Come take a bite from the apple of knowledge!

Welcome to the online newsletter of WeTheLovingCritics. We function on two mirrored platforms in Medium and Substack. Subscribe to our Substack platform if you would like to receive every new article straight into your email inbox. Alternatively, you can also follow us in Medium and read our articles at the convenience of the Medium app from your mobile phone. Either ways, you will get full access to our online newsletter for free!

We The Loving Critics (also stylised as WeTheLovingCritics) first started in June 2020 on Instagram and Facebook as a collaborative explainer page with brief commentaries and opinion pieces in light of Singapore’s 2020 General Elections (GE2020). We are now relaunched as an online newsletter site covering topics focused on Singapore’s History, Arts, and Sociopolitics.

We are all Loving Critics

Our name was inspired by the furore following PAP MP Tan Wu Meng’s attack towards WP MP and Secretary-General Pritam Singh (later appointed Leader of the Opposition in the 14th Parliament of Singapore) for the latter’s apparent support of local playwright Alfian Sa’at by indirectly naming him — amongst others — as “citizens who are loving critics”. This was widely considered as the ‘first shots fired’ in GE2020.

The term “loving critics” was first coined in 2019 by veteran diplomat and Ambassador-at-Large Professor Tommy Koh who said the following in a speech:

We should therefore not blacklist intellectuals, artists and writers just because they are critical of the government or hold dissenting views. We should welcome criticism as long as the critic loves Singapore and is not out to destroy Singapore. Singapore will languish if its lovers are uncritical and its critics are unloving. What Singapore needs is not sycophants but loving critics and critical lovers.

“Singapore does not need sycophants. It needs loving critics” (The Straits Times, 3 Oct 2019)

Here we strive to live up to our name as the Loving Critics of Singapore.

We welcome Contributors

WeTheLovingCritics will continue to support commentaries and opinion pieces from anyone who wishes to express them anonymously. Our Editor will look through all submissions, and after any necessary edits, the articles can be published under the name Contributor or Guest Writer with anonymity guaranteed. Send your submissions directly to our Editor at: wethelovingcritics.editor@gmail.com

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