One evening on YouTube I came across “The Albatross File Exhibition is an Insult to Lee Kuan Yew” on The Show with PJ Thum Season 2 Ep 9.

The introduction was a such great hook. Just 1 minute and 17 seconds into the video, Thum has me whooping and cheering when he exclaims:

I hadn’t known that Thum had beef with Shanmugam?! (I am sooo Patrick Star.) Apparently in 2018 they’d clashed during the Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods hearings? I love love love me some tea.

I don’t know why it’s a surprise to me (it being the fact that I’m in the dark about their rivalry), because I don’t keep up with the news at all. But it feels like something I ought to know.

Should I consume the News again?

Eh… Nah. I recently put on NPR’s Up First in the background while I wore make-up, a little revisitation of a morning habit I’d formed many years ago—listening to the news while getting ready in the morning. It’s entertaining. I stopped when I didn’t have to get ready anymore. Anyway, I pressed play on the podcast and it started the way it always does, a variation of “here’s the news you need to start your day,” and then launched into the dozens of wars and oil embargoes and that’s going on in the world right now.

Now, how the fuck is that news I need to start my day?

My belief is that consuming the news is mega bad for you. It’s bad to learn about terrible things you can do nothing about. Imagine starting everyday with a bummer. Uh no thank you, I’ll take my good mood and healthy headspace, save them for problems I can actually do something about.

Anyway, back to the video. After that incredible introduction, I don’t think Thum mentions Shanmugam again.

Thum criticizes The Albatross File Exhibition for its bad history. (The permanent exhibition at the National Library showcases Singapore’s separation from Malaysia, supplemented by newly declassified documents (about a third) in the Albatross file, compiled by Goh Keng Swee in 1964-5.)

My ears perked up when Thum very curiously started kissing Harry Lee’s ass.

…the qualities which made him great—his political skill, his strategic brilliance, his audacity, opportunism, manipulativeness, obsessiveness, selfishness, his willingness to gamble with thousands of lives in pursuit of his aims—also produced the conditions of his failure.

And because the Exhibition cannot talk about his failure, it cannot talk about his greatness.

It’s like a Greek tragedy with Lee as our tragic hero. Our best heroes are heroes because they are human. They did not succeed because they were perfect, they succeeded in spite of, by overcoming massive human failings. […] But the Exhibition can’t say this, so it strips Lee of his agency, it makes him seem smaller, lesser, than he actually was.

That’s the irony of the Exhibition. In trying to make Lee seem good, it airbrushes out everything which made Lee great.

Is this the PJ Thum I know from the History of Singapore podcast?

Sometime before the History of Singapore, Thum had worked at the National University of Singapore. He’d said that Harry Lee lied about his use of detention without trial in the 1960s, and after his contract ended, he was privately informed by someone senior in the university that he would never be able to work in Singapore as an academic again, as a result of that remark.¹

Thum then goes on to make the History of Singapore podcast that is very critical of Lee—enough for a concerned listener, Joyce, to call in and point that out, and ask if he thought there’ll be any repercussions (legal or not) for the stand he’s taken. Thum replies that there already has been (the NUS incident), and continues:

With regards to legal action, I don’t think so, […] because everything I do is cited, I have plenty of evidence. […] I’m an academic. I don’t make arguments out of thin air. So legal action would be quite silly. Of course, I’m not the powers that be in Singapore, I don’t know what they would decide to do. […] Most of all, you can’t libel a dead man.²

I am able to reference this episode after first listening to it almost 10 years ago because it left a great impression on me. I think the reason is that I felt a huge disconnect at the time—this new data point didn’t fit my mental model of Thum as an shrewd and intelligent historian. This new piece of information screams, “oh my sweet, sweet, sweet summer child.”

I was scared for him. Thum seemed to recognise the possibility of bad consequences, yet remained oddly relaxed, unguarded—banking entirely on his CiTaTIoNs and eViDenCe (please lah, brother) to protect him. It rattled me a bit.

Has he been away from Singapore for too long? Is this hubris? Naivete? Surely he’s aware of OB markers? Detention without trial? They can absolutely get you for no reason at all and they won’t even owe you a fucking explanation. Anybody with family they care about should not fuck around with them.

Fast forward ten years: Thum now lives in the Philippines in political exile.³ Joyce and I? We’re not surprised.

sooo, what’s with the flattery?

I was quite taken by Thum’s framing of “Lee, polished, mythical, good” versus “Lee, messy, human, ✨Great✨”.

He must be up to something! ☕️✨

In my view, Thum’s ‘Great Lee’ frame is essentially a Trojan horse.

Thum is chipping away at the myth of Lee Kuan Yew, but doing it sideways. He’s not saying Lee was bad—he’s offering us a more flattering frame: not ‘Good Lee’ but ‘Great Lee.’ The catch is that the Great Lee only works if you accept him whole—flaws, failures, and all. Greatness, in Thum’s telling, is inseparable from the mess. So the moment you take the upgrade, the myth collapses on its own. You can have the sanitised legend, or you can have Greatness—but you cannot have both.

I’m also curious if he’s kissing ass to make his content a little more palatable to the average Singaporean. It’s a great hook—a little sugar to reel people in before he hits them with the hard truths of who Lee really was. Get the POFMA goons to lower their guard.

Okay, but why demythologise Lee?

Umm, I’m sooo about to talk out of my ass for this one, and it’s honestly something I don’t quite understand (ye gods, the preservation of his Oxley home?) The implicit premise here is that LKY (specifically, the Myth of LKY) is of enormous value to the PAP.

Harry’s brand goes so motherfucking hard:

100th Birth Anniversary of Mr Lee Kuan Yew Commemorative Coin

#LKY100 #FollowThatRainbow

I’m making some leaps here, but I don’t think it’s so crazy to claim that the myth of Lee Kuan Yew serves the present-day PAP by transforming his generation’s achievements into political legitimacy; casting PAP rule as the natural steward of Singapore’s survival and prosperity.

Look, I don’t get how this magic works, but they must be on to something with the coins and the Centennial Fund. #VoucherWong

Alright, I’ve said waaay much bullshit. To summarise my evil read on Thum’s motives: I think he’s introducing a new norm for how we speak of Lee—get us used to talking about him plainly. The flattery is padding for now, but the important stuff—Lee’s cowardice, dishonesty, disagreeableness—enters our shared understanding of who he was.

Again, the trap he’s laid is a devious one: choose ‘Good Lee’ and you’re leaving Great on the table. Choose ‘Great Lee’ and you have to sit with a man who was selfish, reckless, at times a jerk, and you have to reckon with the fact that the PAP has been trading on his myth ever since.

Fully convinced that Thum is playing the long game (LFGGGGG 🔥), I was eager to find out more. I pre-ordered the book immediately. It came with an option to collect it at the book’s launch. How fun! I’d never been to a book launch, and though I already own a signed copy of The Singapore Citizens’ Agenda (it arrived sign, a surprise), I’d never stood in line for an author’s autograph before. I was thrilled at the prospect.

🎉 the book launch

20 Jun 2026 (Saturday)

• 1.00–1.30 pm: Registration and book collection
• 1.30–3.00 pm: Talk and Q&A
• 3.00–4.00 pm: Book Signing

Blue Room, Filmhouse Level 5, Golden Mile Tower 6001 Beach Rd

I’d thought that the space atop (not exactly, but you know what I mean) Golden Mile Tower was gone. Didn’t The Projector announce its liquidation in 2025? It seems like it’s been taken over by the Filmhouse, and it’s doing… exactly the same thing? I don’t know.

Photo stolen from PJ Thum’s Instagram post

There were about eighty people in attendance, among us Paul Tambyah and Leong Mun Wai. Wicked of me to recount this, but: during the Q&A, Leong stood up to ask multiple questions, prefacing them with “I haven’t read your book, but…” Bro. None of us had read the book! All eighty of us had literally just collected it at the door on the way in. I’m probably projecting, but I thought Thum was so done with him. He didn’t give Leong his full attention, which struck me, because it seemed like he’d made the effort with everyone else: listening actively, holding eye contact, you know the drill. But not with Leong. Ooops! And his response to one of Leong’s questions—“I wrote a whole book about it! 😄”—I clocked as major snark.

I won’t say much about Thum’s talk, it was a fairly dry lecture.

But I am reminded that Thum is ultimately a nerd who’s truly passionate about history and getting history right. At one point the host from Pagesetters (the publisher) fumbled the slides or display or something, and Thum appeared briefly annoyed. I thought it odd, because the slides weren’t important in that moment. But I could feel how much it mattered to him. Like he truly had an important lesson he really wanted to deliver.

Hearing him speak in person completely changed my mind about his motives. (I did imagine everything. 🤣) I’m convinced he means it when he says Lee was great, that Lee was an astute statesman. He also means it when he says Lee was a liar and a coward who played dirty. Because all of it is simply true.

I wonder if Shanmugam realises this. A sly person tends to imagine their opponents equally sly. Thum just gets the facts right. They so happen to be a threat to the PAP. Anyway, I got my book signed and went home happy.

Scoop: a new History of Singapore is in the works! I have no concerns about the veracity of Thum’s work because he has POFMA as his fact-checker.

Footnotes

1. Al Jazeera English, “Singapore: The House That Lee Built | People and Power,” YouTube video, March 1, 2018, 19:01, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c27vAhUJQdc&t=1141s It’s just PJ recounting the event. ↩

2. PJ Thum, “Episode 50: Question & Answers III,” The History of Singapore, podcast audio, October 14, 2016, 24:25, https://soundcloud.com/historysg/episode50. ↩

3. It’s a tricksy thing, political exile. At the book launch, the host introduced Thum as being in political exile. At the end of the talk my partner asked me something to the effect of “if he’s in exile, how is he here?” I told him about the police harrassment and the seizing of devices, and he got it. I don’t think it’s obvious to most people. It seems to me that there’s an idea of Exile in people’s minds that involves the state actually kicking people out. If I were Thum, I wouldn’t mention it at all. He already has a bad rap for allegedly lying about his credentials. ↩