Regarding the issue of Indonesian Communism, the prominent historian, Ong Hok Ham, once made an interesting parody. He said Indonesia is always missed 50 years from other countries and nations in responding to Communism. Suppose people outside Indonesia hear that doomsday will arrive soon. In that case, outsiders will undoubtedly flock to Indonesia because they are sure that 50 years later, they will only hear the doomsday information in Indonesia.
Above mentioned parody is indeed bitter, but what else we can do. The ghosts and trauma of Communism in Indonesia are so profound for some groups of people. By exerting all their arguments and energy, they want to show their strength (show of force) to ghosts who are unclear where and which do not necessarily exist. That way, they feel the spirit will disappear, and maybe the trauma will be erased by itself.
Counter-response to the proposal of KH Abdurrahman Wahid (then Indonesian President) to revoke TAP MPRS No. XXV / MPRS / 1966 at the end of 1999, the forced dismissal of the 1965 Victim Research Institute (LPKP) meeting in Magetan in mid-January 2003, the rejection of Vice President Hamzah Haz for the inclusion of communist reconciliation in the National Reconciliation Bill (published by local newspaper Kompas at 20th March 2003), and the abolition of Halaqah The Desantara-Averrus reconciliation in Blitar 1st May 2003 clearly shows how ghosts and traumas are so extensive, intense, and strangely maintained. Isn’t political language still called communist (sometimes added latent) danger?
In West Berlin, before the Berlin Wall fell, a massive billboard of Karl Marx’s photo was being pointed at the East Berlin Wall. On the billboard, the first initiator of Marxism is described standing and talking: “This is just an idea. Is not an idea should be opposed to the idea, why do you kill people”. A warning for generations far from Karl Marx himself is gone when Marxism became political trade.
Marxism then was no longer just mere ideas and thoughts.
Especially in the hands of Lenin and Mao Zedong, he changed sex into a movement. But, on the other hand, he also remained as an idea and thought with specific changes that we later became familiar with socialism. In its development into this movement, Marxism (often coupled with Leninism) appeared fierce, extreme and put forward the revolution as the only way to make changes.
The PKI (The Communist Party of Indonesia) is often cited as adherents of the schools of Lenin and Mao. But many of them are labelled as communist figures with other beliefs. Tan Malaka, no doubt, is a staunch follower of Marxism-Communism. But he also had to accept his destiny, the stamp of “traitors” from the perpetrators of the 1926 PKI’s rebellion, for proposing rational considerations of the revolutionary plan at that time. Likewise, Haji Misbach from Solo, Hasan Raid (Jakarta), Muslimin Yasin (Sumbawa-Jakarta), Muhammad Baisir (Mataram), and Ahmad Chatib who had titled Datuk Batuah (West Sumatra).