THE EMPIRE FILES: THE JAKARTA METHOD

IN 1965, an anti-communist purge in Indonesia killed as many as a million people, a level of devastation made possible by American intelligence and logistical support. Yet Americans tend to have little knowledge of this history, in keeping with a general ignorance of the full viciousness of 20th-century anti-communism and the United States’s complicity in it. But for Indonesian people it is a time in their history that will never be forgotten.

Abby Martin speaks with journalist Vincent Bevins about the campaign of mass murder in Indonesia, which created the model for US extermination campaigns against communists in twenty-two countries during the Cold War.  His new book is The Jakarta Method.

From 2011 to 2016, Vincent Bevins worked as a foreign correspondent based in Brazil for the Los Angeles Times. In 2017 he moved to Jakarta and began covering Southeast Asia for The Washington Post.