Book Review: Bevins, Vincent, Jakarta Method. Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World. Public Affairs, New York, 2020

If one reads a little bit of news from abroad, or if one watches a few movies made somewhere else, one probably already knows that the United States government has participated in extermination programs. One doesn’t get an idea of the extent.

Appendix 5, pages 266-7, gives some of the numbers. If one adds them up, it amounts to 1,927,850 murders. Author Bevins explains on page 238, “As we have seen, in the years 1945-1990, a loose network of US-backed anticommunist extermination programs emerged around the world, and they carried out mass murder in at least twenty-two countries (see Appendix Five).

The numbers given do not include deaths from military engagements or even “collateral damage” deaths. These were murders. The body count doesn’t even include the people who were tortured, maimed, raped, or held in concentration camps. One of the Indonesians interviewed is quoted on page 246, “They needed to kill the communists so that foreign investors could bring their capital here.”

People who are still alive in America can remember when we used to read the words “non-aligned nations” in the official news. Activists talked about “the third world” and “new left.” These were ways of identifying with much of the world’s population that was neither in the First World American rich-people’s camp nor the socialist Soviet camp. They were trying to maneuver in between.

It was these “non-aligned nations” who experienced the Jakarta method. Jakarta was the capital of Indonesia, the fourth largest nation in the world and a major leader of the non-aligned movement. After three million unarmed suspected leftists were persecuted, and after a million of them were murdered, Indonesia aligned. They aligned with the United States, and so did almost all the others.

The actual method in the Jakarta method was to “disappear” dissidents. Suspects were rounded up, usually at night, tortured for the names of more suspects, and then murdered. A General Domingo in Brazil explains the process on page 215, “First we will kill all subversives, then we will kill all of their collaborators, then those who sympathize with subversives, then we will kill those that remain indifferent, and finally we kill the timid.”

As far as I know, Ronald Reagan did not personally strangle any of the victims. American armed forces were not called out, and America’s intelligence services contributed only a minimum of direct participation. America did these murders with sly propaganda, skillful political maneuvering, bullying, and, most of all, with money. America did not conduct these mass murders personally, they paid someone else to do it.

This book has the first comprehensive listing of those American atrocities I have ever seen. It is not easy to read because the truth is not always easy to take. By bringing together the horrors, and by showing how they interrelate, Vincent Bevins makes a great contribution to our understanding of where we are and how we got there. I don’t think it’s perfect, or even complete. For example, I don’t see Angola on the map in Appendix 5, but I can remember when Jonas Savimbi toured the United States to raise money for his terror campaign there.

It only covers part of the post-war period. I shudder to think what might be revealed from a longer view of history, and I shudder even more to think that, twenty years hence, we will be finding out what American “intelligence services” are doing in our names this very day.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. We podcast the program and other “Workers Beat Extra” material on Wednesdays on Soundcloud. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

Why can’t they come up with a unifying plan for the 2020 elections? I don’t mean to insult hippies, nor anarchists, but politically they both share the same malady.

It helps explain why they have so many divergent and confusing attitudes about the current elections, as manifested every day on my social media news feeds.

Hippies and anarchists are really good people in that they sincerely want a better world. They are willing to go to great lengths to make that world happen. They often exhibit great courage in facing arrests and prosecution.

As they never really get anything done, the keepers of the status quo are more than happy to laughingly tolerate them. In fact, the 1% sometimes finds uses for hippies and anarchists to help them confuse and divide the progressive movement.

Hippies and anarchists don’t really like each other, so why am I insisting on throwing them into one big political category? It’s because of what they have in common.

Common Belief of Hippies and Anarchists

They believe that their idea of a better world should come about immediately. They don’t believe in periods of advancement or setback. They basically have one strategy and it is supposed to result in instant gratification — a better world.

Hippies and anarchists believe they already have everything figured out. The hippies take the really short route: they just start living as if the better world were already here. The anarchists take quick actions that are supposed to awaken the rest of us. The hippies don’t care how long it may take for everybody else to catch on, but the anarchists think that just one great “spark” will make their better world right away. The problem is just finding the right spark.

The long, hard work of informing and organizing ordinary people just doesn’t appeal to hippies and anarchists. The daily drudgery of defending democracy and trying to advance it isn’t part of their plan. It isn’t that they are stupid or lazy, maybe they just haven’t thought it through.

Dozens of Election Strategies

That’s why the hippies and anarchists can’t come up with a candidate or a unifying strategy in the 2020 elections. None of the choices, Biden or Trump or 3rd party or abstention, can give them the instant gratification that they consider their due. Eventually, most of the hippies will ignore the election. The anarchists will oppose it. Neither or them will bring anybody any closer to progress.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” radio program every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. They podcast it, and some other “Workers Beat Extra” podcasts, on Wednesdays. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.