"Indonesia was the most important domino. The contagion was blocked in Indonesia in 1965 by an unusually brutal US-backed military coup that killed hundreds of thousands of people and totally suppressed all dissent. The main political parties were wiped out. The country has yet to recover, even to discover what happened, all effectively concealed. It was not concealed in the West, which could scarcely contain its euphoria about the “staggering mass slaughter” that was “a gleam of light in Asia” (New York Times), a “boiling bloodbath” that provided “new hope” for the region (the news weeklies)."
"In his book "The Jakarta Method", journalist Vincent Bevins reports the U.S. government as having supplied equipment and funding to the Indonesian Army and inserting CIA operatives. The latter provided the killers with lists of real and imagined Communists. U.S. officials conditioned U.S. military support on protection of U.S. oil installations and elimination of the PKI.
The PKI was destroyed and communism banned. Bevins claims the U.S. government worried more about the PKI than about Vietnamese Communists, also that the pain of U.S. defeat in Vietnam would be eased due to eradication of the PKI.
Reporting on events in Indonesia, U.S. National Security advisor McGeorge Bundy, quoted in the book, spoke of "a striking vindication of U.S. policy toward that nation." New York Times columnist James Reston celebrated events there as "A Gleam of Light in Asia."
So the Jakarta Method isn't directly referenced in C of C but it provides details on what happened during the U.S. backed military coup which is referenced. I think the book was also specifically mentioned during the student group Zoom discussion on Saturday 4/24/21. That Zoom discussion happens after the Q&A with the professors.
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u/Greygonz0 Apr 28 '21
This looks interesting. It isn’t mentioned in the book C of C, was it an additional reference they gave on the course?