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MANUFACTURING CONSENT
Good and Bad Genocide
Double standards in coverage of Suharto and Pol Pot
Edward S. Herman,
Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania
September/October 1998
 "...Suharto's
overthrow of the Sukarno government in 1965-66 turned
Indonesia from Cold War "neutralism" to fervent
anti-Communism, and wiped out the Indonesian Communist
Party--exterminating a sizable part of its mass base in
the process, in widespread massacres that claimed at
least 500,000 and perhaps more than a million victims.
The U.S. establishment's enthusiasm for the
coup-cum-mass murder was ecstatic .. The U.S. support
and investment did not slacken when Suharto's army
invaded and occupied East Timor in 1975, which resulted
in an estimated 200,000 deaths in a population of only
700,000. Combined with the 500,000-1,000,000+
slaughtered within Indonesia in 1965-66, the double
genocide would seem to put Suharto in at least the same
class of mass murderer as Pol Pot... But Suharto's
killings of 1965-66 were what Noam Chomsky and I, in
The Washington Connection and Third
World Fascism, called "constructive terror," with
results viewed as favorable to Western interests. His
mass killings in East Timor were "benign terror,"
carried out by a valued client and therefore tolerable.
Pol Pot's were "nefarious terror," done by an enemy,
therefore appalling and to be severely condemned. Pol
Pot's victims were "worthy," Suharto's "unworthy."
"
Coverage of the fall of Suharto reveals with
startling clarity the ideological biases and propaganda
role of the mainstream media. Suharto was a ruthless
dictator, a grand larcenist and a mass killer with as
many victims as Cambodia's Pol Pot. But he served U.S.
economic and geopolitical interests, was helped into
power by Washington, and his dictatorial rule was
warmly supported for 32 years by the U.S. economic and
political establishment. The U.S. was still training
the most repressive elements of Indonesia's security
forces as Suharto's rule was collapsing in 1998, and
the Clinton administration had established especially
close relations with the dictator ("our kind of guy,"
according to a senior administration official quoted in
the New York Times, 10/31/95).
Suharto's overthrow of the Sukarno government in
1965-66 turned Indonesia from Cold War "neutralism" to
fervent anti-Communism, and wiped out the Indonesian
Communist Party--exterminating a sizable part of its
mass base in the process, in widespread massacres that
claimed at least 500,000 and perhaps more than a
million victims. The U.S. establishment's enthusiasm
for the coup-cum-mass murder was ecstatic (see Chomsky
and Herman, Washington Connection and Third World
Fascism); "almost everyone is pleased by the changes
being wrought," New York Times columnist C.L.
Sulzberger commented (4/8/66).
Suharto quickly transformed Indonesia into an
"investors' paradise," only slightly qualified by the
steep bribery charge for entry. Investors flocked in to
exploit the timber, mineral and oil resources, as well
as the cheap, repressed labor, often in joint ventures
with Suharto family members and cronies. Investor
enthusiasm for this favorable climate of investment was
expressed in political support and even in public
advertisements; e.g., the full page ad in the New York
Times (9/24/92) by Chevron and Texaco entitled
"Indonesia: A Model for Economic Development."
The U.S. support and investment did not slacken when
Suharto's army invaded and occupied East Timor in 1975,
which resulted in an estimated 200,000 deaths in a
population of only 700,000. Combined with the
500,000-1,000,000+ slaughtered within Indonesia in
1965-66, the double genocide would seem to put Suharto
in at least the same class of mass murderer as Pol
Pot.
Good and bad genocidists
But Suharto's killings of 1965-66 were what Noam
Chomsky and I, in The Washington Connection and Third
World Fascism, called "constructive terror," with
results viewed as favorable to Western interests. His
mass killings in East Timor were "benign terror,"
carried out by a valued client and therefore tolerable.
Pol Pot's were "nefarious terror," done by an enemy,
therefore appalling and to be severely condemned. Pol
Pot's victims were "worthy," Suharto's "unworthy."
This politicized classification system was unfailingly
employed by the media in the period of Suharto's
decline and fall (1997-98). When Pol Pot died in April
1998, the media were unstinting in condemnation,
calling him "wicked," "loathsome," and "monumentally
evil" (Chicago Tribune, 4/18/98), a "lethal mass
killer" and "war criminal" (L.A. Times, 4/17/98),
"blood-soaked" and an "egregious mass murderer"
(Washington Post, 4/17/98, 4/18/98). His rule was
repeatedly described as a "reign of terror" and he was
guilty of "genocide." Although he inherited a
devastated country with starvation rampant, all excess
deaths during his rule were attributed to him, and he
was evaluated on the basis of those deaths.
Although Suharto's regime was responsible for a
comparable number of deaths in Indonesia, along with
more than a quarter of the population of East Timor,
the word "genocide" is virtually never used in
mainstream accounts of his rule. A Nexis search of
major papers for the first half of 1998 turned up no
news articles and only a handful of letters and opinion
pieces that used the term in connection with
Suharto.
Earlier, in a rare case where the word came up in a
discussion of East Timor (New York Times, 2/15/81),
reporter Henry Kamm referred to it as
"hyperbole--accusations of 'genocide' rather than mass
deaths from cruel warfare and the starvation that
accompanies it on this historically food short island."
No such "hyperbole" was applied to the long-useful
Suharto; one looks in vain for editorial descriptions
of him as "blood-soaked" or a "murderer."
In the months of his exit, he was referred to as
Indonesia's "soft-spoken, enigmatic president" (USA
Today, 5/14/98), a "profoundly spiritual man" (New York
Times, 5/17/98), a "reforming autocrat" (New York
Times, 5/22/98). His motives were benign: "It was not
simply personal ambition that led Mr. Suharto to clamp
down so hard for so long; it was a fear, shared by many
in this country of 210 million people, of chaos" (New
York Times, 6/2/98); he "failed to comprehend the
intensity of his people's discontent" (New York Times,
5/21/98), otherwise he undoubtedly would have stepped
down earlier. He was sometimes described as
"authoritarian," occasionally as a "dictator," but
never as a mass murderer. Suharto's mass killings were
referred to--if at all--in a brief and antiseptic
paragraph.
It is interesting to see how the same reporters move
between Pol Pot and Suharto, indignant at the former's
killings, somehow unconcerned by the killings of the
good genocidist. Seth Mydans, the New York Times
principal reporter on the two leaders during the past
two years, called Pol Pot (4/19/98) "one of the
century's great mass killers...who drove Cambodia to
ruin, causing the deaths of more than a million
people," and who "launched one of the world's most
terrifying attempts at utopia." (4/13/98) But in
reference to Suharto, this same Mydans said (4/8/98)
that "more than 500,000 Indonesians are estimated to
have died in a purge of leftists in 1965, the year Mr.
Suharto came to power." Note that Suharto is not even
the killer, let alone a "great mass killer," and this
"purge"--not "murder" or "slaughter"--was not
"terrifying," and was not allocated to any particular
agent.
The use of the passive voice is common in dealing with
Suharto's victims: They "died" instead of being killed
("the violence left a reported 500,000 people
dead"--New York Times, 1/15/98), or "were killed"
without reference to the author of the killings (e.g.,
Washington Post, 2/23/98, 5/26/98). In referring to
East Timor, Mydans (New York Times, 7/28/96) spoke of
protestors shouting grievances about "the suppression
of opposition in East Timor and Irian Jaya." Is
"suppression of opposition" the proper description of
an invasion and occupation that eliminated 200,000 out
of 700,000 people?
The good and bad genocidists are handled differently in
other ways. For Suharto, the numbers killed always tend
to the 500,000 official Indonesian estimate or below,
although independent estimates run from 700,000 to well
over a million. For Pol Pot, the media numbers usually
range from 1million-2 million, although the best
estimates of numbers executed run from 100,000-400,000,
with excess deaths from all causes (including residual
effects of the prior devastation) ranging upward from
750,000 (Michael Vickery, Cambodia; Herman and Chomsky,
Manufacturing Consent).
Pol Pot's killings are always attributed to him
personally--the New York Times' Philip Shenon (4/18/98)
refers to him as "the man responsible for the deaths of
more than a million Cambodians." Although some analysts
of the Khmer Rouge have claimed that the suffering of
Cambodia under the intense U.S. bombing made them
vengeful, and although the conditions they inherited
were disastrous, for the media nothing mitigates Pol
Pot's responsibility. The only "context" allowed
explaining his killing is his "crazed
Maoist-inspiration" (New York Times, 4/18/98), his
Marxist ideological training in France and his desire
to create a "utopia of equality" (Boston Globe
editorial, 4/17/98).
With Suharto, by contrast, not only is he not
responsible for the mass killings, there was a
mitigating circumstance: namely, a failed leftist or
Communist coup, or "leftist onslaught" (New York Times,
6/17/79), which "touched off a wave of violence" (New
York Times, 8/7/96). In the New York Times' historical
summary (5/21/98): "General Suharto routs communist
forces who killed six senior generals in an alleged
coup attempt. Estimated 500,000 people killed in
backlash against Communists."
This formula is repeated in most mainstream media
accounts of the 1965-66 slaughter. Some mention that
the "communist plot" was "alleged," but none try to
examine its truth or falsehood. What's interesting is
that the six deaths are seen as a plausible catalyst
for the Indonesian massacres, while the 450,000 killed
and maimed in the U.S. bombing of Cambodia (the
Washington Post's estimate, 4/24/75) are virtually
never mentioned in connection with the Khmer Rouge's
violence.
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