Daily Times

The month of October heralds a change in the weather. Nearly a century ago, the workers writhed in the misery of oppression, weathered a storm of brutality and crowned themselves into power. Contrary to the Arab Spring, which turned into a winter of discontent, it brightened the world with a rosy glow, with an unpolluted dawn that changed the horizon as it offered a new hope to the wretched of the earth.

The world was inundated by the revolutionary fervour. The workers had found their consciousness. The streets echoed with the old solitary slogan: workers of all countries unite. The battle cry drowned the bestial chorus of imperialist warmongers; the spectre of Socialism was ‘haunting’ the world. After overthrowing the exploiters, the workers got rid of the muck of ages to form a new society – the only way of redemption they knew.

The enemy, battered and bruised, decided to strike with all means available. The German revolution was stifled. Fascists, from Spain to Italy, were pampered and cajoled. The world was pushed into Dante’s inferno. If that was not enough, the bugles of Cold War were blown. From the persecution of McCarthyism to the Martial Plan, no stone was left unturned. The ruse of reason was employed to counter the wave of Socialism; the idea of a welfare state sneaked its way out of the head of Zeus. Class consciousness could not be erased but mollified and corrupted.

Along with the countries of the South Cone in its own backyard, Indonesia was another gold mine chosen to be vilified by the US. The Communist party (PKI) of Indonesia, one of the largest parties of any Muslim country, was working to rebuild a state ravaged by the imperialist forces; a Dutch colony that found its freedom in 1949 through a fierce armed struggle in which the Communists played the leading role. The independence had seen Sukarno, a nationalist, as the President of the Republic backed by the PKI

Along with the countries of the South Cone in its own backyard, Indonesia was another gold mine chosen to be vilified by the US. The Communist party (PKI) of Indonesia, one of the largest parties of any Muslim country, was working to rebuild a state ravaged by the imperialist forces; a Dutch colony that found its freedom in 1949 through a fierce armed struggle in which the Communists played the leading role. The independence had seen Sukarno, a nationalist, as the President of the Republic backed by the PKI.

The national army, as an autonomous body, was developed with plenty of fanfare but it was like creating one’s own nemesis. “Finding itself idle and without any definite mission, the army goes into politics and threaten[s] the government. Drawing-room generals, by dint of haunting the corridors of government departments, come to dream of manifestoes. The only way to avoid this menace is to… nationalise it” (Fanon).

To guard against Bonapartism, the number of permanent officers needs to be trimmed to the minimum while the security reliance is to be left in the hands of mass-based militia developed simultaneously. This curbs the impetuosity of a handful of paid mercenaries to commit any adventurism against their own people; guards refrain from assuming the title of guardians.

All nationalists are inherently class collaborationists, and Sukarno was no exception. Fearing the ‘Red scare’, he inducted the army to national politics, and thus the seeds for an eventual overthrow of the civilian government – a favourite pastime of imperialism – were sown inadvertently. The war in Vietnam gave the Empire a further impetus; the father of the nation was overthrown and the human slaughter began. Two eternal predators, the Praetorian guards and the religious fanatics, were the assassins. Despite having an aura of hegemonic control over human psyche and soma, the futility of religion has made it vestigial; its domination invariably demands the backing of fascist forces.

On October 1965, history saw the biggest purge of its time. Lumpens of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), a religious party, a cohort of Suharto clustered under the banner of KAP-Gestapu, and a mercenary unit was unleashed on the Communists. The name that reverberates through the Nazi history reminds us that they were not unique in choosing the name synonymous with liquidation of humanity. Those were the nights of long knives, the architects who shaped the independence of Indonesia were massacred brutally; the blades of knives butchered the dawn that promised economic liberation for the nation. An estimated figure of casualties varied from five hundred thousand to two million. The country was doomed but the leaders of NU saved their private property, the land that was under threat of being nationalised. The night of long knives gave into the night of generals.

“As those accused of being communists went into detention or were killed, others took their property and sometimes even their wives in a practice called ‘wife taking'”; the exploits of war have never been a taboo in religious circles. Whether the letter of Andrew Gilchrist was forged or not, there is no denying that the involvement of the US was direct. CIA provided the list of Communist party members who needed to be eliminated and the primitive version of Al-Qaida in Indonesia, still active against Communists, compiled. “A 21 December 1965 cable from the embassy’s first secretary, Mary Vance Trent, to the state department referred to events as a ‘fantastic switch which has occurred over 10 short weeks’. It also included an estimate that 100,000 people had been slaughtered”.

The country was left open to be experimented for the New Order by the Berkeley Mafia, the initial version of Chicago Boys who played havoc in Chile once Allende was executed in cold blood. The massive sale of public assets and the deregulation and privatisation of economy had disastrous effects which culminated in the Asian financial crisis of 1997 exposing all Asian tigers as paper tigers. The rupiah tumbled from 2600 to 14000 a dollar, and with it sank both Suharto and East Timor. Despite committing these hideous crimes, Nahdlatul Ulama remains guiltless. It has refused to allow the rebirth of the Communist Party in any name which proves that when it comes to the defence of private property and expropriation, imperialism and religion find themselves hand in glove with each other.

Copper, nickel, bauxite, oil, forest, shrimp and tuna – all drenched in human blood were presented in a golden platter to the US and Japanese corporations. No one cried foul, everything happened without a whimper; the conscience of international community was in deep slumber, it only rebuked and reviled the sight of revolution.

The writer has authored books on socialism and history. He blogs at saulatnagi.wordpress.com and can be reached atsaulatnagi@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, October 25^th 2018.