Miguel Afonso Caetano<p>"A pro-regime student organizer under the Suharto dictatorship that held power from 1966 to 1998, styling itself as the “New Order,” the bespectacled Fadli now occupies the office of minister of culture and is one of Indonesia’s more polarizing figures. Known for his populist theatrics, far-right nationalism, and Sinophobia, Fadli has long flirted with historical mythmaking.</p><p>Now, with the launch of his controversial project to “revise” Indonesia’s national history curriculum and state-supported narratives, he is attempting something far more dangerous. It amounts to the rejection of more than twenty-five years of democratic reforms and increased academic freedom, and a return of the Suharto dictatorship’s propaganda machine. The project comes as political analysts, civil society organizations, and activists are raising the alarm about the government’s increasingly repressive actions.</p><p>Known for his populist theatrics, far-right nationalism, and Sinophobia, Fadli Zon has long flirted with historical mythmaking.<br>Although Fadli has framed the initiative as a corrective effort to decolonize Indonesian historiography and purge it of alleged foreign distortions, it is, in fact, a thinly veiled crusade to rehabilitate the New Order legacy, demonize the Left, and entrench a narrow ethnonationalist and patriarchal vision of Indonesia’s past. In the process, it threatens to undo decades of hard-won efforts by progressive historians, civil society actors, and survivors of state violence to foster a more inclusive and democratic understanding of Indonesian history."</p><p><a href="https://jacobin.com/2025/08/indonesia-suharto-genocide-revisionism-authoritarianism/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">jacobin.com/2025/08/indonesia-</span><span class="invisible">suharto-genocide-revisionism-authoritarianism/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Indonesia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Indonesia</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Suharto" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Suharto</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Dictatorship" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Dictatorship</span></a></p>