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A review by caris96
The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevins
5.0
“Now ‘Jakarta’ meant something very different. It meant anticommunist mass murder. It meant the state-organized extermination of civilians who opposed the construction of capitalist authoritarian regimes loyal to the United States. It meant forced disappearances and unrepentant state terror. And it would be employed far and wide in Latin America over the next two decades” (pp. 199–200).
Let me say first that this book is not an academic work, and does not pretend to be. Vincent Bevins is a journalist, but he plays to his strengths extremely well—as far as journalism goes, this book is thorough, reflexive, and well-researched. It reads as a historical overview of the U.S. regime’s war crimes, human rights violations, and international political interference: as the subtitle put it, “the mass murder program that shaped the world.” The liberal public has become more informed about victims of state violence like racialized, disabled, and gender/sexual minorities, but when it comes to government-sanctioned extermination programs, anticommunism, which has intersected with all of these groups at some point, has remained unquestioned and ignored.
As a leftist myself, it’s difficult to surprise me about the misdeeds of neoliberal countries, and still this book managed to do that. A neoliberal-fascist alliance against communism uses propaganda very effectively: one doesn’t even need to justify violent policies as long as its victims are labelled ‘communists’—in this political imaginary, communists are essentially evil. But the victims of communism are never only communists, and they are never only targeted for their political activity. They’re targeted if they can fit the narrative and benefit political objectives.
An example Bevins provides in great detail is the ‘Gerwani’—a feminist chapter of the PKI, Indonesia’s Communist Party. During the anti-communist exterminations, women were specifically targeted under the narrative that Gerwani were literal ‘witches’. And further, all this violence was erased and written over; consumed by the machine of capital. The aftermath of the genocide in Indonesia under Suharto hits home: “a little bit later, the first tourist hotel went up on the very beach, Seminyak, that had been used as a killing field” (pp. 151).
But it’s more than just reactionary violence. Anticommunism is an ideology permeating every facet of social life. It fills the kindest citizen with hatred towards his neighbour: “Men take advantage of weakness in other men. They’re just like countries in that way. The strong man takes the weak man’s land. He makes the weak man work in his fields. If the weak man’s woman is pretty, the strong man will take her… which would you rather be?” (pp. 180).
It reminds me of Foucault’s preface to Anti-Oedipus: “The major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism. And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini… but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behaviour, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us” (pp. xiii).
This book is an anthology of tragedy, and it fills me with sadness. Citizens in colonized countries already know this history. People of colour know it. Women workers know it. Immigrants to Western countries know it. Americans either don’t, or they choose to interpret it in a palatable way that doesn’t challenge their national pride or personal greed. I think all of us who’ve benefitted however indirectly from state violence and colonialism must learn the lessons this book teaches; and does so in such an objective, factual way.
Let me say first that this book is not an academic work, and does not pretend to be. Vincent Bevins is a journalist, but he plays to his strengths extremely well—as far as journalism goes, this book is thorough, reflexive, and well-researched. It reads as a historical overview of the U.S. regime’s war crimes, human rights violations, and international political interference: as the subtitle put it, “the mass murder program that shaped the world.” The liberal public has become more informed about victims of state violence like racialized, disabled, and gender/sexual minorities, but when it comes to government-sanctioned extermination programs, anticommunism, which has intersected with all of these groups at some point, has remained unquestioned and ignored.
As a leftist myself, it’s difficult to surprise me about the misdeeds of neoliberal countries, and still this book managed to do that. A neoliberal-fascist alliance against communism uses propaganda very effectively: one doesn’t even need to justify violent policies as long as its victims are labelled ‘communists’—in this political imaginary, communists are essentially evil. But the victims of communism are never only communists, and they are never only targeted for their political activity. They’re targeted if they can fit the narrative and benefit political objectives.
An example Bevins provides in great detail is the ‘Gerwani’—a feminist chapter of the PKI, Indonesia’s Communist Party. During the anti-communist exterminations, women were specifically targeted under the narrative that Gerwani were literal ‘witches’. And further, all this violence was erased and written over; consumed by the machine of capital. The aftermath of the genocide in Indonesia under Suharto hits home: “a little bit later, the first tourist hotel went up on the very beach, Seminyak, that had been used as a killing field” (pp. 151).
But it’s more than just reactionary violence. Anticommunism is an ideology permeating every facet of social life. It fills the kindest citizen with hatred towards his neighbour: “Men take advantage of weakness in other men. They’re just like countries in that way. The strong man takes the weak man’s land. He makes the weak man work in his fields. If the weak man’s woman is pretty, the strong man will take her… which would you rather be?” (pp. 180).
It reminds me of Foucault’s preface to Anti-Oedipus: “The major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism. And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini… but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behaviour, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us” (pp. xiii).
This book is an anthology of tragedy, and it fills me with sadness. Citizens in colonized countries already know this history. People of colour know it. Women workers know it. Immigrants to Western countries know it. Americans either don’t, or they choose to interpret it in a palatable way that doesn’t challenge their national pride or personal greed. I think all of us who’ve benefitted however indirectly from state violence and colonialism must learn the lessons this book teaches; and does so in such an objective, factual way.