The book centers on the anti-communist massacres that took place in Indonesia in 1965–66, as US-backed dictator Suharto deposed his anti-imperialist, developmentalist predecessor Sukarno. In his new book, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World, Vincent Bevins reveals the staggering death toll of the United States’ foreign policy throughout the Cold War.

But they are unlikely to have noted that the world’s largest empire engaged in a program of international assassinations more deadly than Stalin’s purges - all in the name of capitalism. It was said to be the largest conference of coloured peoples across the world in 1955 and it challenged the status quo set by the twin polar opposite forces of Soviet communism and American capitalism.Review of The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevins (Public Affairs, 2020).Īny self-identifying socialist will be met with the question at some point in their lives: How many people have been killed in the name of socialism? They might have pointed out in response that Soviet-style state socialism is about as far removed from the democratic socialism proposed by politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn as Chinese state capitalism is from its free-market cousin. The PKI had three million card-carrying members and, according to Bevins, had support from a quarter of the rising nascent nation, which had made itself a starlet of the post-colonial world hosting the world-renowned Bandung conference. Indonesia had the largest communist party (PKI) in the non-communist world after its ruling Russian and Chinese counterparts. Nasakom comprised Islam, communism, and nationalism.

Indonesia at that time consisted of a mix of communists, nationalists, and Islamists led by the charismatic Sukarno who coined his political philosophy as NASAKOM.

The Jakarta Method, as its namesake suggests, starts in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country and the leader of the Third World movement-a movement that looked to neither the US nor the Soviet Union to design its own socio-economic philosophy.

The jakarta method vincent bevins