Page - 72 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/01

72 | Freek L. Bakker www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/1, 63–77 In each instance the latter disturbed the happiness of the former. Zygmunt Bauman has proposed that a vision is a necessary impetus to such “cleansing”. A forest, a mountainside, a pasture or an ocean, or nature in general, distin- guished from human culture, is neither clean not dirty in and of itself. Human behaviour defiles and besmirches nature, whether with the remnants of a Sun- day picnic or the waste of chemical factories. Human behaviour creates the dis- tinction between dirty and clean.5 Impurity is understood in terms of the pres- ence of something that is not natural, something that causes irritation and must therefore be removed. A vision based on purity is related to a desire to create order, an order that stems from the presence of that which belongs and the elimination of that which does not belong. The world of those striving for such purity is too small to provide space for the other.6 Even before he was inaugurated as president of Indonesia, President Soehar- to had introduced the concept of Orde Baru (New Order), in opposition to the concept of Orde Lama (Old Order), for which President Sukarno was responsi- ble in the form of the so-called Nasakom order, which had room for nationalists, religious people and communists. The New Order had no space for communists. Something similar can be said of Nazi Germany. The German saying “Ordnung muss sein” (There must be order) has been identified as a fundamental of Ger- man culture.7 “Ordnung muss sein”, President Hindenburg stated in 1930.8 Ado- lf Hitler implemented this maxim by explicating that there was no longer room in the German Reich for Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and the disabled, nor for communists. Bauman repeatedly references differences in forms of dirt. Cockroaches, flies, spiders and mice need no invitation to enter a house. They might be pre- sent for a long time without the other occupants being aware. The filthiest dirt, however, may be invisible to the eye – carpet mites, microbes or viruses, for example. What appears safe and clean may not be safe and clean. Hygiene is important. Dirt is not innocent. It can endanger health and must therefore be controlled constantly.9 If human beings are regarded as dirt, the message is that they need to be re- moved. Bauman points out that an atmosphere can change suddenly. Despite contemporary anti-Semitism, Jews in Germany appeared to be increasingly ac- cepted, especially if they assimilated and their behaviour conformed to that of a “good” German citizen. In Indonesia the communists were also accepted. Their political party was the biggest in some populous provinces and they therefore 5 Bauman 1998, 5. 6 Bauman 1998, 6 7 Tomalin 2006, 37. 8 Graudenz 1930. 9 Bauman 1998, 6–7.