Political Mobilization in Indonesia: Nationalists against Communists

1973 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 707-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Gunawan

The bond between nationalists and communists in the Indonesian independence movement was always close. For this reason the failure of the communist rising of 1926–27 was felt in nationalist circles as a blew for the Movement. It is also typical that the communist rising of 1948 did not lead to a ban on the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI, whereas the anti-communist sweeps of 1951 were not received in outside circles with whole-hearted approval. The co-operation between nationalists and communists rested thus on more than a simple battle for independence. The nationalists, just as much as the communists, attributed a positive significance to the public masses, which were to harbour all the prosperity of the nation. These popular masses were supposed to be bowed down by imperialism and capitalilst exploitation, so that the Indonesian nationalists also made the liberation of the popular masses a point of policy.

1973 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 707-715
Author(s):  
B. Gunawan

The bond between nationalists and communists in the Indonesian independence movement was always close. For this reason the failure of the communist rising of 1926–27 was felt in nationalist circles as a blew for the Movement. It is also typical that the communist rising of 1948 did not lead to a ban on the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI, whereas the anti-communist sweeps of 1951 were not received in outside circles with whole-hearted approval. The co-operation between nationalists and communists rested thus on more than a simple battle for independence. The nationalists, just as much as the communists, attributed a positive significance to the public masses, which were to harbour all the prosperity of the nation. These popular masses were supposed to be bowed down by imperialism and capitalilst exploitation, so that the Indonesian nationalists also made the liberation of the popular masses a point of policy.


Author(s):  
Richard J. Brody

World War II was a defining experience for the identity of the Stalin-era Soviet Communist Party. The war accentuated fundamental problems in the identity of the civilian party as an instrument of political mobilization. The war also highlighted a deeper disjuncture between popular political mentalities within Soviet society and the official ideology of the Stalin-era party. This essay will examine efforts by party political organs to propagate the official ideological line among party members during World War II and the problems party leaders encountered in training political workers to transmit the party's propaganda message to the public.


2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 658-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neringa Klumbytė

This article explores intersections between power, subjectivity, and laughter by focusing on Šluota ( The Broom), a humor and satire journal published by the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party during late socialism (1970s to mid-1980s). In Lithuania, while the official newspapers and journals were commonly distrusted, The Broom was perceived as a grassroots media. In this article, the author asks how officially sanctioned socialist humor was translated into readers’ sincere laughter; how sensual and political dialogue was created between state authorities, artists, and readers. The author shows that in the case of the official culture of humor presented in The Broom, laughter cannot be easily classified as performance of resistance or support for the regime. In The Broom, the discourse of power was never monologic and simply oppressive. It was situational, contextual, and changing. Officially sanctioned laughter was infused with and mediated by private emotions and values. Moreover, the journal provided space for artistic creativity and self-expression that reshaped official political aesthetics. Laughter blurred the distinctions between the state and the citizen, the public and the private, the hegemonic and the sincere. The author argues that laughter is an experience and a performance of political intimacy through which various agents imagine a self, society, and the state and reproduce various power orders. Political intimacy refers to coexistence of state authorities and other subjects in fields of social and political comfort, togetherness, and dialogue as well as in the zones of shared meanings and values.


Popular Music ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Mitchell

In his article ‘Rock music and politics in Italy’, Umberto Fiori deploys the example of an open-air concert by Genesis in Tirrenia in the province of Pisa, promoted in the summer of 1982 by the Italian Communist Party (PCI) as part of its annual Feste dell'Unita, as a summary example of de-politicisation of the consumption and production of rock music in Italy, and the institutionalisation of the oppositional, dissenting aspects of rock music that had previously been so potent there throughout the 1970s. To Fiori, the Genesis concert representedan unmistakeable step forward in the slow process of the ‘normalisation’ of the relationship between rock and politics in Italy. Explosive material until a few years before, rock music in the 1980s seems to have returned to being a commodity like any other, even in Italy. The songs are once again simply songs, the public is the public. The musicians are only interested in their work, and the organisers make their expected profits. If they happen to be a political party, so much the better: they can also profit in terms of public image and perhaps even votes. … Italy now learnt how to institutionalise deviation and transgression. An ‘acceptable’ gap was re-established between fiction and reality, desire and action, and music and political practice. (Fiori 1984, pp. 261–2)


Res Publica ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-562
Author(s):  
Catherine Guillermet ◽  
Johan Ryngaert

Ten years after they were set up, the Italian regions have fallen into general discredit. They are discredited by the central government who regards them as a source of support for the opposing Communist Party and has sought to undermine this reform by depriving the regions of all true autonomy. The regions are discredited by the public opinion by not fulfilling the expectations placed in them. Such an assessment does not stand up to a close examination of regional practices : some geographical differences rapidly become obvious, but especially evident are the political differences. In fact, the regions are the product of an apparent agreement between the political parties and have always suffered from political bargaining which explains the national scale of the issues raised at the last elections. Strengthened by the favorable results obtained in certain regions, the Communist Party was quick to turn this statement of the electoral opinion into a « referendum » about the newly formed Cossiga government.


Author(s):  
Alma Rachel Heckman

Chapter 3 uncovers the previously untold story of Jewish participation in the Moroccan national independence movement, disproportionately from within the Moroccan Communist Party. It examines Moroccan Jewish political life in conjunction with Israel’s establishment in 1948, Moroccan independence in 1956, and strife in the Middle East. Friction developed between the Communist and the Istiqlal Parties in the common fight to throw off colonial rule. Tensions also reigned within the Moroccan Jewish community as it navigated an escalating series of questions regarding its future in Morocco. Most Moroccan Jews were not politically active. To most, the Jewish Communists represented a liability for the stability of the community. Meanwhile, questions of Jewish loyalty to Morocco and the identity of Morocco as a Muslim state became linked to anti-Zionism and Arab nationalism. Increasingly, Moroccan Jewish Communists were isolated from the wider Jewish community, moving in opposite practical and ideological trajectories.


Author(s):  
Anneka Lenssen

Nazir Nabaa, a respected Syrian painter, made his greatest contributions to Arab modern art in the 1960s and 1970s, when he contributed to the graphic identity of progressive political causes and the Palestinian liberation struggle. He joined the Syrian Communist Party in the 1954 and in 1959 was briefly jailed for this affiliation. After his release, he traveled to Cairo on a fellowship to study painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, there developing a heroic realist style around social and labor themes. After returning to Syria in 1964, Nabaa taught drawing in rural schools and worked with myth and folklife. Moving to Damascus in 1968, he worked as an illustrator and became involved in creative projects in support of political mobilization, including poster design, puppet theater, fine art painting, and art criticism. Between 1971 and 1975, Nabaa studied in Paris at the Academy of Fine Arts. Upon his return, he joined the faculty of the College of Fine Arts in Damascus. His later paintings became more fantastical, combining goddess figures with still lifes of fruits, tapestries, and jewelry. He also developed a parallel corpus of abstract paintings based on the exploration of texture and color.


Author(s):  
Tony Saich ◽  
Nancy Hearst

There is a vast array of materials available to assist in the study of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) before 1949. In China this is aided by the presence of a large number of officially employed researchers at party research centers and related archives. To earn their keep, these researchers have to put out publications. Availability of materials was boosted by the start of reforms in 1978 and preparations for the 1981 official party history. Given that, especially in the early years of reform, when expression of personal opinions could be dangerous, many of the released publications were documentary collections or chronologies. These came in several different varieties, based on either historical periods, particular events, or the lives of key individuals. These materials were complemented by memoirs of key figures who wanted to ensure that their version of history was in the public eye. This makes selection very difficult. Some of the works that follow are a must for students and scholars; others are personal favorites of the compilers and should be treated as exemplary of the types and varieties of sources that are available for the study of the CCP before 1949. More recently, materials from China have allowed researchers to conduct more detailed research on the social and economic transformations wrought by CCP presence and the difficulties the party had in maintaining local support. This has meant that, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, we have seen fewer monographs that attempt to paint the broader picture of the sweep of the CCP revolution. Instead, there are many fine-grained analyses of particular events or CCP activities in specific locales that reveal the extremely complex and multifaceted nature of the Chinese revolution.


2019 ◽  
pp. 147737081988290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Hansen Löfstrand

This article examines how and why marketization of policing may occur in a historically state-centred policing context in the absence of governmental policy promoting privatization and marketization. In Sweden, a community-level marketization is increasingly becoming the new norm. It is a result of a political mobilization by the private security industry, characterized by an association of private security with the public interest in safety, an absence of national political decision-making, and pragmatic local initiatives to increase public safety, but it results in the dispersion of political decision-making that fails to ensure democratic governance of policing and security provision.


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