Late last week, Newsweek published an article about Indonesia. The title that the respected international news magazine chose to use is, without a doubt, the worst kind of clickbait – exaggerated to the point of inaccuracy and totally irresponsible. Allow us to break down why that is.
The title of the article is “A Love of Hitler Leads a Nazi Revival in Indonesia.”
Really, the general Indonesian populace loves Hitler? There’s a “Nazi Revival” happening in Indonesia right now? Surely, Newsweek and article author Aaron Akinyemi have excellent evidence to make such bold claims.
No, they don’t. The two pieces of evidence the article cites is the re-opening of Soldatenkaffee in Bandung way back in June and the infamous pro-Prabowo music video in which rockstar Ahmad Dhani wore a replica Nazi uniform.
Soldatenkaffee is a cafe that was forced to close in July 2013 due to heavy criticism, both international and local, for its glorification of Nazi imagery. Even after it reopened in June 2014, with a more general WW2 theme and less Nazi imagery, it was still heavily criticized.
Also heavily criticized locally and abroad was the Ahmad Dhani music video in which he sang about how awesome then-presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto was while wearing a replica of the Nazi uniform worn by Adolf Hitler’s military commander Heinrich Himmler.
Both of these incidents prove, at most, that there are a couple of idiots in Indonesia who are really into Nazi symbolism and are completely ignorant or in denial of the horrible war crimes and genocide they committed.
But do a couple of idiots constitute a “Love of Hitler” and a “Nazi Revival” amongst the general Indonesian population, as the headline suggests? Hell no. Especially when so much of the criticism they received came from within Indonesia.
The article makes the point that many in Indonesia are ignorant of the Holocaust and what the Nazis really did. That is probably true, because that’s a part of history conveniently ignored in most Indonesian curriculums (the Indonesian education system tends to avoid messy subjects like genocide).
But just because many Indonesians are unaware of this important part of history, does that automatically mean they “love Hitler?” Hell no.
The real argument the article tries to make, and fails at miserably, is that Prabowo represents some form of Neo-Nazism. It tries to draws connections between Hitler and Suharto, because Suharto was also a brutal dictator who committed genocide, and Suharto and Prabowo, because Prabowo was Suharto’s son-in-law.
It’s a thin, tenuous connection at best, but even if you concede that support for Prabowo did represent some sort of nostalgia for the brutal, Nazi-like authoritarianism of Suharto, the article still couldn’t possibly conclude there is a “Nazi Revival” in Indonesia because Prabowo lost, showing that the majority of Indonesians want a break from the country’s political past.
If the article’s author or editors had bothered to keep with the political happenings in Indonesia during the past three months since the election (and since this article might have been relevant), they might have had something to say about how the current political maneuverings of Prabowo’s Merah Putih Coalition is laying the groundwork for a new authoritarian regime.
But why bother keeping up with the news, Newsweek, when you can just write lazy clickbait headlines? Sure, you might paint a whole nation of people as ignorant, Hitler-loving neo-Nazis in the process, but when you’re the poster child of magazine journalism failure you can’t worry about those things if you want to remain relevant.
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