The Jakarta Method w/ Vincent Bevins

On this edition of Parallax Views, in 1965 and '66 massacres occured in Indonesia. It was, simply put, a coup that led to a changing of the guard in regards to those who held power in Indonesia's leadership. And it was by movers and shakers in Washington, D.C. Decades later a full, crystal clear picture of what happened to Indonesia in late September and early October of 1965 still eludes us.

In The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World, journalist Vincent Bevins, who has written for such publications as The New York Times and The Washington Post, doesn't necessarily answer all the lingering questions that remains about the Indonesian massacres and the U.S. involvement in them. He does, however, raise even more startling questions that should shake readers to their very core and make them reconsider the Cold War, the CIA, the Third World, 20th century history, and the world we inherited from the century past.

In this conversation we discuss many of the major themes an details of The Jakarta Method as well as talking about Vincent's time in Brazil where he witnessed the rise of the controversial Jair Bolsonaro. He fills us in on what the Third World Movement was, the struggle of nations like Indonesia to gain independence after WWII, and how D.C leadership, like the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover, held a paranoid view of communism during the "Red Scare" that would have an effect on the entire world. We discuss the work of two CIA figures, Howard Jones and Frank Wisner (as well as Wisner's "Gang of Weirdos"), and their role in Indonesia as well as how JFK figures into the story of the U.S.'s relationship to Indonesia in the mid-20th century. And, of course, we discuss the events leading up to the Indonesian massacre of '65/'66, the questions they've left behind, what came after those massacre (including in places like South and Central America), and what it all means in regards to the present day. All that and more on this extremely fascinating edition of Parallax Views.

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