Bevins’ reconstruction of US-orchestrated violence and terrorism elicits a mix of disbelief, horror, and outrage over the role played by this imperialist ‘superpower’ in the collapse of progressive, socialist governments which have sprung in the aftermath of the second world war. The global pattern of anticommunism which inspired, up to this day, local despots from the exploiting classes in Third World countries to install themselves as tyrants, of course with the help of the army—in many cases the military itself seizes control of the government—being the United States’ most reliable ally in their anticommunist campaigns across the world, particularly in oppressed and exploited countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, is a product of US neocolonialism. Bevins also points to the historical role of the CIA in implementing this project by spreading anticommunist propaganda, and even overseeing and orchestrating coup d’états against civilian governments whose elected leaders the Washington feel are leaning towards communism even in the slightest of indication.
The book is a heavy, difficult read because of the harrowing details of rape, torture, mass murder, burning of indigenous communities, and the outrageous intervention of the United States in the affairs of countries outside of its borders. It is both enlightening, depressing, and infuriating.
One thing we can learn from the book is the importance of armed struggle in revolution, and in resistance to imperialist superpowers, like the United States. The PKI tried to move and operate within spaces of liberal democracy. Salvador Allende tried to apply democratic socialism in Chile. But regardless of the distinction between those who believed in the primacy of armed struggle and those who chose to rather work within the bourgeois institutions and put primacy on participating in the elections, leftists, socialists, and communists were altogether purged. Only the people’s armed resistance against its local and foreign oppressors would ultimately lead us to victory and bring an end to US imperialism and exploitation.
The leader of the death squad which assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero said that “You can be a Communist even if you personally don’t believe you are a Communist.” (p. 224). Clearly this still rings true in the case of red-tagging and red-baiting spearheaded by the military in the Philippines today. The author later reflects on this: “Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much that the United States said it supported, rather what it really supported—what the rich countries said, rather than what they did. That group was annihilated.” (p. 243)
Jakarta Method is a must read, especially for the people of the Third World. But be prepared for the gory details of the mass murder, the rape, torture, burning of villages, that occured in Jakarta and elsewhere. It almost seemed as if the book was discussing Marcos’ Martial Law. It turns out, as Bevins carefully, but aptly lays out, that there is a global pattern for this anticommunist ideology, and the dictatorships established alongside it. The author put it this way: “For hardened anticommunists around the world, the method behind this ‘savage transformation [of Indonesia from a pro-Chinese policy under Sukarno to a defiantly anti-Communist policy under General Suharto…]’ would soon be seen as an inspiration, a playbook. But how could the international press, and the State Department, remain entirely untroubled by the fact that this was achieved through the mass murder of unarmed civilians? Howard Federspiel, at the State Department, summed up the answer perfectly, ‘No one cared,’ he recalled, ‘as long as they were Communists, they were being butchered.” (p.158)
Ultimately, the book accurately portrays the US as a morally bankrupt neocolonial empire that exploits, terrorizes, and actively blocks the growth of developing nations to maintain their raw material-oriented economies for the benefit, ultimately, of the former. The anticommunists are so violent and purely evil that even the author, however he spews anti-Stalin or anti-Mao rhetoric, acknowledged: “Even the anticommunists’ great enemy, the supposed reason for all this terror, did not deploy this kind of violence. Using numbers compiled by the US-funded Freedom House organization, historian John Coatsworth concluded that from 1960 to 1990, the number of victims of US-backed violence in Latin America ‘vastly exceeded’ the number of people killed in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block over the same period of time.” (p.228)
Fanon in his Wretched of the Earth said that national liberation is always a violent phenomenon. Perhaps we can make sense of that powerful opening sentence by juxtaposing it with Sartre’s preface to the book: “Get this into your head: if violence were only a thing of the future, if exploitation and oppression never existed on earth, perhaps displays of nonviolence might relieve the conflict. But if the entire regime, even your nonviolent thoughts, is governed by a thousand-year old oppression, your passiveness serves no other purpose but to put you on the side of the oppressors.”
May we always remember the victims of US – backed anticommunist violence and repression in Jakarta and elsewhere. May we finally win the people’s war so we can bring justice to the memories of our martyred comrades who have died in the hands of the enemies fighting for the cause of freedom and of a bright, socialist future.
Down with US imperialism!
jktan84 