23 Comments on “Papernas”
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mad-muhaa Says:
August 4th, 2006 at 8:47 pmAnti-imperialism, anti neo-liberalism, progressive. One argues that a political body with that much “anties” alienates more than it attracts. It is pointless to fight imperialism when there’s no empire around anymore. It is also blunt to disdain neo-liberalism: what is it anyway? What about plain old liberalism?
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Ross Says:
January 26th, 2007 at 3:11 pmThe sloganising of this new group sounds exactly like the boring old marxist garbage we used to hear at uni in the 60s, and a notorious red like Max Lane’s endorsement further gives the game away.
There is a definite turn-around these days. PKI resurgent in new guises -don’t know about this particular party, but the Reds are around all right - and people teaching communist courses at Indonesian universities, which would be fine if the teachers were out to reveal what communists do whenever they get the chance.
Instead they seem to think that marxism is just another idea like liberalism or nationalism or conservatism, which is open to reasonable discussion, rahter than the irrational class-hate doctrine it was born as and has remained.
Canada banned the Communist Party during the Second World War because it was a clear and present danger, and Indonesia is wise to maintain its ban today. The fanatics who use religion to torment minorities are bad enough - if the PKI ever came back from their scurvy exile, they’d been aiming to do even worse. -
Yan Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 9:02 pmRoss you sound like a paranoiac New Order hack. What did the New Order do for 30+ years? Was it open to “reasonable discussion” regarding its interpretation of anything? No it wasnt, and it routinely arrested, intimidated, and killed those who dared to oppose it. The grand irony of the New Order was that despite its constant invoking of an invisible non-existent communist threat (it had slaughtered most PKI and countless others in 65) it was closest thing the region has had to a Stalinist regime. It used the irrational fear of an imaginary PKI threat to legitimate its totalitarian ambition and apparently there are those such as Ross who continue to believe it.
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March 30th, 2007 at 8:05 amYan, nobody denies the excesses of the Suharto regime but look at what the Communists have done WHEREVER they took power. China’s imposed famine plus Red Guard massacres plus the immediate murders at the end of the civil war must total 100 million. Your PKI minions took shelter in that enormous death zone, and sing its praises still.
In Russia, with a population not dissimilar to Indonesia, Stalin’s holocaust cost 6 or 7 million in the Ukraine alone. Solzhenitsyn is a good read!
Go and look at the site of the Berlin Wall, or Jan Palach’s memorial in Prague or take a walk through Budapest where buildings are still pock-marked with Soviet bullet-holes from 1956. Think about Pol Pot, or the Belene concentration camp in Bulgaria. Recall Huber Matos and Valladares in Cuban cells for decades.
Communism is vile. Ignorant peasants may be conned into joining up and may be forgiven but educated people who tried to put the PKI in power here deserve utter contempt as traitors.
They were hard at work curtailing Indonesian democracy long before 1965. The threat was no myth. -
Ihaknt Says:
March 30th, 2007 at 8:47 amIt seems so easy to create your own party in Indonesia. Maybe Patung and co, should take this forum further into a political party?
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Dimp Says:
March 30th, 2007 at 10:05 amHi ihaknt,
I am proposing that we form a Common Sense Party, or in Indonesian Partai Akal Sehat (PAS).
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March 30th, 2007 at 10:17 amRoss, I appreciate the sincerity of your repsonse, however you have missed my point. I am no apologist for communism, or any other ism. Whenever ideology takes precedent over humanity, the outcome can only ever be tragic. It is pointless trying to make historical moral equivalences between state atrocities, be it in the name of pancasila, communism or anything else the end result is the same. It is hardly suprising that in Indonesia where a market majority minority live it up while millions struggle to exist that ideas of redistribution of resources remain attractive. Point being that the danger lies not with Papernas or other left leaning groups (It is not equivalent to the PKI, the democratic socialism they propose in no way resembles standard communist ideology) but with the current system. If the political elites and their rent-a-goons were serious about “curtailing the comunist threat” they would focus less on banning books and political thuggery and more on seriously addressing the real issues: corruption, endemic poverty, unemployment etc. As it stands the PKI exists, but more as spectre and scapegoat that can be arbitrarily applied to anyone who makes substantive criticisms of the system and the self-interests of the few that it protects.
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March 30th, 2007 at 11:37 amHi Ross,
How about Cuba, just because they are communists they were sanctioned by the US government, and due to the embargo they can hardly grow. I’ve never been there myself but met many Canadians who said that it is just a fantastic place with plenty of intelligent people (most of the population are college graduate as school is free). So there are some aspects of communism that may be good to be implemented.
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March 30th, 2007 at 1:04 pmOkay, Yan and Dimp
Firstly, Yan, I agree the ruling class here are mostly revolting. I also have no idea what this new party is up to. Okay if they are just democratic socialists and not the sort of bullies and brutes who generally join communist parties, then good luck to them.Cruelty is not a monopoly of left or right but communism as such is much worse than any other movement, in terms both of the death-toll of innocents and the dehumanising effect of its creed. Here’s a piece from the BBC today:
‘A Catholic priest has been jailed for eight years in Vietnam on charges of disseminating information to undermine the state. Father Nguyen Van Ly is a prominent democracy activist and long-time opponent of Communist Party rule.
The 60-year-old has been under house arrest since early February. His trial lasted one day.
Four co-defendants received prison terms ranging from 18 months suspended to six years.
“The behaviour of the defendants amounts to the crime of spreading propaganda against the Socialist state”, Judge Bui Quoc Hiep told the court in the central city of Hue. Earlier, a policeman had removed Father Ly from the court after he shouted “Down with the Communist Party”.’That’s what communism is all about, and another reason I find it so bizarre that ASEAN and the West keep whining about Myanmar when a red tyranny like Hanoi still torments its subjects (but that’s another matter).
Secondly, Dimp. yes, there are Canadians totally ignorant of Castro’s record, usually because they won’t take the time or trouble to listen or read. Also Pierre Trudeau, the late and highly unlamented Prime Minister of Canada, was a great friend of Castro and encouraged him in his repression of Cuba’s freedom. Trudeau’s marxist sympathies have percolated through to some younger Canadians who lack a broad education.
Cuba was a relatively prosperous country until the reds took it and chained up all opposition, even those who helped them fight Batista’s old regime.
Thousands have died in prison or by firing-squad, initially supervised by that psycho Guevara. Press freedom was one of the first liberties to go, and trades unions were shackled. Even the guy Castro first installed as President decided to flee to America when he realised what a totalitarian swine Castro was - and is.
Ask the Canadian fellow-travellers, if Castro is so popular, why does he persecute any Cuban who tries to form an opposition party or suggest free elections. Why is anti-communist argument banned, if communism is so beloved by the majority?
Free education means free indoctrination. There is no intellectual or academic freedom in Cuban universities. What value then in a degree?
Check it out. Read about Huber Matos, Valladares, or the many other good democrats who suffered and died at the hands of Latin America’s last despot.
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March 30th, 2007 at 6:20 pmHi Ross,
Thanks for the info, I know Castro cannot be considered as one of the good guy, the Canadians that I was telling you about actually travelled to Cuba, and he regret the policy that the American implemented punishing all Cubans because of Castro, making him more like a hero rather than a dictator.
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Aby Says:
March 30th, 2007 at 6:41 pmGuys, we are talking about Social Democracy, Green-Socialism, and Liberal Communism, not the distorted impressions created by those Imperial Socialists (USSR, PRC, Vietnam, Zimbabwe). The face of Social Democracy, Green-Socialism and Liberal Communism can be seen in the governments of many of the world’s most developed countries, such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, UK, and Austria. What seems, to me, to be the problem here is that the Indonesian people have not been exposed to enough information about these ideologies, that they just simply brand anything Left-leaning as “Communist”. But the fact is, these ideologies are staunch proponents of personal freedom. However, the real question ought to be why the anti-Communists are not hostile to Megawati’s PDI-P, since it is also a political party which bases itself on the ideology of Muslim Social Democracy, where the government was lenient on people’s personal choice concerning religion, but was harsher with unjust treatment to labour, capital, and the environment.
Oh, and Ross, if you say that Communism is the most brutal movement there is, why dont you check General A Pinochet. He was the ultimate Free-Marketeer, like Ronald Reagan. Yet his regime was as brutal as Stalin. Also look at Hitler. A staunch anti-Communist, but what happenned to the Jews?
Good day.
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Rambutan Says:
April 11th, 2007 at 3:41 pmPapernas is strongly left-leaning but hardly communist. But whatever their ideological orientation is, as a democratic party they have a right to exist in Indonesia and should be protected by the state from attacks by the thugs of FPI and cohorts. I applaud their move to report FPI to the police for the attack and hope that FPI will be banned. They have proved repeatedly that they are anti-democratic and nothing more than a bunch of criminals - unfortunately with backing from the police and military.
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Discomfort Says:
April 30th, 2007 at 1:31 pmIs it possible that these ‘gerakan - boys’ aren’t only backed by the police and military, but also by a consortium of foreign bodies (whether it’s governments or corporation) that have major interest in keeping Indonesia ’socialist-free’? It’s a known fact that the suspected PKI members massacre in the aftermath of the so-called G 30 S/ PKI coup are backed by CIA and M16 isn’t it? So why not now? Call me paranoid, but (at least to me) this idea is somewhat realistic.
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April 30th, 2007 at 3:45 pmAby, my apologies for not replying sooner.
Pinochet was a dictator, but not, repeat not, by choice but because he saw Chile turning into another Cuba and stepped in to stop that.
I am aware of Hitler’s responsibility for millions of deaths, but you have to hand it to the Communists, they outstrip even the Nazis for death and destruction and oppression. In Ukraine alone in the Stalin era, more Slavs died at the hands of the reds than ever there were Jews killed by Hitler.
Alas, whenever a Red is challenged, he tends to say that, oh no, Vietnam, Cuba, China, North Korea, they haven’t got it quite right, so you can’t use them as an example of communism…. if WE organise things , we’d do it better.
Castro used to lie like that, ‘not really commie, just a freedom-lover,’ but when he got his chance the firing-squads and dungeons were brought into action.
It is not unfair to say that the only good communist is a dead one, as long as we draw a distinction between those free to choose (in democratic countries) and those who are at the mercy of marxist regimes and have to knuckle under for the sake of their loved ones.
Communists in non-communist countries are traitors, who consciously opt for enmity to their own people’s liberty.
Look at their record in World War II -banned in Canada, for subverting the war effort against Hitler, eagerly instigating strikes in Britain to harm the wartime economy, cosying up to the Nazi Occupation in France, until Stalin said ‘change course,’ and like the contemptible puppets they were (and are) it was all of a sudden ‘rally round the flag.’
Discomfort, hesitate please before invoking ‘known facts.’ Most historians, except the Red ones, now tend to think that the CIA was taken by surprise by 1965’s upheavals in Jakarta. It is clear that the Reds got what they deserved because most Indonesians had had enough of their pretensions to power.
That is not to say that many others did not get much worse than they deserved, of course. The humble peasants conned by marxist propaganda should not have been punished on a par with rats like Aidit -
April 30th, 2007 at 6:13 pmReally?
Most historians? Did you count them one by one?
“..The role of the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office and MI6 intelligence service has also come to light, in a series of exposés by Paul Lashmar and Oliver James in The Independent newspaper beginning in 1997. These revelations have also come to light in journals on military and intelligence history..”
“..Often cited by the left as evidence of a broader, international plot to topple Sukarno, a number of revelations were made by former employees of U.S. State Department and Central Intelligence Agency regarding American actions during the Indonesian Civil War..”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G30S_PKI )
Well, I guess you could always say that sources such as Wikipedia are weak, right? :)) suit youself sir. I guess just like beauty, truth is in the eye of the beholder :))
Anyways, politics-schmolitics, whether it is the ‘reds’ or the ‘red white and blues’, there ARE medling hands at works here.. Don’t you think Indonesia should decide which path to take withouth the interference of these ‘foreign’ interest?
This one is from the archive of the NSA
On another highly controversial issue - that of U.S. involvement in the killings - the volume includes an “Editorial Note” on page 387 describing Ambassador Marshall Green’s August 10, 1966 airgram to Washington reporting that an Embassy-prepared list of top Communist leaders with Embassy attribution removed “is apparently being used by Indonesian security authorities who seem to lack even the simplest overt information on PKI leadership at the time”¦.” On December 2, 1965, Green endorsed a 50 million rupiah covert payment to the Kap-Gestapu movement leading the repression; but the December 3 CIA response to State is withheld in full.
(http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB52/)
Now please tell me Ross, is the NSA one of those ‘red’ historian? More like ‘red white and blue’ eh? :)))
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Colson Says:
April 30th, 2007 at 7:20 pmDear Mr Ross McKay,
Your hatred of communists and communism is remarkable. Remember, its no longer 1989 but 2007.
And your statements seem to be very, very apodictical. It came to my mind you must live in a very small world thinking that almost every historian nowadays takes it for granted that in ‘65 the CIA was taken by surprise. Well, your trick of course is that everybody who disagrees with you, is a “Red”. “Red” meaning scum in your vocabulary.
There has been a number of colossal crimes in recent history. The Nazi killing of almost the entire Jewish population in Europe was and is unprecedented. But, indeed, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot had their communist slaugherhouses as well. But in as much as it is outrageous to compare Castro’s Cuba with those criminals, you should have compared ( with a clean conscience as well) Suharto’s victims in the aftermath of ‘65 ( the estimated number somewhere between 0,5 million and 1 million) with those of the communist dictators mentioned above. In all these cases, no genocide but mass slaughterhouses and severe crimes to humanity.
Semi-quote: nearly all historians, exept the neocons, now share this opinion.
Btw: I was an anticommunist already in times when it was worthwhile being one. I still am. But with friends like you, one does not need a foe.
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May 1st, 2007 at 12:17 pmDear Mr. Colson
Of course I loathe Communism and its acolytes as much today as I did in 1989. A foul dictatorship like Castro’s, albeit older, is just as evil and cruel. May Cuba see freedom return some day soon when the swine dies, or sooner.
I do not think all Communists are ’scum.’ Many are, but there have been many cases of communists who see the light and become strong fighters against the red cancer. ‘The God That Failed’ is a book by a group of such people. Good on them, also on James Burnham, and I think Robert Conquest too was a man who saw through the drivel of marxism. That was the point I was making. The only good communist is a dead one, but that does not mean we should kill all Communists. Rather we should try to help them see that their creed is a blind alley. Marxism elevates hate to the status of a religion.
It is hardly fair to say that Hitler’s murder of Jews was unprecedented.
Saxons drove out or killed the ancient Brits, and Sinn Fein has been working on the genocide principle in Ulster for the past fifty years at least. Not nice.
My point is that in modern terms, Communism has murdered more innocents than any other ‘philosophy.’ And a lot of their murders were as racist as anything Hitler dreamed up. The Katyn Forest mass-murder was aimed at wiping out Polish leadership, on racial grounds, to subjugate Poles to Russians. The Chechen Ingush deportations were racist (and religious) vendettas.You say you were an anti-communist ‘when it was worthwhile being one.’ When does it cease to be worthwhile to oppose bad people and bad things? Cuba and North Korea and the other red regimes have not vanished into thin air. They continue to make a mockery of human rights and common decency. Get with it, man, as you may have said in the days when it was ‘worthwhile.’
Must work, will return to the fray next week. -
Janma Says:
May 1st, 2007 at 12:49 pmdimp!
quote “I am proposing that we form a Common Sense Party, or in Indonesian Partai Akal Sehat (PAS).”
Oooh…. sounds good! Can I join your group?
Janma.
*having a pythonesque moment* -
May 1st, 2007 at 7:28 pmJanma, you need to come up with a suitable color for the party.
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Aby Says:
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:35 pmRoss
Are you saying that Pinochet did not have any choice but to kill millions? Does this justify his actions, like you seem to justify Hitler’s?
If you are saying that Socialist states like VN, PRC, NK and Cuba are not really Communists, I have to say “I cannot agree more”. However, I should like to add the USSR to that list as well. Why?
Because those countries were established as Statist states, not Socialist or Communist. Communism and Socialism is the ideologies where the course of the economy is believed to ruin the social welfare unless the government intervenes, while the personal lives of each individual is believed to be no business of the state. Statism, on the other hand, is the ideology where both the course of the economy and the personal lives of each individual are business of the state.
Furthermore, the countries you refer as ‘Communists’ seem to be the same countries you call ‘fake Communists’. So how did you make your judgement about Communism?
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May 2nd, 2007 at 3:17 pmAby
Before we proceed, please tell me what ‘apodidtical’ means? Is it English or Indonesian?
No, I did not say the red regimes still on the go are not communist. I suggested that it is a favourite marxist tactic to pretend that red regimes are not ‘really’ red at all and that therefore communism is worth a try. Thank you for confirming that marxists are still up to their old debating tricks!Twisting my words to suggest I ‘justify Hitler’s ‘ actions would be bad enough, but you don’t even twist any words, simply pluck the smear out of the stratosphere.
Pinochet? Check out Robert Moss’s excellent book, Chile’s Marxist Experiment.
Take a week to read it or at least some extracts from it, because I have too much to do to resume this argument at least until after Europe Day. -
May 7th, 2007 at 3:05 pmRoss.
I dont know what ‘apodidtical’ means. Ask the person who wrote it, not me…
My basic argument is this. There are two types of “Communism” in general. The first one is the more widely known one, which is State Capitalism (Statism) like those countries we have discussed above. The other one is Communism (or Eurocommunism), which has little to do with Marx except the idea that capitalism has to be controlled. Also, you should read more about ideological diversity, so you realise that there are more of the Left than just Communism.As for Pinochet, he was not a Marxist. The Marxist was President Salvador Allende who was the victim of Pinochet’s coup. And, as a matter of fact, Pinochet modelled much of the Chilean economy on the UK under Thatcher. So, again, read more please.
And, oh, for the record, I am not a Marxist, and I kind of dislike them. I am also not a supporter of Papernas, as the party is just another outdated Marxist organisation (although it claims to be of Social Democratic ideologies). I just agree that capitalism should be controlled to achieve sustainable development. (and from this you can probably guess that I am a Left Green)
Why did I start my argument here? Because there seem to be a general need to help narrow minded people to realise that the world is much, much more complicated than one single belief or ideology.
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Hartati Nurwidjaya Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 6:03 pmThe more political parties the more problems and there is no united to built a strong nation and pecae!
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