By: Abdul Makmum)*
In today’s digital era, radicalism and hoaxes are still common enemies. The community needs to be vigilant and synergize to jointly prevent the spread of radical ideas and hoaxes that are able to create national disintegration.
Since social media and news on digital platforms are increasingly accessible to the public, hoaxes or fake news and the spread of radical ideas often decorate our home screens.
Asep Warian as a Legal Expert who is also known as a Professor of Constitutional Law, Faculty of Law, Parahyangan University, said that hate speech and false information are rampant on social media timelines. Because it has the potential to increase radicalism in Indonesia. Therefore, Asep asked the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Mahfud MD to change the government’s approach to solving this problem.
This situation is also very unfortunate, because Mahfud has to work harder in tackling the rampant problem of radicalism. Moreover, the high diversity that Indonesia has is also a vulnerable point for the difficulty of controlling the friction of community conflicts on social media.
Furthermore, Asep is worried that this radical act will try to enter the vortex of the formal parliamentary political level by riding the celebration of the 2024 General Election. Because of the danger if this radicalism enters the formal political level, it will certainly cause chaos. Like the division of society in the political year in 2024. If not controlled, it has the potential to escalate.
Radicalism is a teaching that wants to change the basis and ideology of the state by going against the rules, then destroying the way of thinking of the new generation. Adherents of radicalism usually seem exclusive and closed to their social environment, they always voice that Pancasila is not in accordance with sharia, respect for the red and white flag is also not in accordance with sharia.
In this case, we need to know how the history of Islam entered Indonesia. Of course Islam entered in a peaceful way. Even through the approach of human social behavior and culture, so that it is not uncommon for Islamic da’wah to be carried out using the puppet show method. Indeed, socially humanity when Islam is present in a place does not change people’s culture.
Meanwhile, lecturer in Strategic and Global Studies at the University of Indonesia (UI) Puspitasari assessed that radicalism was spreading rapidly because it was used by instant campaigners. Its adherents use social media and features on the Internet so that the distribution becomes massive and wide.
Puspitasari said, Pancasila was eroded because of the massive campaign of radical understanding. He emphasized that if Pancasila is dealing with radical groups who use propaganda, it is also necessary to use the principle of (counter) propaganda. Radicalism in the name of religion usually has nothing to do with religion. But there are other interests or problems behind it.
Meanwhile, the rise of hoax news in cyberspace is indeed a very complicated problem, among children, mothers and even academics also cannot be separated from the threat of hoaxes that are spread mercilessly through social media applications.
Fast media access seems to be directly proportional to the speed of hoax news that spreads to the Family WhatsApp group. Worse, news that had been confirmed as a hoax in the previous year, was sometimes still disseminated only by copying a link.
Of the many hoaxes, it turns out that the type of hoax news that is most often received by the public is hoaxes about social-political issues, following in the second position is hoax news about SARA. The spread of this overdose of hoaxes has raised concerns among netizens. This concern arises because hoaxes can still be digital weapons to threaten domestic panic.
The spread of hoaxes through social media seems to appear unstoppable, social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the most frequent channels for netizens to receive hoax news. Furthermore, chat applications are also very vulnerable to hoax news, especially in WhatsApp groups.
When your fingers are attached to your device, it’s as if we don’t have immunity to hoaxes, so it’s important for all social media users to filter information before sharing it on their social media networks.
Radicalism and Hoax are two things that make the atmosphere noisy, the sense of unity also collapses just because the news is too provocative and far from reality. It is time for us to say war on radicalism and hoaxes that are seriously destroying peace in various countries.
)* The author is a contributor to Pertiwi Institute
