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American Conservatives Take Advantage of Jakarta's Obama Statue Controversy
When the news broke about an Indonesian Facebook page where more than 55,000 members demanded that the Obama statue in a central Jakarta park be taken down, the issue quickly spread around the world. The news provoked comments from bloggers worldwide - mostly from those who second the motion. The event then prodded Jakarta city officials to state that they are mulling doing just that.
But the motive behind the Indonesians' Facebook move is increasingly lost in the din, with conservative voices from America trying to co-opt the talking points on both a similar Facebook page (named in English after the original Indonesian page) and the traditional media - particularly the US's Republican/conservative news channel, Fox News.
So we need to straighten out the argument behind Indonesian Facebookers' demand for Jakarta city officials to remove Obama's statue from central Jakarta's Menteng Park, and lay bare the detestable reason American conservatives jumped onto the bandwagon.
On their "Turunkan Patung Barack Obama di Taman Menteng" Facebook page, the eight Indonesians who started the page write that they are not driven by any ill feeling toward Obama or the United States to kick off this social media movement. They say they simply want Indonesians to stand up as a sovereign nation that respects its own heroes more than foreigners such as Barack Obama. Since Obama has been president of United States, they say, he has made no significant contribution to Indonesia; he only lived in Jakarta briefly when he was a young boy.
Much of members' discussion on the Indonesian Facebook page focused on Indonesian nationalism getting trampled by allowing a foreign head of state, who had made no contribution to the country, to have his statue stand tall in their homeland. There are also discussions about Obama's continuing his predecessor's, Bush's, war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The English version of the Facebook page (named "Take Down Barack Obama's Statue In Taman Menteng Park" - a literal translation of the original Indonesian Facebook page) is not run by Indonesians. It is administered by Richard John McNamara, a correctional officer in California. That page even asks visitors to read a Fox (Faux?) News story about taking down Obama's statue.
The discussions on the English Facebook page focus on hatred of Obama and exhibit strong racial intolerance. The overtone those American conservative voices are promoting clearly runs counter to the outline made clear on the Indonesian Facebook page: That the call for taking down Obama's statue is not grounded in ill feeling toward Obama.
In a nutshell, Indonesian Facebookers must not allow the racially prejudiced from America to co-opt their true mission.
