Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
Paperback, 340 pages
English language
Published 2021 by PublicAffairs.
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.
El libro parte de una premisa muy interesante, pero en eso se queda. No termina de enganchar, presenta una estructura muy liosa. Salta de un sitio para otro y presenta el libro desde la perspectiva de diferentes personas (pero solo en partes concretas).
He aprendido mucho, pero he necesitado empezarlo dos veces para poder terminarlo.
Nothing particularly new here for those interested in this kind of thing... but very useful and compelling to have all the dots connected in this specific manner creating a compelling narrative around the particular shade of neo-colonialsim the US wrought on the world during the cold war and the days since.
For a particular interest in Colonialism, de-colonialism, repression and neocolonialism in Indonesia this would be an integral component of the picture along with:
The Buru Quartet by Pramoedya Ananta Toer Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan the film The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer
These media taken together form a pretty solid overview of Indonesia's struggles against colonial forces from both Macrocosmic and Microcosmic perspective, from idealism and materialism, through research and lived experience.
I think most will find this book eye opening. During the Cold War, the U.S. government helped reactionaries in Indonesia slaughter a million communists. They then repeated that approach (the Jakartra Method) in Brazil. This book gets into the weeds, but it does a nice job of balancing personal accounts of victims with the bigger picture history.
Blood boiling book about right-wing violence post WW2 and how the US was directly or indirectly involved in all of it.
The book itself mentions that it should be paired with the documentary "The Act of Killing", which I also recommend to watch before or after reading this book.
A must-read, although it is an emotional struggle to get through it.
O livro narra como a violência foi empregada na Ásia e na América Latina (com apoio dos EUA) para exterminar comunistas reais e imaginários. Obviamente é impossível dizer como estaríamos hoje se as coisas tivessem sido diferentes, se os governos de Sukarno, Goulart, Allende e tantos outros não tivessem sido sabotados, se pessoas que sonhavam com um mundo melhor não tivessem sido condenadas e mortas por esse crime. Mas esse livro me fez pensar nos futuros que nos foram negados...
Covers a very wide range of events and connects them. Therefore, it doesn’t go much into detail. A mix of history research and witness interviews
This is a book which everyone should read, but it is a difficult book to read. The details of this book are soul crushing and disturbing but it is something everyone should know.
One thing I really appreciate about this book is its focus on survivor testimony. It is often the case when we hear about an atrocity, we cannot grasp the humanity of its victims. This book, thru interviews, completely avoids that problem allowing/forcing the reader to understand the victims as something other than a statistic.
If every American - and every citizen of a first world nation - could read and understand this, it would make the world a better place. An illuminating, aggravating portrait of how the US used murder to further its interests around the world, and how that has affected modern culture everywhere. It should be required reading. Please get yourself a copy.
paired w/ quiet americans, very good read and upsetting as fuck, how we bury history and negate what happened.
Sheds a lot of light on violent imperialism in the mid-late 20th century that was just conveniently omitted from my western textbooks. This is the kind of book that I want to send to my friends, family, and parents, and say "wow, how did we miss all this?". Of course, I know the answer - people don't want to have to confront this. Bump this to the top of your reading lists.
