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Intelligentsia alienation under Prabowo’s presidency (part 2)
Ordinary people are more acquainted with news spread by the “influencers” than by professional journalists.
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Support from afar: Members of the Muslim community protest in front of the Arjuna Wijaya Statue in Central Jakarta on Sept. 20, 2023, against a government plan to develop Rempang Island near Batam into a Chinese-funded economic zone that would displace around 7,500 people. (AFP/Yasuyoshi Chiba)
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nfortunately, amid the overcast influence of the imagined communities, ordinary people are more acquainted with news spread by the “influencers” than by professional journalists.
In this sense, we can see why the political elite at all levels prefer to choose the influencers as the more reliable ally in power contestation events. Amid the further eroded intellectual landscape, they are deemed more effective and efficient in creating people’s enchantment.
Why? By employing the influencers, the political elite no longer need to think seriously about digesting the system of ideas offered by the intelligentsia, members of the imagined communities.
Isn’t it simply through the orchestration of the influencers that the elite can directly enchant the people without formulating the nation's profound ideas and contemplations within the logic of the imagined communities?
We are unconsciously witnessing political practices during the recent decade that have taken place in the structure of direct relations between the elite and ordinary people. The elite, in this context, in addition to acting as the rulers, are the exclusive strategic plan makers. Meanwhile, the ordinary people, in addition to serving as the enchanted party, are the passive receivers of the results the elite have created.
This kind of power relation reminds us of the concept of bureaucratic polity introduced by Karl D. Jackson. In his Bureaucratic Polity: A Theoretical Framework for the Analysis of Power and Communication in Indonesia (1978), Jackson sees the bureaucratic polity as “a political system in which power and participation in the national decisions are limited almost entirely to [...] the officer corps and the high level of bureaucracy, including [...] the highly trained specialists known as technocrats.”
Thus, my point is that the national strategic development plans are not formulated and reflected in the articulation of the interests of the masses.
