Little noticed in the West, the past two years have witnessed the largest protest wave in decades against Indonesia’s increasingly authoritarian crony-capitalist government. But activists are still mentally stuck in the 1990s, deploying depoliticized concepts like “civil society” and “moral force,” and resorting to ill-conceived methods of resistance that have left the movement in a rut and unable to realize its radical potential.
  • Sunn_Owns [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    How, then, should the Indonesian left proceed in its pursuit of genuine, radical social change? There are obviously no easy answers to this question. As a rough sketch, however, there is a need to formulate novel strategies tailor-made for the present trajectory.

    Protests are spectacle, easily ignored by those in power. They're useful as a first step, but if there is no second step striking at power then the movement will just dissipate.

    Perlstein in Nixonland wrote this about Adlai Stevenson, but it still rings true. "It marked a certain structural weakness of liberalism: seeing honor as an end in itself."

    Might makes right. There's still this unwillingness to talk about power, how to get it, and how to use it