Combating Politics of Fear

KOMPAS/DAHLIA IRAWATI

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo symbolically hands over 5,153 land certificates to landowners in Malang Raya, East Java, on Wednesday (28/3) at Ken Arok Sports Hall in Malang city. In 2018, East Java targeted to issue certificates for 1.6 million land plots.

The use of the politics of fear has recently emerged in the phenomenon of the competing elite ahead of the 2018 and 2019 elections.

The political propaganda to cause a collective fear among the public has derailed public discourse from an evocative and encouraging battle of political ideas and narratives.

There are two actual and potential “anything goes" political instruments being used to spread public fear in connection to electoral politics, namely racial issues and the politicization of religion. The two are being used systematically by political forces to gain power.

Deception, as senior politician Amien Rais accused in the distribution of land certificates to the people is, according to this writer, not only a bombastic approach to political discourse with poor data, but even further, is actually designed to lead the way to releasing two "political bullets" simultaneously: to "delegitimize" the programs of Joko "Jokowi" Widodo\'s government and to problematize the economic gap through the gap in land ownership.

Such is also the case with the statement that Indonesia would be disbanded in 2030, as Gerindra Party chairman Prabowo Subianto said. Objectively, this "prediction" is clearly fictional (never mind that its messenger acknowledged that the source was a novel), is short of supporting data and tends toward delusion.

The statement is also not merely an expression of pessimism and a signal to raise caution, but more than that, it is a "political bullet" that is discharged, and clearly intended to target President Jokowi\'s government in order to give the impression that it has failed to overcome social division and is unable to maintain social cohesion or national integration.

Finally, of course, it intends to question the gap in national asset management as triggering the "dissolution" of the state.

Racial politics

Therefore, the narrative of both the "deception in the distribution of land certificates" and "Indonesia\'s dissolution in 2030" actually intend to convey the message that national integration is facing a super-serious threat because of the economic gap and the management of the nation’s strategic assets by a handful of people. Its target is, of course, decreasing Jokowi\'s electability.

Nevertheless, let us not forget that the impact on logic that is developing is increasing sentiments, anger and racial hatred against the nation\'s children of Chinese ethnicity, who are now being propagandized pejoratively as "aseng".

Racial sentiments intended to trigger hatred and anger among the societal groups that compose the nation of Indonesia should be avoided as a political commodity. A political sphere that is based on fatsun (etiquette) and civility should ideally give no room for racial campaigns that drive a wedge into social cohesion.

It needs to be noted that "selling" racial hatred for the sake of competing for power reflects the shallowness of the political imagination. Politicians who prefer to capitalize on public anger and ultimately trigger social divisiveness through political hyperbole, especially by "threating" the end of Indonesia as our common home, are in fact creating a shadow of fear over the public’s collective future.

In the hands of statesmen like Soekarno and the founders of other countries, resolving the issue of our nation’s life will undoubtedly be done by building a politics of unification, not a divisive one.

Economic disparities and land management are real problems in the communal homeland, but it is irrational to attempt their resolution by awakening social sentiments that can destroy the homeland.

In the history of our political journey, the fear, hatred and anger based on racial sentiments in 1997-1998 caused a humanitarian tragedy that should not be repeated. The mass rape of Chinese women in the reform period – whose tragic cases have not been settled fairly and justly – is racial politics that is more than horrific enough to be a lesson for us to avoid its reoccurrence.

Politicizing religion

Besides racial sentiments, the politicization of religion is also being used for electoral campaigns. The regional elections, general elections and the presidential election are beginning to be filled with the use of "hell, infidelity and imbalance" as a political instrument (vote-getting). The 2017 regional election removed the figure of "religious defamation" through the politicization of religion.

For the sake of electoral politics, places of worship and religious teachings are being utilized as spaces to foster hatred against others based on religious doctrine. Moreover, the faithful are being conditioned to feel insecure and threatened by the political stances of different religious groups.

In general, when we look at the political campaigns and narratives politicians are developing, there is a tendency for them to attack their fellow sons and daughters of the nation by stirring primordial emotions, especially race, ethnicity and religion. The instruments of the politics of fear wielded in electoral campaigns show the political phenomenon of power a la Foucault, a power that is biological in nature, or biopower.

Literally, biopower refers to having power over other bodies. The power of an entity is attached to another entity; the energy of one group\'s power presides over other groups.

In the logic of Foucaltian praxis, to have complete power, the power of others must be eliminated.

In that context, race and religion have become a strategic tool in the biopower experiment. Racial issues (as well as religious issues) can encourage biopower practices to "make life or allow death" (Michel Foucault, 2003).

Therefore, the narrative focusing on differences and inferior or superior feelings toward or in the presence of others is used to determine who may live and who must die. In the biopolitical framework, the deaths and absence of others are a requirement for a political group to live and exist.

This is how the politics of fear appear to be working in our electoral dynamics. Certain political forces are using racial and religious issues to marginalize, exclude, defeat and even kill other groups for their own survival and existence.

Elimination

The attempts to gain power are then being applied in a hard, rough and eliminatory manner. The political contest is not being conducted by enabling a competitive climate of civilized politics, but rather through black campaigns, hoaxes, hate speeches and fearmongering.

PRAYOGI DWI SULISTYO untuk Kompas

Hendardi

The effect of politicians and unknown political passengers carrying out such political practices is the increasing vulnerability of social cohesion and national integration.

Therefore, the public and "new" politicians who have entered the electoral arena should fight against the politics of fear with its antithesis, the politics of hope. In this context, the politics of hope is a means to realize the common hope for a better life of the nation and state.

Without the ability to imagine hope for the future, it would be difficult to tie the many differences in race, religion, ethnicity and inter-groups (SARA) into a unifying force.

Hendardi, Chairman, Board of Executives of SETARA Institute