THE JAKARTA METHOD - VINCENT BEVINS

I’ve been waiting for this one for a while. I believe I heard this guy talking on the radio or something like that a few months ago (maybe a year) and I’ve been waiting ever since to get this book from the library. I almost bought a copy because the wait was too long. It did not disappoint, if anything, the book is too short and ends too soon. I’d read a book at least double this size about all the anti-communist mass-murders the USA has sponsored. Or, perhaps it is best to think of this as part of a real history of the Cold War, which is typically depicted as the US triumphing over evil communism merely through our god-ordained superiority and moral rigor. We basically had only to sit back, continue to be the Greatest Nation On Earth™, and nature, or nature's god, took care of the evil doers. Obviously, this isn’t true, we spent the time between the end of WWII and 1991 soaking the earth with blood. This is another of those topics that I’ve read around for years and I’m still putting pieces together. This is a big-ass piece. Bevins is wise to not focus solely on Indonesia itself. He does go into depth about the immediate, material conditions of the ‘65 coup but the book isn’t an Indonesian history tome. Likewise, he’s not myopic about the killing itself, despite its vastness and insanity (the movie The Act of Killing goes into this part of the story much more deeply and disturbingly). What he does do well is talk about how all of these Cold War mass-killings are related and orchestrated by the USA. He shows convincing links between what happened in Indonesia and what happened in South America, under Operation Condor. He points out that the Brazilians and Chileans and others not only took inspiration from Jakarta, they spray-painted threats on city walls that threatened leftists with a “Brazilian Jakarta,” a threat that they very much made good on. An appendix for the book lists the dozens of countries the USA encouraged, aided and orchestrated mass killing programs for communists and leftists. There is another strain, about how the world was supposed to change after the end of colonialism. How in the mid-20th century, literally billions of people were liberated from direct colonial control and how these people carried with them hopes and aspirations for a more just and equitable world. The US had other ideas though, and through programs like these made sure that no 3rd world country actually built a world outside of American influence. The contrasts Bevins highlights between how the USA treated European countries vs how they treated global south/brown countries is, predictably, deeply depressing. Bevins is a mainstream journalist, he works for the Washington Post and the LA Times so the book stays within the realm of the totally provable, a welcomed change from the other CIA books I’ve read that will, without warning, stray into conjecture and “conspiracy theory” (to use a term invented by the CIA itself). I feel like we can and should have a series of books like this, well-researched deep dives into the more occluded episodes of this era. As an American, it’s a chilling read, we really are the baddies. 65 massacres.