Nervousness in dealing with Geert Wilders, 'Fitna'

Ong Hock Chuan ,  Jakarta   |  Wed, 04/16/2008 12:31 PM  |  Opinion

When you get down to the bottom of it, ironically, Geert Wilders wants the same thing as the most extreme of the Muslims he attacks in his film Fitna -- the terrorists.

Terrorism, according to Louise Richardson in her book What Terrorists Want, is motivated by the 3Rs -- Reaction, Revenge and Renown. The terrorist commits acts of terrorism precisely because he knows they will cause a reaction, they help him seek revenge for perceived slights and they bring him renown.

What Geert Wilders wants -- and got -- with his act of creative "terrorism" in releasing Fitna are the same:

Revenge: This is not very clear, but presumably Geert at some stage felt he and his ilk had been insulted or had been deprived of something important by Muslims, and Fitna was his act of vengeance.

Renown: Before this episode, Geert Wilders was just a third rate extremist politician with bad hair, tucked away in a small country. Now he is known throughout the world.

Reaction: The game for terrorists is to provoke a harsh reaction on the part of governments and others. These reactions usually result in alienating them from their constituents.

So what do you do with the Geert Wilders of the world?

If you, like some Muslim groups, stage angry demonstrations and mount death threats against him, then you've played right into his hands by giving him the reaction he wants.

If you're like the Indonesian Government and react by blocking (although it retracted its decision several days later) sites like YouTube and other online social networks then you've also played into his hands. What he wants is for you to react with an action that is unfeasible, unreasonable and alienates you from all or part of your constituents. You've done just that.

In this day and age, it is almost impossible to block anything on the net, unless you are like China, which is willing to wield and deploy dictatorial-like powers to deny access to certain sites. But China is China and, if push comes to shove, the government would not hesitate to use the barrels of guns, from which all political power derives from.

In Indonesia, the move has already begun to reap criticism form bloggers and some opinion leaders, and is likely to escalate with time if the government keeps it up.

Blocking Gert from YouTube and the social network also gives Geert the other reaction he yearns for -- renown. Right now, even the geekiest nerd in Indonesia who couldn't care less for the world of humans has heard of Geert Wilders.

So what should the Indonesian government do? The best course of action is studied nonchalance. Just say that we think Fitna is a badly done film in bad taste not worthy of our reaction. Why? Because Indonesians are mature enough to make up their own minds on what gert has to say.

The critics would say, "But it insults Islam, how can you allow it to be broadcast on the Net?" In which case, the appropriate answer would remain that we have faith in the maturity and the level-headedness of our people, and then find some appropriate religious reference to back that up.

It is not like there has been no precedence for this sort of thing in Indonesia. Remember The Da Vinci Code, the movie? The Pope in Rome got all hot and flustered about it and ordered Catholics not to watch it. The result, Unspun bets, was that Catholics flocked to the cinemas to emulate Adam getting a bite of the low hanging Forbidden Fruit.

Compare that to the reaction of the Bishops Conference of Indonesia who said they would not ask that the film be banned in Indonesia because Catholics in Indonesia were mature enough and that forbidding them to watch the movie would only increase their desire.

Result? The film came and left Indonesia without fuss and without causing even an iota of outrage. It is studied nonchalance, rather than overreaction, that the government should muster to respond to the Geert Wilders of the world.

The writer is a PR consultant specializing in crisis and issues management. He also blogs his opinions at http://theunspunblog.com.

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