‘The Jakarta Method’ Book Review: The Truth About Indonesia’s 1965 History
[Hello! This Medium is no longer active and is now an archive for my previous works. If you want to see more of my writings and thoughts, you can check my Substack. See you there!]
The Americans and the rest of the colonizers might not remember this, but we, the generations of the victims, are still affected by the aftermath in our daily lives.
Title: The Jakarta Method
Author: Vincent Bevins
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Year of Publication: 2018
Collation: 340 pages
ISBN: 9781541724006
Get Dist’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Trigger Warnings: Genocide, violence, state violence, murder, kidnapping, xenophobia, rape, sexual violence
‘This book has changed my life’ is an understatement. I cannot believe that I was never taught about the real, harsh, violent truths of our history in 1965 at school. I eventually learned about this from a book written by an American man, which I bought from an indie bookshop since I would never have found it in mainstream bookstores (it definitely would’ve been banned, thanks to censorship).
So, what is the book about specifically?
‘The Jakarta Method’ is a nonfiction book by Vincent Bevins, an American journalist and author who has spent several years living in Brazil (as a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times) and Indonesia (as a Southeast Asia correspondent for The Washington Post). The book talks about the complicity of the CIA and the US government in the anticommunism crusade and the mass murder of millions of people around the world, one of the bloodiest being in Indonesia.
It took me four and a half months to finish this book. Yes, I took my sweet, sweet time to finish the whole book. I wanted to understand fully what history had been robbed from me and many Indonesians. This, added by my viewing of ‘Eksil’, and reading Leila S. Chudori’s ‘Pulang’ and ‘Namaku Alam’, has sparked conversations and discussions on the damaging and cruel nature of the US government’s agenda worldwide, even decades after the events occurred.
This might be the hardest book I’ve ever read until the end, though I’m still grateful that this book exists as a slap on the face for many. To realize that my identity (and many citizens, I believe) as an Indonesian was built on the hatred of communism that was a product of a systemic, calculated move to spread capitalism and other ‘American values’ makes me sick to the stomach. The Americans and the rest of the colonizers might not remember this, but we, the generations of the victims, are still affected by the aftermath in our daily lives.
I recommend this book for every Indonesian, as we deserve the right to know the real truth of the nation, where it stands, and how it was built. Five out of five stars.
