Listen to your gut

Sinophobia as a political weapon

By DUNCAN GRAHAM | On 8 January 2021

Morality racketeering’ is Australian academic Dr Ian Wilson’s shorthand for Indonesian white-clad mobsters who dress in religious righteousness to terrorise their animus-du-jour. Last century it was vice. More recently it’s been blasphemers.  Now it’s the government of President Joko Widodo. Continue reading →

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During the first lockdown last year, one of my friends created a WhatsApp group. They had a suggestion: every day we send a photo. The catch? It had to be positive. I was grateful, very quickly, for that chat. We soon failed to send a photo daily, but frequently something would appear, and I would receive an insight into my friend’s world. It was a reassurance. Before I had even clicked on the latest photo I would find myself cheered — here was a friend, thinking of the rest of us. There was something in that alone. Friendships are a certainty that is easy to undo. What proof do we have that anyone is really our friend? Do texts count? A sufficient call log? Birthday cards?

If you’re committing to a monogamous romantic relationship, there will be learned ways in which you measure its significance. But with friendship, the judgment complicates. There are too many types of friendship to be able to easily quantify your significance. The pandemic has encouraged reflection. We have turned inwards: stuck inside, and in our heads. With forced isolation, for some it has been a time to take stock. All the while, friends have been kept at a distance. How to be social when seeing your friends in-person is discouraged (sometimes, illegal)? How have friendships weathered during the pandemic? 

The strange thing about writing on friendship, though I approached psychologists for the technical view, is that suddenly everyone is an expert. I was surprised by how much people had to say. I wanted to hear how my interviewees had tried (or failed) to sustain their friendships under restrictions. Ten months into what might have once seemed a short stopgap, it seemed the time to ask how the process has felt. Evidently it was a topic people had been thinking about. A few sent me stories of dramatic friendship break-ups only to stop replying — their messages were perhaps cathartic enough. Others passed me on to their own friends after we had spoken, sure that they would also have something to share. 

Katie, who is 28 and lives in London, tells me: “I have got a lot closer to a lot of friends.” One of the ways that has happened has been through voice notes. 

These aren’t offhand recordings: Katie compares them to podcasts, some of them up to 40 minutes long. “It makes me really listen. It’s not to say I don’t listen to my friends, but in a world where we are bombarded with Zooms and phone calls, and we’re trying to see people in a social-distanced way, [it’s about] having a safe space where you can record when you have the headspace and time to do so.” Familiar ways of communicating have been difficult since restrictions began — and besides, the pandemic has tampered with conversation. 

Nothing happens while everything is happening. Many people I spoke to devised ways of getting around that. For Louise, 30, the pandemic prompted her to start an online film club. She had been regularly talking with friends on Zoom but the conversations were “quite frankly, boring”.

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An MA student in India wonders why she hadn’t been taught about the “women sages who baffled kings and philosophers alike with their nuanced discourse” — Deepshikha Sharma (University of Delhi) on Gargi, Maitreyi, and Sulabha (via Michael Glawson)

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Sinophobia as a political weapon

By DUNCAN GRAHAM | On 8 January 2021

Morality racketeering’ is Australian academic Dr Ian Wilson’s shorthand for Indonesian white-clad mobsters who dress in religious righteousness to terrorise their animus-du-jour. Last century it was vice. More recently it’s been blasphemers.  Now it’s the government of President Joko Widodo. 

An Australian supporter of the ultra-nationalist group Front Pembela Islam (FPI – Islamic Defenders’ Front) explained to TV news this month why he and a few friends were backing the FPI leader Rizieq Shihab, 55, a man who’s no Santa Claus.

They said Widodo had neutered opposition through political alliances. This left the FPI and its incendiary preacher as the only voice offering alternative policies.

Unfortunately, that voice is hate-filled. If there are plans worthy of being called policies, they’re rooted in sinophobia. The signs are subtle, more dog whistles than shouts according to another Australian scholar, Dr Quinton Temby based at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Keywords in the FPI’s rhetoric include naga, the symbol of a dragon, cacing (worm) and zalim (aka zulm) Arabic for cruelty, exploitation and oppression. All are linked to China and Communism.

Readers who remember Vietnam War propaganda would recognise the images – a loathsome red creepy-crawly, jaws agape, slithering towards the motherland.

Shihab likes to strike demagogue poses and call himself the Imam Besar (Grand Cleric) descended from the Prophet Muhammad through his ancestors who brought Islam to Indonesia.

Critics have publicly called him a thug, but his claims suggest the man’s also a charlatan. The Prophet, who died in 632 is supposed to have had 13 wives but only two children. Islam arrived in Java in the 14th century, popularly through the Walisongo, or nine saints of Islam.