The Jakarta Method, by Bevins
5.0 Stars
8-1-2022

Kansas, the root of all evil. Alt-text: "are we the baddies?"

A study of the cultivation and spread of anti-leftist mass murder in the third world in the 50's - 70's. In many ways this is a companion piece to Legacy of Ashes, where Legacy is US-centric and views events through the lens of the CIA, while Jakarta is Third World centric and views events through the lens of people who were affected by this violence. They are both excellent books, but this one has the advantage of being simpler? more innocent? and manages to at least partially separate itself from cultural preconceptions and achieve a "this is an alien describing earth society" viewpoint. It's also briefer than Legacy, and I think it is a great history book for understanding what exactly is meant by terms like imperialism and neo-colonialism, and how large chunks of the world transitioned from the post-WWII world to our current world. The short summary of the book is that America's initial anti-Communist efforts were spearheaded by the CIA, and were often unsuccessful or had enormous blow back. Later on, we transitioned from acting more or less directly, to instead nurturing & funding hard-right elements in the target nations, and letting them do the desired work in a more organic and home-grown fashion.

Other deets:
-Leavenworth, Kansas, where the US gathered and nurtured Alex Jones types from all over the world before sending them back out to organize and commit mass murder. It was the School of the Americas before the School of the Americas.
-It turns out the Secret Service is usually the agency responsible for supplying foreign dignitaries with prostitutes. Which makes some of the Secret Services more recent scandals less surprising (I mean the sex scandals, not the coup scandals).
- It's jarring to see so many names starting with "Bal-", since 99.9% of the time when I see that prefix it is as part of my Metafilter handle. :D But it turns out to be a common way to begin a name in Indonesia.
- Some insightful letters between Mao and the peaceful democratic-socialist party of Indonesia. He's trying to break it to them as gently as possible that they need to arm up or else the right wingers will kill you. Other people make the point more directly later, that the