Outside Agitator

Naomi Klein and the new new left.
by Larissa MacFarquhar

The marquee outside the Bloor Cinema, in Toronto, advertised “The Last Mistress” at four, “Naomi Klein—the Shock Doctrine” at seven, and “Little Shop of Horrors” at nine-thirty. It was a warmish night. The falafel shop next door was doing a brisk business. A line of people holding tickets to the Naomi Klein event stretched to the end of the block and around the corner. Outside the entrance to the cinema, a middle-aged man and an elderly woman paced up and down selling copies of Socialist Action for a dollar. (The September issue included articles about capitalism’s contradictions, class war in Bolivia, and a commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal—a regular feature.)

Kejarlah Daku Kau Kusekolahkan

Oleh: Alfian Hamzah

MEREKA memulai perjalanannya dari pelabuhan Armada Laut Timur Ujung di Surabaya. Sekitar 700-an serdadu dari Batalyon Infanteri (Yonif) 521/Dadaha Yodha menyemut di bibir dermaga, menunggu giliran naik ke kapal Teluk Bayur.

Mereka akan berlayar ke Aceh, medan perang yang jaraknya 3.000 kilometer, dari asrama mereka di Kediri.

Di dermaga, seorang gadis berambut kepang mencari-cari sesosok wajah. Saat kapal beringsut meninggalkan Surabaya, pipinya basah dengan air mata.

Exit Suharto

Obituary for a Mediocre Tyrant

By: Benedict Anderson

In 1971, the indonesian presidential machine informed the public that Suharto and his wife were planning a mausoleum for themselves on a spur of Mount Lawu, the dormant, 3,000m sacred volcano that lies to the east of the ci-devant royal Javanese city of Surakarta. [1] The site had been carefully chosen, respectfully situated some metres below the early tombs of the Mangkunegaran dynasty—the second most insignificant of the four small Central Java principalities instituted by colonial authority in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Nasionalisme Indonesia: “Proyek Bersama” yang Belum Selesai

Oleh: Nezar Patria*

NASIONALISME, bagi generasi Indonesia hare gene, mungkin bukan termasuk barang asyik ditimbang, dibedah, atau dipikirkan kembali. Banyak orang menyimpulkan, kita berada pada senjakala nasionalisme. Fajar baru dunia adalah globalisasi, yang telah menggerus tapal batas teritorial, dan mengaburkan persepsi atas borders, sesuatu yang justru sangat esensial dalam doktrin nasionalisme. Karena itu, berbicara soal nasionalisme akan kedengaran katrok, dan mereka yang berapi-api membelanya terancam dicap pendekar kesiangan.

Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism

Is there a difference that matters?

By: Benedict Anderson

Mercifully, we no longer hear a great deal about Asian Values. These ‘values’ were too brazenly rhetorical, as euphemisms of certain state leaders to justify authoritarian rule, nepotism and corruption. The 1997 financial crisis, anyway, dealt a harsh blow to their claims to have found a fast-track road to permanent economic growth and prosperity. But the idea that there is a distinctively Asian form of nationalism is not only very much still with us, but has roots going back more than a century. [1] It is fairly clear that its ultimate origins lie in the notorious insistence of a racist European imperialism that ‘East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ But this insistence on an irremediable racial dichotomy began to be used, early in the twentieth century, by a number of nationalists in different parts of Asia to mobilize popular resistance against a now-utterly-alien domination. Is such a radical dichotomy really justifiable, either theoretically or empirically?

How Significantly, And In What Ways Did WW II Effect Indonesia And The Development Of Its Nationalism?

This paper seeks to address the effects WWII had on Indonesia and its nationalism by contrasting two periods, namely the pre-war and wartime Indonesia. This is done to accurately measure the significance of any changes thought to be wrought by the war.

The United States And The Overthrow Of Sukarno, 1965-1967

by: Peter Dale Scott

In this short paper on a huge and vexed subject, I discuss the U.S. involvement in the bloody overthrow of Indonesia’s President Sukarno, 1965-67. The whole story of that ill-understood period would transcend even the fullest possible written analysis. Much of what happened can never be documented; and of the documentation that survives, much is both controversial and unverifiable. The slaughter of Sukarno’s left-wing allies was a product of widespread paranoia as well as of conspiratorial policy, and represents a tragedy beyond the intentions of any single group or coalition. Nor is it suggested that in 1965 the only provocations and violence came from the right-wing Indonesian military, their contacts in the United States, or (also important, but barely touched on here) their mutual contacts in British, German and Japanese intelligence. And yet, after all this has been said, the complex and ambiguous story of the Indonesian bloodbath is also in essence simpler and easier to believe than the public version inspired by President Suharto and U.S. government sources. Their problematic claim is that in the so-called Gestapu (Gerakan September Tigahpuluh) coup attempt of September 30, 1965 (when six senior army generals were murdered), the left attacked the right, leading to a restoration of power, and punitive purge of the left, by the center.1 This article argues instead that, by inducing, or at a minimum helping to induce, the Gestapu “coup,” the right in the Indonesian Army eliminated its rivals at the army’s center, thus paving the way to a long-planned elimination of the civilian left, and eventually to the establishment of a military dictatorship.2 Gestapu, in other words, was only the first phase of a three-phase right-wing coup — one which had been both publicly encouraged and secretly assisted by U.S. spokesmen and officials.3

Shakespeare and Company

by : Ernest Hemingway

In those days there was no money to buy books. I borrowed books from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was the library and bookstore of Sylvia Beach at 12 rue de l’Odeon. On a cold windswept street, this was a warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books, new books in the window, and photographs on the wall of famous writers both dead and living. The photographs all looked like snapshots and even the dead writers looked as though they had really been alive. Sylvia had a lively, sharply sculptured face, brown eyes that were as alive as a small animal’s and as gay as a young girl’s, and wavy brown hair that was brushed back from her fine forehead and cut thick below her ears and at the line of the collar of the brown velvet jacket she wore. She had pretty legs and she was kind, cheerful and interested, and loved to make jokes and gossip. No one that I ever knew was nicer to me.

Drugs That Shape Men’s Minds

by: Aldous Huxley

In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country. The craving for ethyl alcohol and the opiates has been stronger, in these millions, than the love of God, of home, of children; even of life. Their cry was not for liberty or death; it was for death preceded by enslavement. There is a paradox here, and a mystery. Why should such multitudes of men and women be so ready to sacrifice themselves for a cause so utterly hopeless and in ways so painful and so profoundly humiliating?

Literature and Totalitarianism

by: George Orwell

I said at the beginning of my first talk that this is not a critical age. It is an age of partisanship and not of detachment, an age in which it is especially difficult to see literary merit in a book with whose conclusions you disagree. Politics — politics in the most general sense — have invaded literature, to an extent that does not normally happen, and this has brought to the surface of our consciousness the struggle that always goes on between the individual and the community. It is when one considers the difficulty of writing honest unbiased criticism in a time like ours that one begins to grasp the nature of the threat that hangs over the whole of literature in the coming age.

“Bacaan Liar”: Budaya Dan Politik Pada Zaman Pergerakan

oleh Razif

“... More and mores writers will be drawn because of their simpathy with the working people and ideas of socialism, and not because of consideration of gain or personal ambition. It will be a literatur freedom, for instead of serving a few spoiled ladies or the fat and bored “upper ten thousand,” it will be written for the millions of working people who a represent country’s pride, its strenght and its future.”

Pengantar
Tulisan ini akan menganalisa produksi bacaan kaum pergerakan yang sering disebut oleh negara kolonial sebagai “Bacaan Liar.” Untuk itu akan dibahas bagaimana produksi “Bacaan Liar” tersebut tumbuh dan dikembangkan, disebarluaskan, sampai dengan kematiannya. Adalah sangat penting untuk melihat pergeseran dari bacaan yang belum dianggap ‘liar’ sampai pada tahap sebuah bacaan dianggap sebagai ‘liar.’ Sementara itu para pemimpin pergerakan sendiri memandang produksi bacaan mereka sebagai bagian yang tak terpisahkan dari mesin pergerakan: untuk mengikat dan menggerakkan kaum kromo–kaum buruh dan kaum tani yang tak bertanah. Produksi bacaan dapat berbentuk surat kabar, novel, buku, syair sampai teks lagu. Bagi kaum pergerakan, bacaan merupakan alat penyampai pesan dari orang-orang atau organisasi-organisasi pergerakan kepada kaum kromo. Oleh spektrum revolusioner dan radikal dari kaum pergerakan, bacaan diisi pesan tentang jaman yang telah berubah dan penindasan kekuasaan kolonialisme. Tujuan dari pesan-pesan tersebut adalah agar dapat mengajak rakyat–kaum kromo–melawan penjajah, sebagaimana pernah dinyatakan Marco: