In what might be the most unintentionally self-owns in modern governance, parliamentary leaders have claimed that the Straw Hat Jolly Roger — the beloved skull-and-crossbones from One Piece — represents separatist tendencies and is being used by shadowy forces who want the Prabowo government to collapse (the news even made it to Screen Rant of all places). The flag has since been targeted for criminalization, under the claim that it’s “provocative,” “disrespectful,” and “threatening national unity.”

So let’s get this straight: a cartoon pirate flag — flown initially by angry truck drivers protesting against what they claim to be unjust safety laws — is now being treated like an act of sedition. Because in a country that refuses to hold corrupt conglomerates accountable, it’s easier to demonize drivers than fix the system. And it’s easier to vilify a pirate crew from a manga than face public anger that refuses to stay quiet.

The real kicker is that any One Piece fan can see it from ten thousand nautical miles away.

The people trying to ban the Straw Hat flag? They sound exactly like the villains in the story.

The rhetoric, about order, unity, suppressing dangerous symbols, and punishing those who question authority, is textbook World Government. This is Gorosei energy. This is the Tenryuubito clutching their pearls because the commoners dared to speak. This is CP0-level control tactics dressed up in nationalistic language. And just like in the manga, it’s not about real threats. It’s about protecting the illusion of stability, no matter how rotten the core has become.

The Straw Hat Pirates in One Piece aren’t the enemy. They’re the ones who sail against corrupt institutions, take down slave-trading elites, and expose the lies propping up unjust empires. Sound familiar? In that universe, flying the Jolly Roger isn’t an act of terrorism — it’s an act of refusal. A refusal to bow, to comply, to play along with a system built to exploit and erase.

And now here in the real world, when working-class Indonesians adopt that symbol in protest — not even violently, just by putting it on their trucks, on their front yards, on their cars, flown atop mountains and volcanoes, etc — the state starts echoing the exact same paranoia we see in the story. The same language. The same scapegoating. The same absurd claims that any challenge to the hierarchy must be criminal, foreign-funded, or anarchist.

It’s actually impressive, the level of irony involved in banning a flag that literally represents resistance to authoritarian overreach because you think it represents resistance to authoritarian overreach.

This isn’t about a flag. It’s about power — and who’s allowed to speak against it. It’s about fear — not of pirates, but of symbols that resonate. It’s about the ruling class realizing that a bunch of truck drivers with anime decals are suddenly more culturally relevant than their entire media machine.

In One Piece, the Jolly Roger is a symbol of freedom, loyalty, self determination, and righteous rebellion. It flies over ships that break chains and challenge tyrants. In Indonesia, it was flown by people tired of being silenced, manipulated, gaslit, and taken advantage of, and now the government wants to treat them like enemies of the state.

If that’s not the most perfect, painful parallel between fiction and reality, I don’t know what is.

So go ahead. Ban the flag. Call in intelligence briefings. Threaten legal action. But just know, you’ve officially cast yourself in the role of the very villains this generation grew up learning to resist.

The funniest things out of this? Vice President Gibran wore a Jolly Roger pin during an election debate last year (while also wearing a Naruto inspired denim jacket) and there is a parody version of the flag using the sideways logo of Indonesia’s 80th anniversary of the Independence Day declaration. Because it really does work and drives home the point much further.

By the way, Deputy Home Minister Bima Arya said nobody is banning the flag (never mind that the parliament leaders are rushing to ban it and demanding law enforcement to act against those flying the flag) and people are still free to fly it as a form of expression. When the government can’t even get their messaging right, nobody should surprised that people are doing what they do.