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.
  • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    well that is were the communists got genocided by the CIA so I can't blame them

  • Shinji_Ikari [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Reminder to read The Jakarta Method.

    Very good book with a true and horrifying story.

    • Sunn_Owns [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Just don't read it right before bed or you'll lay awake staring at the ceiling. Great book.

  • Chomsky [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Lol. Fucking jacobin. "Crony capitalist"

    It's nice of them to point out the protests, but this anaylsis makes almost no sense whatsoever.

    • wrecker_vs_dracula [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      What is the editorial reasoning adding the 'crony' prefix? It only seems to imply that there are other more acceptable forms of Capitalism. Is this a message Jacobin is actively promoting?

      • Chomsky [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        "The Jacobins supported the rights of property, but represented a much more middle-class position than the government which succeeded them in Thermidor. Their economic policy established the General maximum, in order to control prices and create stability both for the workers and poor and the revolution. They favored free trade and a liberal economy much like the Girondists, but their relationship to the people made them more willing to adopt interventionist economic policies."

        When they say they are Jacobins, we should believe them.

        Not to bad mouth Jacobins. Being a Jacobin was super cool and hip... In the 1790s...

    • Chomsky [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Which is probably why they are employing the same means of resistance as the pro democracy movement in neighboring Phillipines and no we shouldn't infantalize them for that and no it's not the same as the pro democracy movement in Hong Kong.

  • 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