have been fully vaccinated.
More than 200 comments reacted to this comparison, mostly from critics who accused him of being “deeply offensive” and for acting like a “disillusioned prick.”
Bowyer thinks those critics were behaving “cowardly” and that he had no time to deal with those trying to cancel him.
“I have no time for the cancel culture as Singapore is in a crisis now, a crisis created, in no small part, by the government itself, its reactive one-dimensional mishandling of the situation and now this dangerous divisive path they are taking us on,” he wrote in yesterday’s resignation announcement. He also noted that his views were “diverging” from the party.
“By the same token I will not let keyboard warriors derail me from my position on how badly this crisis has been handled and how it is affecting so many people whether they like it or not. So, in that regard today I am tendering my resignation from Progress Singapore Party.”
Bowyer lost in last year’s election after competing in the Nee Soon constituency. His team got 38.10% of the votes.
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