The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins
The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins
7 Rating(s)
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
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The Jakarta Method
Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

Author: Vincent Bevins

Narrator: Vincent Bevins

Unabridged: 9 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 05/19/2020

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, AND GQ

“A radical new history of the United States abroad” (Wall Street Journal) which uncovers U.S. complicity in the mass-killings of left-wing activists in Indonesia, Latin America and around the world

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.

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Adisudewa on May 28, 2020

I am an Indonesian, was born in the ‘70s. My dad was a 24-year old high-school teacher in 1965 when G30S movement broke our country Indonesia. He later told me that then, he witnessed innocent men with communist affiliation were brought to our village cemetery to be slaughtered. "Were these men athei......more

Goodreads review by Always on January 14, 2022

This book took me a while to finish reading because I just kept putting it down. I think as an American it's hard to read this and come to terms with a lot of the harm we've perpetuated through out a lot of the world. I do not quite know what to say because I feel like anytime I write a review about......more

Goodreads review by Kevin on December 05, 2023

US anti-communism vs. Global South decolonization: Preamble: --My personal readings and my classes finally converged with this book, helping me dive much deeper than just reading it by myself. --For a Jim Glassman class, I started my project on the 1965-66 Indonesian genocide with the question: how......more

Goodreads review by Swrang on February 22, 2021

show this book to someone the next time you hear them say "but when has socialism ever worked??!??!?!?!"......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on August 24, 2021

Five stars for the content of this book, without a doubt. Vincent Bevins does a great job of explaining how the United States contributed to the horrific mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia as well as further violence due to anti-communist panic/propaganda in countries such a......more


Quotes

“A radical new history of the United States abroad.”—Wall Street Journal

"Excellent...anchors itself in a history most Americans never learned or would rather forget."
Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post

"The Jakarta Method is a must-read to better understand how the U.S. intelligence apparatus became what it is today, and how it's ravaged so many other countries along the way."
GQ

"Bevins gives a concise account of how US-supported carnage in Indonesia inspired other countries to unleash their own murderous suppression of left-wing movements. By focusing on Indonesia and nations not aligned with either the United States or the Soviet Union, he goes beyond the typical Cold War history of arms races and intrigue....As Bevins effectively describes, we are still living in the world created by these anti-communist purges....[His] account raises necessary questions. Did the anti-communist mania of the 20th century make the world any safer? And if so, for whom?"—Foreign Policy

"Bevins is not the first to note that the Cold War frequently burned hot in the Third World, but he excels at showing the human costs of that epic ideological struggle."
The New Republic

"The Jakarta Method dismantles and re-positions the American mythos, similar to two recent Pulitzer Prize winners: Nikole Hannah-Jones's The 1619 Project and Greg Grandin's The End of the Myth.... The Jakarta Method is a devastating critique of US hypocrisy during the Cold War, and a mournful hypothetical of what the world might have looked like if Third World movements had succeeded."
Los Angeles Review of Books

"Riveting....As a polemic, The Jakarta Method is never anything less than conscientious and persuasive, but Bevins's book truly takes flight as a work of narrative journalism, tracing the history of America's violent meddling in Southeast Asia and Latin America through the stories of those it brutalized."
Jacobin

"[The Jakarta Method] sheds a welcome light on the crimes that took place in Indonesia, a history largely forgotten in the West...but it also asks the fundamental question of why America aided such atrocities... Bevins persuasively argues for his country's blanket anticommunism as a kind of zealotry, an irrational pull with origins in the foundation of the United States."
Times Literary Supplement

"Exceptional...If Indonesia is counted as a 'win' for the pro-regime change crowd, the idea of promoting regime change is absolutely bankrupt and should never be employed again."—The American Conservative

"Trenchant....powerful....[Bevins] translates the findings of complex scholarly accounts into smooth and readable, if often heartbreaking, prose."
Boston Review