The Artist as a Revolutionary - A Carnation Press Manifesto

It has felt like the world is ending for the longest time. 2025 was in the top three warmest years on record, with temperatures rising an average of 1.44°C; data centres invade our cities and use up water while regions of rural communities are still without clean water; illegal dumping pollutes the countryside, inflicting disease on working-class populations.

Fascism is on the rise both globally and locally, with the 2022 and 2023 elections seeing significant strides made by the right-wing coalition in Malaysia. Activists and individuals are being detained en masse for exercising fundamental liberties. Malaysian youth are tired and dissatisfied, struggling to get jobs, buy houses, and survive in an increasingly hostile capitalist society. Many dream of migration as a way to escape the pressure and claustrophobic reality of late-stage capitalism. Individualism runs rampant, and loneliness swallows us all in our interlinked, hyperconnected, dystopic society.

In the face of a world falling apart, change begins.

The Covid-19 pandemic radicalised many youth against capitalism, with many seeing for the first time the privilege and exceptions granted to the elite. October 7th 2023, perhaps the greatest ever act of resistance against imperialist occupation led to the ongoing Palestine-Israel war, the world’s first livestreamed genocide. People have begun to wake up and realise that to be silent in the face of injustice is to choose the side of the oppressor.

In Malaysia, protests are becoming more frequent, creative, and radical, with groups like GEGAR and MP4P leading the fight against Western imperialism and Malaysian complicity in the genocides in Palestine and Sudan, exploitation of Congolese resources, and the bombing of Venezuela. Other youth-led groups like MISI: Solidariti ignited a fire in their online activism and organising during the Movement Control Order (MCO) at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia.

I name these groups for I follow their activities closely, and have continuously been able to draw strength from them to aspire for something greater. Alongside them, I have been able to dare to hope for a more optimistic world. A conversation I find myself having over and over again is how to keep going, how it often feels like to be so aware of everything all the time is so painful, and how it often feels like insanity to keep doing mundane tasks like going to school or work as wars continually break out, bloodlines are erased, and we edge closer and closer to climate catastrophe. We remember the legacy of our forgotten elders, the Malayan communists who fought against colonialism and for our freedom, whose bravery and strength are still called ‘terrorism’ even now, three-quarters of a century later. Every hopeful thread seems to have been lost or tangled or cut.

An analogy I often use to my friends is that I feel as though organising is shouting into a void. We are a small scene of a handful of the populace, yet we are trying to enact a mass change. It feels like we’re a drop in an ocean. I look at the faces of those next to me, the faces of people at protests, and people writing and researching and educating, and I see people motivated by love yet overwhelmed by grief. It is inherently loving to try to make life better. Yet we live in a state of mourning, witnessing the calamity of contemporary life under capitalism trudge on. My friends are some of the most hopeful people I’ve ever met. They’re also among the most depressed.

In 2021, Sarah Irdina, co-founder of MISI: Solidariti, was arrested by police. This was in the middle stages of the pandemic, when there was still very limited movement in Malaysia. She was detained for several hours, well into the night, under the Sedition Act 1948. Her crime? Tweeting a set of demands related to the suspension of Parliament and the then-ongoing state of Emergency. She was twenty years old at the time and was released following widespread public pressure and condemnation.

The 2020-2022 Covid-19 pandemic, the MCO and state of Emergency in Malaysia led to the normalisation of police and military encroachment on public life. People faced threats, fines, and harassment for existing in public spaces. Simultaneously, people witnessed politicians and other members of the elite openly travelling and fraternising in public spaces, maskless and without consequence. Covid proved to be something that led to the radicalisation of many, with the white flag campaign allowing for communities to come together to give aid and support to their neighbours, and the black flag initiative letting people express their desire for change in government.

Independent bookstore Gerakbudaya has faced constant raids, with authorities attempting to find illegal or controversial materials, at times without effect. Tokosue, another independent bookstore and community hub specialising in zines, closed down due to financial difficulties.

In 2025, Tash Aw’s critically acclaimed novel The South was pulled from shelves over perceived ‘controversial’ content. While longlisted for the Booker Prize, the book is nowhere to be found in the country it is set in, in the homeland of its author.

This is the story of contemporary Malaysia. We love our country, but that country doesn’t love us back.

Like many young people, I often find myself ruminating on the state of the world. Oftentimes, it feels like a state of despair. My grief threatens to weigh me down and prevent me from continuing to live my (very privileged) life. Yet I cannot be satisfied existing in my thoughts alone. I must act.

The world is on fire, the world is going to end, so what can we do?

In my case, I write.

Literature has always proved to be a home and a friend. Perhaps the earliest thing radicalising me was the simple fairy tales of love and justice. In the immortal words of James Baldwin:

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

What is the role of the artist in the revolution?

This is a question that I have contemplated deeply. It seems in times of chaos and anxiety, it has been art that has brought comfort. Yet simultaneously, to have the luxury to pursue being an artist, to indulge in art, is a sign of privilege. Historically, patrons of the arts were members of the aristocracy. The production of art doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Art cannot be understood outside of the world that it lives in. Under capitalism, the role of the artist is to entertain, to distract, from the laborious and exhausting reality of existence. In contemporary society, art is commodified and sanitised, it reflects the desires and ideologies of the dominant ruling class, and encourages subordination, complacency and stagnation.

Revolutionary art differs.

Its purpose is to educate, to challenge, to inspire, to agitate. Art often comes as a pure expression of feeling, as a channelling of emotion. To be a revolutionary artist is to stand against the numbness and greyness of contemporary capitalism and dare to feel its weight, to critique its limitations, to aspire for something different, something better. Living under capitalism is a hell that we are all forced to endure, and in sharing that suffering, we should be brought closer together. Capitalism demands individuality; revolution demands collaboration.

In times of chaos and uncertainty, literature provides a home.

Aarani Diana
Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Malaysian Carnation Press