Neo New Order’?

Indonesia today, reform has stagnated. Although the democratic
transition in 1998 was presented as a national consensus, this was
never entirely true. It always had opponents, some of whom felt
politically constrained to accept democratisation as a necessary evil
but never accepted it as a final settlement.
As well as the hardliners, today these include enormously wealthy
oligarchs, tenacious survivors of former dictator Suharto’s regime and
elements of the armed forces. These disparate forces that together
form Indonesia’s revisionist and populist right have little in common
and often compete with one another. However, they also create
expedient alliances from time to time, motivated by a common desire to
roll back at least some of the democratic system initiated by
Reformastions,  the reform era.
Together they can sometimes intimidate or outflank progressive
civil-society leaders. Governments, local and national, seem uncertain
about how to respond to these challenges, and vacillate between
inaction, opaqueness or endorsement of reactionary policies. As a
result, 20 years on from Reformasi, the spirit of reform that drove
democratisation seems distant.
Most Indonesian champions of civil society would agree that Reformasi
ended long ago – maybe well over a decade ago – but a new label to
define what replaced it has not yet emerged. This reflects an
uncertainty among many Indonesians about where their country is
heading. Many prominent critics of the government believe that while
electoral democracy seems entrenched, liberal democracy is under
threat from populism, Islamism and renewed conservatism.
  Facing bumps, but on the right track: Indonesia's democratic progress
For them, Indonesia seems to be sliding towards what some call the
“Neo New Order”. Others say this is too harsh, arguing that electoral
democracy is now firmly entrenched and the critical change that marked
the end of Suharto’s system, the retreat of the military from
government, has not been reversed.
However, it is increasingly difficult to argue that all is well with
Indonesian democracy. The forthcoming elections aside, rampant
corruption is perhaps Indonesia’s single biggest political issue. The
courageous Corruption Eradication Commission is under continual attack
from politicians and police. The human rights courts are virtually
defunct and rarely hear cases.
The National Commission on Human Rights is ineffective; the
Constitutional Court has faced its own corruption scandals; the press
is confronting increasingly prohibitive defamation laws that assist
politicians and oligarchs; and civil society is under pressure from
elite push-back and Islamist provocation.
Indonesia’s alt-right: trolls, hackers and vigilantes
The tensions over Islam are part of a much older struggle in Indonesia
to determine who controls the interpretation of the religion, and thus
religious power. However, the recent rise of conservative Islamist
hardliners also resembles the rise of populism and conservative
politics elsewhere in the world. Islamist conservatives are in many
ways the local equivalent of America’s alt-right – and they are just
as adept at online disruption and manipulation.
Research by State Islamic University Jakarta links the rise of
religious intolerance among young Muslims to their increased access to
the internet and social media. Indeed, Jakarta tweets more than any
other city in the world, and Indonesians are very big users of
Facebook, as well as WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram, an
encrypted-messaging service.
One of the best-known examples of online disruption involves the
so-called Muslim Cyber Army, the most prominent of a number of tags
adopted by Islamist trolls in Indonesia. Active across all platforms
popular in Indonesia, Muslim Cyber Army members enjoy building an
atmosphere of mystery, threat and self-importance, sometimes using the
Guy Fawkes mask, popularised by the graphic novel and film V for
Vendetta, of the hacktivist group Anonymous in their postings T is
deeply ironic, given the distance between their ideological objectives
and the libertarian ambitions of most Western hacktivist groups. The
Muslim Cyber Army does, however, share a willingness to exploit online
anonymity to enable criminal activity – for example, by hijacking the
social media accounts of the dead.
An Indonesian researcher, Damar Juniarto, has shown that Muslim Cyber
Army trolls are highly effective, working collectively and using tools
such as Twitbots to flood Twitter with coordinated messages. They
target their more liberal opponents by “doxing”: publishing their
personal information and contact details. This often triggers physical
attacks from groups such as the notorious vigilante organisation
Islamic Defenders Front, or Front Pembela Islam (FPI), within a few
days and, in some cases, police attention on suspicion of blasphemy.
A list of such targets went viral in a video produced by the
“Blasphemer Hunter Team”. These groups have attacked President Joko
Widodo (“Jokowi”), former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama
(known as “Ahok”), foreigners and LGBTI Indonesians – targets they
share with some prominent hardliner “buzzers”, or social media opinion
leaders, many of whom are keyboards for hire.
Juniarto also suggests that many of these groups have close ties to
politicians and senior military figures. Certainly, social media
manipulation and “fake news” hoaxes produced by Islamist groups were
powerful factors in the campaign that led to Ahok’s defeat in last
year’s Jakarta gubernatorial elections. The winner was Anies Baswedan,
a protégé of former general Prabowo Subianto, Jokowi’s possible rival
in the 2019 presidential election.
It would be naive to think this won’t happen again in next April’s
crucial legislative and presidential races. During the 2014
presidential campaign, Jokowi, a Muslim, endured claims he was a
closet Christian and ethnic Chinese (his detractors chose to ignore
the fact that his opponent, also a Muslim, has a Christian mother and
siblings).
The upcoming presidential election  – which may well be a rematch
between Jokowi and Prabowo, but for the first time held simultaneously
with legislative elections  – is expected to see the most vicious
cyber campaigning yet.