Dis-Spiracy Theory: Why Corona Rhymes with Corruption in Indonesia

Abstract

In Indonesia, the most popular online super-spreaders of conspiracy narratives relating to Covid-19 and Corona vaccines include the drummer of a punk-rock band and a former health minister. Tracing the links between antiauthoritarian punk and nationalist politics in the world's most populous Muslim country, the chapter shows how anti-authoritarianism, anti-globalism, religious piety, and postcolonial ideas of sovereignty – each with their own historical trajectories and sense – feed into Covid-19 suspicions. Following how paranoia in Indonesia historically has always been paranoia-within-political-reason, the chapter shows how Indonesian conspiracism is not a cultural system of knowledge and beliefs with a specific style or theory but rather an assemblage of disparate narrative extracts from historically motivated suspicions that appeal to multiple online publics.