…and it causes a minor scandal. Here is an article, in Indonesian. And here is the offending image.

Puteri Indonesia 2015 @anindyakputri memakai kaos berlambang komunis, silakan @TNI_AD dan @KOPASSUS_id tindak lanjut pic.twitter.com/vgjoDgs0XJ

— Prasetiyo Yudhi (@mas_prasetiyo) February 23, 2015

That’s right. Anindya Kusuma Putri, Miss Indonesia 2015, captioned her peasant-communist-chic Instagram photo as “I am so Vietnam today.” I got the image from a tweet by one @mas_prasetiyo, who suggests that the Army and Special Forces take action.*

Now, this isn’t a giant scandal or anything. But reading the comments and tweets you can see how a segment of Indonesia’s population remains gripped by a Cold War-era mentality, one fostered under Indonesia’s New Order regime, of communism as an existential threat to the very idea of Indonesia. I have no systematic evidence to back this up, but my guess is that such sentiments are fairly widely shared. A follow-up tweet from another user mentioned in the article above says it all: Communist ideas are forbidden [= terlarang] in Indonesia.

Untuk media @tribunnews ketahui, PAHAM KOMUNIS adalah PAHAM TERLARANG di INDONESIA. Jangan coba-coba kaburkan itu dg opini komunistophobic!

— Last Samurai (@semesta_kicau) February 23, 2015

And in this tweet, yet another Twitterer mentioned in the article follows up by drawing on a common trope among anti-communist Indonesians, a memory of one’s family having been victimized by PKI, the Communist Party of Indonesia, over fifty years ago.

@semesta_kicau @WPanunggal yg ngmng picik ama komunis kluarga na ga pernah jd korban PKI..ga pernah ngalamin..

— sissy sweety (@sissysweety) February 23, 2015

What I find even more interesting, though, is the explicit analogy drawn between communism and ISIS as two common threats to the Indonesian state.

@aherbawono @semesta_kicau @anindyakputri yg pake kaos ISIS di depok jg lansung di tindak kan?apa beda na?utk komunis jd permisif gitu?

— sissy sweety (@sissysweety) February 23, 2015

The user mentions a widely known case of an ice cream vendor in the Jakarta exurb of Depok being detained simply for flying an ISIS flag. As if the more suggestion of ISIS and communism are enough to warrant an intervention by the state’s security apparatus.

Such sentiments from a random Twitterer would not be so notable were it not for the fact that, indeed, particular arms of the Indonesian state security apparatus have explicitly likened the threat of ISIS to the threat of communism (here is an example from a regional military command).

UPDATE

Right on cue, an Indonesian Army general feels it necessary to weigh in—as a private citizen, of course—on the matter, asking Miss Indonesia to apologize.

Note

* To best of my knowledge, those are not the official twitter accounts of either the Army (TNI) or the Special Forces (KOPASSUS), although there’s probably an entire dissertation to be written on the GI Joe-themed KOPASSUS one.