Working in the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith obediently repeated the INGSOC slogan, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
While I can’t confirm that Fadli Zon, Indonesia’s minister of culture, has read George Orwell’s 1984, it seems likely that he would have at least encountered it during his high school education in Texas or on his path to a PhD in Russian literature. In any case, his record in President Prabowo Subianto’s increasingly authoritarian administration has been shockingly Orwellian. Nowhere is this more evident than in his previously secret project to revise Indonesia’s official national history.
Originally set for release on August 17, 2025, a “gift” to mark eighty years of Indonesian independence, the planned ten-volume oeuvre will radically distort the historical record. Fadli’s project will consign significant contributions from women, ethnic minorities, and left-wing political movements to a memory hole, along with acts of treason and horrific human rights violations committed by prominent right-wingers.
A pro-regime student organizer under the Suharto dictatorship that held power from 1966 to 1998, styling itself as the “New Order,” the bespectacled Fadli now occupies the office of minister of culture and is one of Indonesia’s more polarizing figures. Known for his populist theatrics, far-right nationalism, and Sinophobia, Fadli has long flirted with historical mythmaking.
Now, with the launch of his controversial project to “revise” Indonesia’s…
Auteur: Michael G. Vann
