The Jakarta Method

Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

The hidden story of the wanton slaughter — in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world — backed by the United States.

In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful.

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The hidden story of the wanton slaughter — in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world — backed by the United States.

In this bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that spans the globe. For decades, it's been believed that parts of the developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington's final triumph in the Cold War.

2 editions

Hardcover, 320 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2020 by PublicAffairs.

ISBN:: 978-1-5417-2401-3
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Reviews

soratoyuki reviewed The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins

4.0 stars

In terms of prose, I appreciate how well-written it is. It's hard to write historical narratives with suspense (the book covering largely-unknown history helps, in that regard) but the Jakarta Method keeps a brisk, fiction-like pace that I appreciate. I'm one of those sickos that wishes Bevins wrote more about the inner workings of the politics involved (for a story about ideological conflict, Jakarta Method largely deliberately sidesteps theory) but I recognize I'm likely in the minority.

I specifically love knowing how nothing changed, no reforms were taken, and no one was held accountable. I get to wake up tomorrow knowing my Democratic governor is an unrepentant CIA spook and that service to one of the world's largest, most damaging terrorist organizations is considered a good resume point for a politician.