Another Indonesia-related ephemera:

I’ve wondered for decades! why Pinochet has been so much more reviled than Suharto in the popular imagination when Suharto was so much more lethal ?! There’s even a film about it with Mel Gibson but somehow it’s still not as well known ;-)

Suharto was responsible for one of the largest anticommunist massacres of the Cold War. Maybe the largest? it’s well known to anyone who knows Cold War history, but in the general imagination & compared to Chile’s notoriety, it has remained relatively obscure

this past year has seen more coverage of 1965-66 because of the Bevins book & the surrounding publicity. but when you consider there have been hundreds of books about CIA interventions in the Third World, weird that Suharto was never as much of a pariah as the Shah or Pinochet

It could be sheer Eurocentrism: the Chilean elite, both left and right, tend to be white; & Chilean politics just seems more ‘western’. & the memory of Allende is partly mediated through a famous interview in French with Régis Debray etc. and that probably adds a touch of glamour

other possible reasons: Allende was a conventional Marxist who had (an electoral path to) socialism as his goal. Sukarno, despite being one of the heroes of anti-colonial liberation as well as Bandung-NAM, was not a Marxist so he doesn’t get the empathy?

another reason could be that the overthrow of Sukarno did not kickstart neoliberalism in the way the overthrow of Allende did.

Or Indonesia is just neglected as a country. I’ve certainly said so wrt development econ. Despite being a populous developing country much discussed in the 1960s including by the likes of Geertz & Myrdal, SE Asia has dropped off the development radar compared w India or Africa

In the 1950s and 1960s when you thought of ‘Asia’ and even the “Third World, you thought of India, China, and Indonesia. Indonesia even had a history of colonialism parallel to India’s and Dutch colonialism was probably more rapacious

Someone suggested another reason Suharto was not reviled was because he didn't have defenders on economic grounds like Pinochet did with the alleged Chilean miracle, etc. BUT THIS IS NOT TRUE

People tend to forget, but in the mid-1990s, just before the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, and in the very middle of the East Asia model debate — the countries falling under the designation of the ‘East Asian Miracle’ did include Indonesia as a kind of junior member.

For example, on the left is the World Bank view, and on the right is the critique of the WB view of East Asia (as contained in Fishlow, Haggard, Rodrik, & Wade). Both agree Indonesia is a tiger 'cub' at least

At the time China had to settle for marginal inclusion in the group by adverbial modification “even” ;-) Vietnam at the time did not rate a mention. It’s only since the Asian Financial crisis that South East Asia have kind of reverted to Global South status

And just as there was a "markets versus state-led" debate about the 'main' East Asian countries, there was a smaller debate of the same strip with respect to South East Asia including Indonesia, in the 1990s. (Most agreed Indonesia's economy was pervasive with 'distortions')

Indonesia under Suharto registered one of the highest growth rates in the world (I believe higher than anyone outside E Asia); its inequality in Gini terms was low for developing countries & earned it a reputation for 'growth with equity' & substantial poverty reduction.

I am saying that was Indonesia's reputation just before the Asian financial crisis. I don't want to dispute how accurate that was. But indisputable is that in 1965 Indonesia primarily an exporter of commodities/resources. By 1995 its exports were 50% manufactures.

Export diversification was an important reason Indonesia escaped the Third World Debt Crisis of the early 1980s. It's definitely NOT because it had less debt than the crisis countries.

So Suharto was a bloody, corrupt, post-colonial dictator who did not strictly follow orthodox policies & delivered one of the highest growth rates in the world with a relatively egalitarian record & poverty reduction.

I don’t understand why isn’t he a hero of Branko Milanovic?

I should mention: PKI was the third largest communist party in the world, the largest non-ruling one, and was legal under Sukarno. Got about 15-20% in elections. It probably would have governed in some provinces at least if it had not been exterminated by Suharto probably