Somewhere removed from the Grand Line, a pirate flag from Eiichiro Oda’s Japanese manga and anime sequence, One Piece, has been making a divisive sort of landfall. Across Indonesia, forward of the nation’s Independence Day on August 17, the Strawhat Pirates’ Jolly Roger — the flag of Monkey D. Luffy and his fictional crew — had been hoisted beside doorways, pinned to the backs of autos, and flown instead of the nationwide pink and white.
The picture of the iconic grinning cranium in a straw hat has unfold far sufficient to catch the consideration of the state. For many it was a wordless declaration that the state had been failing its folks. A deputy home speaker condemned the flag as an “attempt to divide the nation.” Another lawmaker hinted at treason. One senior aide to President Prabowo Subianto warned that the image, flown beside Indonesia’s red-and-white, may undermine the nationwide flag itself.
A graffiti of the pirate flag from Japanese anime One Piece, adopted by some Indonesians as a image of frustration with their authorities, is seen on a avenue in Sukoharjo, Central Java, on August 6, 2025, forward of the nation’s eightieth Independence Day
| Photo Credit:
AFP
If you understand One Piece, you most likely see it already. In the iconic world Oda has constructed since 1997 — of vibrant pirates of all sizes and styles combating again towards corrupt marines, genocidal monarchs, and a “World Government” that erases historical past — the Jolly Roger is exactly the emblem you’ll fly for those who liked your nation however may not abdomen what its rulers had made from it. The pirate story about friendship and treasure has lengthy been a parable about dismantling tyranny. And if Luffy and his Strawhats existed in our world, the similar officers who drape themselves in jingoist patriotism would probably name them what they routinely model so many dissidents of oppression in the battle for liberation.
Conjuring the ‘enemy’
History is replete with moments when the label “terrorist” has been stretched to suit no matter form energy wanted it to. British colonial directors used it to discredit Indian revolutionaries; apartheid South Africa utilized it to Nelson Mandela. The phrase’s elasticity has lengthy allowed these in authority to blur the line between “public enemy” and “liberator”. One Piece’s World Government perfects this system, although the story additionally acknowledges that violence and extremism are actual forces in the world, not merely fictions conjured by propaganda.
A panel from the ‘One Piece’ manga depicts Monkey D. Luffy ordering his crewmate Usopp to shoot down the flag of the World Government
| Photo Credit:
VIZ Media
In the sequence, the state’s propaganda machine works tirelessly to recast dissent as hazard. Archaeologists on Ohara, responsible of preserving forbidden historical past; the folks of Alabasta, resisting a manufactured insurgency; the Shandians of Skypiea, holding on to land in the face of pressured displacement — all are folded into the similar caricature as “enemies of peace”. In the broadcasts of the marines’ struggle correspondents, like Big News Morgans, state violence is sanctified and its victims are rendered villains.
And but, the Strawhats are usually not harmless of the cost that they are a menace to the established order. They have torched authorities flags, attacked fortified bases, and aided revolutions in occupied territories. Before the eyes of the complete world, they have declared open struggle on the World Government. By the definitions in a authorities file, these are acts of terrorism. What One Piece insists on nevertheless, is that such acts can’t be divorced from the situations that provoke them, and that typically the refusal to just accept a peace constructed on the backs of the oppressed is a ethical crucial.
After all, buried deep in the rarely-leafed pages of the Geneva Conventions (specifically Additional Protocol I to Article 1(4)) grant armed resistance to colonial domination or alien occupation the dignity of nationwide liberation and self-determination. Which means, unlikely because it sounds, that even a foolish, rubber boy with a dream operates in compliance with worldwide humanitarian legislation.
A politics of liberation
The genius of One Piece is that it wears its politics on its sleeve whereas masquerading as a humorous pirate story. Luffy isn’t any Robin Hood, content material to topple one unhealthy king and prop up one other. Dense and blockheaded he could also be, the Strawhat captain seeks nothing lower than the liberation of the international oppressed and the destruction of the order that props up oppressors in the first place.
Time and once more, the sequence drags the Strawhats into conflicts the place the ethical stakes are absolute. On Fish-Man Island, systemic racism has festered for centuries, pitting species towards one another. In Dressrosa, a king recognised by the World Government is the truth is a warlord who tortures and enslaves his folks. In Ohara, the state commits a full-scale genocide to forestall the reality from escaping.
You can draw parallels with out even making an attempt. The educating information Oda’s work has impressed amongst activists and educators likens the actions of the World Government to atrocities being commited in actual time, in the actual world. It can also be no accident that the worst crimes in One Piece are the ones dedicated beneath the veneer of legality. The marines’ white coats are tailor-made for believable deniability. And so to learn the sequence as apolitical is to disregard its very essence, that legislation and order are meaningless when they serve solely the highly effective.
Gaza and the Strawhats
In its peculiarities of distilling ethical readability into extra bite-sized meals for thought, the Internet has been asking: would Luffy free Palestine? For One Piece followers, the reply is nearly too apparent to trouble with. Set the Strawhats down in Gaza and they’d deal with the siege as simply one other unjust island to liberate — slipping meals via blockades, toppling watchtowers, and unmaking partitions. And they’d most likely do it understanding full properly that, in the eyes of the powers they’d crossed, they would positively be branded criminals, extremists, or worse.
A panel from the ‘One Piece’ manga depicts Monkey D. Luffy punching a Celestial Dragon, a member of a group of people who’re supposed descendants of the 20 kings who based the World Government 800 years in the past
| Photo Credit:
VIZ Media
Since late 2023, Israeli navy operations in Gaza have killed 1000’s of civilians, destroyed hospitals and water methods, and forcibly displaced and starved greater than a million folks. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported patterns of conduct in step with crimes towards humanity and, in the judgment of the International Court of Justice, with acts which have constantly met the authorized definition of genocide.
Under the logic of the World Government, Palestinians who resist this — whether or not by protest, or by breaking the siege, or by armed battle — needs to be labeled terrorists. It is the similar logic that sees no contradiction in flattening total districts for “security” whereas denouncing stone-throwing as barbarism. It is the similar logic that will put Luffy’s wished poster on each wall from Tel Aviv to Washington.
One can argue the ways, the morality, and the timing of any specific act of resistance. But the broad reality stays that the oppressors have at all times reserved for themselves the proper to resolve who’s “legitimate” and who’s an “enemy of peace.” In One Piece, as in Gaza, that propogated legitimacy has much less to do with justice than with obedience.
Why they fear the flag
This might be why, in Indonesia, the Strawhat flag’s sudden ubiquity has unsettled the political class. It’s clearly not simply a bit of popular culture silliness or an act of otaku indulgence. It’s been a direct reminder that allegiances are usually not owed to governments just because they wave the proper flag. And it’s a image that has at all times mentioned: our loyalty is to freedom and to not you.
When symbols like the Jolly Rogers or the keffiyeh emerge, they turn into threats exactly as a result of they journey sooner than the official rhetoric. They supply a shorthand for solidarity and a visible language that may’t be simply co-opted. Governments can attempt to confiscate them and make them unlawful, however in doing so, they inadvertedly affirm what their critics have been saying all alongside: that their authority will depend on controlling what folks do, and extra dangerously, what they can think about.
“One Piece isn’t political”
There has nonetheless been a notably irritating pressure of denial amongst some followers who insist that One Piece is simply an journey, and that politics is one thing imported into it by overzealous critics. The vapidity behind this thought is to liken Animal Farm to a kids’s e-book about speaking animals. It is to disregard that the sequence has, for greater than 20 years, depicted imperialism, systemic racism, propaganda, ethnic cleaning, and slavery as the very engines of its plot.
The politics of One Piece have by no means been incidental, the truth is, one may argue they are its very marrow. Oda’s villains have at all times been robust in ways in which mirror the worst habits of our personal world. And his heroes have at all times been sort in ways in which threaten the hierarchies we take for granted.
A panel from the ‘One Piece’ manga depicts Monkey D. Luffy standing resolute, not letting a Jolly Roger fall
| Photo Credit:
VIZ Media
It’s not not like the ethical backbone that runs via James Gunn’s Superman, the place the current conversations round what the cape and the crest stand for have been far less complicated, and much more subversive, than the partisan readings imposed on them. Strip away the stand-ins and also you’re left with a hero who refuses to weigh human lives on the scales of alliance or comfort, who will cease a bloodbath whether or not it comes from a sanctioned ally or a sworn enemy. In that sense, Luffy and Superman share a harmful trait in the eyes of the highly effective with their loyalty to the cussed concept that the susceptible needs to be protected, even when it means being referred to as the villain by these doing the hurt.
If Luffy’s world ever bled into ours, you could possibly think about his ship turning up wherever the robust have taken over or made a jail of another person’s dwelling. In Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, Ukraine, Xinjiang, Rakhine, Tibet, Tigray, Ireland, Syria, Artsakh, and Kurdistan — the names would change with the wind, however he would preserve crusing till nobody’s freedom trusted the permission of their oppressor.
