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View all search resultsTime to stop scaring the nation with the communist boogeyman
More than six decades after the bloodshed of 1965-1966, President Prabowo has a historic window to finally bury the red phantom and lead the nation into a future free from manufactured fear.
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Communist resurgence?: Police officers display a symbol of the outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) alongside Molotov cocktails seized from a group of protestors following their rally in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, on Sept. 2, 2025.
(Antara/Handout-Dimas)
T
he coming days present President Prabowo Subianto with a historic opportunity. He has a narrow window to address the nation, call for an end to the endless debates over whether communism remains a constant threat to the country and direct our collective focus toward shared prosperity. He has the stature to do it.
He should also assure the public that militarism will not return at any cost. Signs are growing that the military is creeping back into social and political life, a sphere it had vacated for over two decades.
Rampant, systemic corruption across nearly every layer of power, unchecked abuses within the executive, legislative and judicial branches and entrenched poverty remain the true crises facing Indonesia today, not communism.
We are also witnessing expanding militarization, aggressive centralization of authority and mounting human rights violations, not least the ongoing oppression of marginalized communities such as the Papuan people. These are the urgent realities before us.
Even avowedly communist states like China and Vietnam run economic models far more pragmatically open than those of many self-styled democracies, and both are on track to prosperity.
Indonesians could be forgiven for chuckling at United States President Donald Trump, who has invoked "communism" and "communists" more than 100 times since late June. In his stump speeches, Trump routinely brands political opponents as "hardcore, godless communists".
During his address marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, he went so far as to declare communism "a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11".
