Taking Conspiracy Thought Seriously: A Sociological Perspective

In this contribution, a propaganda campaign is analysed that led to the Indonesian genocide in 1965–6 and the overthrow of President Sukarno. The so-called 30 September Movement, acting on a rumour about an imminent army coup, decided to abduct seven generals and bring them before President Sukarno, on the night of 1 October 1965. However, the generals were murdered, and General Suharto captured the soldiers involved in the action. To this day his own involvement in this action remains a mystery. He called it a ‘failed communist coup’ and proceeded to murder between 500,000 and three million people, imprisoning hundreds of thousands of others. The ideological basis of his self-styled ‘New Order’ military dictatorship, that lasted until 1998, was a campaign of propaganda. The first element consisted of the fabrication and spread of a gory story of sexual slander, to incite the military and (Muslim) militia to murder. Next, history was rewritten, to accuse the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) of always having betrayed the nation. Added to this was a sustained crusade of terror, oppression, obfuscation and silence about the crimes against humanity committed by the military. To this day not one perpetrator has ever been brought to court.