Restraining Identity Politics
Identity politics only emerge when the democracy we practice is "thin democracy", in which democracy is reduced to a political battlefield revolving around the exploitation of primordialism for political gains.
More than mere pejorative, identity politics has become a frightening specter in this nation.
Unlike the political elite, the grassroots community does not appear to have the capacity to resist and recover immediately from the destructive effects of identity politics. In the absence of such capacity, the destructive effects are so tremendous that it will take them a long time to restore rationality.
The 2017 Jakarta governorship election and the 2019 general election showed how identity politics causes social damage. Society became fragmented into two major divisions with their distinguishing identities labeled using derogatory descriptions linked to their religious affiliation: cebong (tadpole) and kampret (bat).
While political reconciliation was immediately restored at the elite level, the grass roots continued to indulge in nostalgic identity-related sentiments for some time. The social fragmentation and disharmony gave birth to a wave of mass street rallies, such as the 212 movement and the like.
Also read:
> Putting a Check on Identity Politics
> Identity Politics of Indonesia-ness
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has appealed to the public not to get carried away with identity politics ahead of the upcoming electoral process laden with political interests. Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) chairman K.H. Yahya C. Staquf has also stressed that the country’s largest Muslim organization opposes the use of identity politics, especially the politicization of religious identity, in the 2024 election.
There is no guarantee that identity politics will not build up again over the course of the 2024 election. This will likely be deployed covertly under ideological colors and orientations, and when exposed, will lead to a repeat of the disharmony and fragmentation that afflicted society.
Digital base
Within the democratic spectrum of politics in Indonesia, the warnings against identity politics during the electoral process are sent out only as ethical and moral calls, which means they have neither legal nor formal weight or impact. There is no guarantee that these kinds of warnings will deter the use of identity politics in the upcoming electoral process.
In this digital era, social media offers public space that political contestants can use as an entry point to carry out various political persuasions and promotions, including negative campaigns that exploit identity politics.
Therefore, public education is necessary to raise awareness among netizens that identity politics can trigger social disharmony and fragmentation.
As I have written previously (Kompas, 23/11/2017), the use of identity politics is a realistic and pragmatic yet dilemmatic approach in a democratic election. Exploiting identity politics, according to Jenny L. Davis (2016), is the easiest and cheapest way to gain political support in the digital era.
The 2016 United States election that ushered in Donald Trump as the superpower’s president affirmed the effectiveness of exploiting identity politics through digital channels.
Since entering the digital era, Indonesia has seen the number of internet users and social media access increase over time.
Also read:
> Radicalism and Identity Politics
According to data from the Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers (APJII), the Covid-19 pandemic drove a significant rise in the number of internet users across the country. Before the pandemic, Indonesia had 175 million internet users, which then grew to 210 million, or an increase of 77 percent, as of January 2022 after the pandemic started subsiding. As many as 191 million users (91 percent) have access to social media platforms.
These figures of internet and social media users are clearly not small. In the political strategy for the elections, these figures can be seen as an electoral base that will appeal to political "peddlers".
Deplorably, the way they woo voter support through identity politics tends to be presumptuous, brutal and unethical. As a result, the dialectic of information and ideas on digital platforms will be reduced to negative campaigns that demean and dehumanize others.
Primordialism
In the view of essentialists such as Francis Fukuyama (2018), identity is about self-recognition, self-determination, sense of becoming and being valued as a particular, unique, and distinctive self.
In every person is what he refers to as “thymos”, which is the deepest psychological element that always allows people to crave appreciation, respect, and acknowledgement from others. Thymos is inherently a part of self-esteem and self-pride that can transform individual character into collective culture.
When a person is prevented from fulfilling these primordial needs, they feel deprived of their individual rights.
In the construction of individual selfness, the manifestation of thymos in the private sphere becomes common. The presence of thymos in the private sphere is the process of fulfilling an individual’s primordial needs in relation to the psyche and behavior.
A strong mechanistic bond develops between an individual’s subconscious and primordial dimension that may originate from religious teachings, culture or inherited traditions. When a person is prevented from fulfilling these primordial needs, they feel deprived of their individual rights. It is likely that they will resist this deprivation in an endeavor to fulfill their human rights.
Problems arise when thymos, which supposedly operates in the private realm, is actualized in public space to form a collective identity. When thymos turns into a collective identity, it is certain to lead to the politicization of identity through narratives based on primordialism that are prone to reciprocal degradation and dehumanization.
Simon Bein (2022) refers to this conflicting form of collective interests as a dysfunctional paradox of democracy. In the language of Robert Dahl (2000), it is called a democratic paradox, with the emergence of different collective interests unable to be reconciled or compromised in a social vessel that would otherwise cater to all interests.
It is in this context that political observers begin to doubt the "effectiveness" of the democratic system as the ultimate mechanism for tying together collective interests to satisfy all citizens.
Also read:
> Winding Road of Religious Tolerance
> Managing Our Philanthropy Sector
John Charvet (2019) points to the problem of political authorization in the modern world. The people’s sovereignty must entail addressing the interests of all citizens toward what he refers to as “sufficiently robust substantive common identity”. According to him, a democratic system only serves the collective interests of the majority.
Therefore, democratic knowledge is needed to uphold a civilized and dignified political culture to help stem the politicization or capitalization of identity through identity politics.
Every citizen in this republic has the right to channel their political aspirations based on non-racial or non-primordial arguments as part of their political rights. However, allowing the capitalization of identity to become identity politics in an election as a political event will actually rot democracy from within.
Thicken democracy
To anticipate the return of identity politics in the 2024 elections, efforts are urgently needed to "thicken" the democratic narrative. This is because identity politics only emerge when the democracy we practice is "thin democracy", in which democracy is reduced to a political battlefield revolving around the exploitation of primordialism for political gains.
Thin democracy is democracy without a dense narrative on welfare, justice, equality, humanity, and other virtues and positive values.
In addition, digital literacy is an urgent need to enable every citizen in this nation to be critical, selective and sensible in the face of the information flood on social media channels.
Digital literacy will make users aware of the potential politicization of religious issues or identity in public space. This kind of literacy will develop what John Rawls (1997) calls public rationality, in which the people’s political choices are not dwarfed or confined by primordial arguments over the issues of religious, ethnic, regional, and other types of identity. Instead, their political aspirations and choices will stems entirely from rationality based on universal values.
MASDAR HILMY
Masdar Hilmy, Professor and postgraduate program director at Sunan Ampel State Islamic University (UIN) Surabaya, member of the Advisory Board of the Nahdlatul Ulama Scholars Association (ISNU), East Java chapter.
This article was translated by Musthofid.
