Now here’s an intriguing one. A Malaysian politician has issued a thinly veiled threat of mob violence against that country’s Chinese minority by warning them not to become like American Jews.

Reports the Associated Press:

Ahmad Ismail, a district chief in the United Malays National Organization ruling party, claimed that the Malay majority was losing patience with minorities, particularly ethnic Chinese politicians.

“I urge the Chinese not to become like the Jewish in America, where it is not enough that they control the economy, but they also want to dominate politics,” Ahmad told a news conference late Monday in northern Penang state.

“Consider this a warning from the Malays,” Ahmad said. “The patience of the Malays has a limit. Do not push us against the wall, for we will be forced to turn back and push the Chinese for our own survival.”

Ahmad is facing an as yet unspecified punishment for these blood-curdling remarks. But this is not the first time that the Chinese minority has been threatened by a leading politician. And it is not the first time that the image of the all-powerful Jew has been conjured up to strike fear into Malaysian hearts.

There’s the matter of Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader who has been in and out of jail on charges of “sodomy.” Widely regarded as an enlightened democrat, Anwar’s opponents have tried to smear him as a “Zionist,” in part because of his ties to Paul Wolfowitz, the former Pentagon official and World Bank chief. But it seems that Anwar is not above making similar charges himself; according to Michael Shannon, Anwar is now “accusing his country’s government of supporting the pro-Israel lobby in the US and Jewish groups inside Israel.” And, as Shannon explains, “…Anwar did not elaborate on the nature of the alleged support or his evidence. Going on recent form, it’s hard to see Malaysia’s stance on diplomatic ties with Israel changing anytime soon – pro forma condemnations of Israeli policy have issued from Kuala Lumpur at every Israeli-Arab flare-up in recent years.”

Most famously, the former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad told an Islamic Summit in 2003 that Jews ruled the world “by proxy.” Exhorting the world’s Muslims to throw off their chains, he declared: “We are actually very strong, 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.”

What separates Mahathir’s remarks from those of Ahmad and Anwar, it seems to me, is that Mahathir was using antisemitism as a tool against Jews. In Ahmad’s case, it’s a stick with which to beat the Chinese, while in Anwar’s case, it’s a means of discrediting his political opponents in what has become a very nasty battle. In other words, not just antisemitism without Jews, but antisemitism directed at non-Jews. Yet another strange mutation, then, but one based upon the abiding theme of the Jew as a figure of fear.