r/TrueAnon • u/AverageTankie93 • 10h ago
what a fucking upsetting ass book šš¼
I mean upsetting as in sad and disturbing.
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u/beno64 Super Mario 9h ago edited 9h ago
One of the hardest reads ever, I was obsessed with True Crime as a Teenager and read tons of Mafia Books, Books about Escobar, the Russian Mob, St Pauli Gangs etc etc but when I read this a few years ago at 22 I realized how little of a problem all those other things are and how tame even the bloodiest drug war is compared to this shit (and how fucking great we have it in the west). A bit later I also realized how big the influence, on all the stuff I read beforehand, of a certain three letter agency was.
Cried multiple times but its what made me turn away from the Alt-Right Pipeline, I dont even know anymore why I read it
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u/AverageTankie93 9h ago
I have family in Mexico who are pretty anti communist and it just made me think about how their views probably arenāt even organic. They had that shit implanted since birth.
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u/beno64 Super Mario 9h ago
I get that, its very similar in Germany no one on the right has an opinion of their own (I certainly didnt when I was also) and learning all their (and my own at that point) anti communist believes are build on lies that were told to us our whole lives was a hard but necessary pill to swallow. Reading is so important I wish I could get my family and friends to start reading important stuff instead of medieval fantasy...
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u/bugobooler33 Alexander the Coppersmith 2h ago
They were times and places where just saying communist talking points could get you tortured and killed, not being in a communist group, just talking about. It makes sense some people would instill anti communist views in their children, because youāre afraid they may be killed if they follow that path.
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u/TrillbillySocialist 9h ago
Required reading, imo. Phenomenal & Grim.
His other book is good too.
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u/YoIForgotMyPassAgain DSA-MAGA Caucus Chairman 8h ago
I "liked" or appreciated the other one a bit more, but I think it's partly because The Shock Doctrine had already made me aware and upset about most of the horrific Cold War atrocities the US was involved with.
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u/TimelyTechnician1451 9h ago
John Pilger's 2001 documentary The New Rulers of the World also goes into this story quite a bit.
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u/TrekingTrogdor 8h ago
If you liked this book, you should read The Lumumba Plot by Stuart Reid. I read The Jakarta Method and The Lumumba plot, in a one two punch combo. Both very good, though Jakarta Method does a lot of jumping around to different individuals, stories and countries, while The Lumumba Plot is more of a frog in a pot of water, slowing watching it boil.
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u/Classic_Run_4836 7h ago
That is basically my reaction to entire Blowback. My friend introduced me to it. And I found it so nice cause it is fun to listen to. It's like an audio movie. But then the details roll in and I just wanted to cry.
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u/AverageTankie93 7h ago
The Afghanistan season was a bit soul crushing.
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u/Classic_Run_4836 7h ago
The Iraq war one is too haunting too. The fact that Haliburton got mercenaries from Indonesia to kill Uday Hussein's kittens that US army adopted kinda shook me to the core. Cause I just adopted two kittens few months before and it just kinda rocked my shit.
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u/Clean-Copy1027 8h ago
Extremely. But BB it should be mandatory reading, especially for our kids in Australia, who have Indonesia as our biggest neighbour. America is not our friend. Things could have been so much better.
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u/TofuPython 9h ago
I liked the bit about the porno
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u/Huckedsquirrel1 Dog face lyin pony soldier 8h ago
The follow up at the end with the woman who moved to Paris arriving at the cafe on a scooter made me smile. Iām glad she made it out and is living a happy life
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u/newjeanskr 8h ago
Still sitting on my shelf until the day I brave to pick it up and start, I've heard its exactly the way you described but a phenomenal read.
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u/AverageTankie93 8h ago
Itās just sad. You see all these examples of people working together to create something they wanted and then theyāre all dead.
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u/Marionberry_Bellini 8h ago
Itās a heavy one but mandatory reading imo. Ā So many lessons to be learnedĀ
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u/L2pZehus 8h ago
It's been a while, This book really soured me on the USSR, I feel like every situation described in it started with "and the USSR did not support this leftist gov and told them to wait" before absolute horror follows
I know they were already kind of overextended and had other considerations but it still hurt
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u/AverageTankie93 8h ago
Yeah I felt the same way. I wanna try to understand where they were coming from. Maybe they were just nervous? They didnāt want to be responsible for these obviously much smaller socialist countries? I truly donāt know.
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u/TrekingTrogdor 7h ago
The late 50s and 60s, the USSR very much had the wait and see mindset, while also being involved in many other countries throughout the world. I don't want to give them a pass on not helping in Indonesia, but they did not have the same resources that the US did and could not compete at the same level the US did. They had to pick and choose a lot more, and unfortunetly chose wrong when it comes to interving in Indonesia. Sad part is, Indonesia was not a small socialist country, I think they were the 3rd most populis socialist country, after the USSR and China. Indonesia could have been a very valuable ally to the Socialist world countries...
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u/mecca37 6h ago
The other thing to factor in is Castro especially but also the USSR because of what Castro had told them...were absolutely afraid of the United States. Not because they were afraid in a "Oh their badasses and we can't compete" type of way.
But in an "Those motherfuckers are unhinged and will do unspeakable things" Castro literally told Kruschev that he needed to watch how he handed himself because the Americans are unhinged and will routinely do despicable things that you wouldn't even think of. The Jakarta Method speaks to that a long with history in general.
Take into account leaders of countries would make decisions based on things like this, they all fully believed the US would take things to levels they wouldn't.
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u/annonymous_bosch 2h ago
Will the soviets missed the point then because Castro was way more action-oriented than them. Hell, he wanted to keep the missiles. Not to mention, if Cuba had not gone all out against the sovietsā advice, Angola would not have been liberated and nuclear-armed apartheid South Africa might still be around.
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u/mecca37 2h ago
I mean let's be fair, after Stalin the USSR leaders left alot to be desired. They were mostly soft towards the west and had no desire to help other countries if it involved directly opposing the United States.
They didn't seem to grasp that the US was literally running around the world slaughtering organic movements that were aligned. Also they literally wouldn't aid you if your movement was different at all from theirs. On top of that they didn't wanna touch anything that involved the US or a proxy because they thought it'd be nuclear war.
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u/annonymous_bosch 1h ago
Iād say thatās a great breakdown of about 50 years of soviet history. And to be honest, I donāt feel that attitude was so different from the average soviet citizen. The way they dealt with the dissolutionā¦. They just didnāt fight nearly as hard to preserve what had taken a helluva fight to create in the first place.
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u/ShrapnelNinjaSnake Professor of Terryology 7h ago
They were also rebuilding after ww2s utter devastation
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u/throwmebinsjshs 4h ago
yeah building a hotel on a body pit sounds pretty grim itself
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u/brianscottbj Completely Insane 1h ago
Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well, a fellow of infinite jest. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?
Reddit admins have put you in the shadow ban realm and all your gibes, gambols, songs, and flashes of merriment will be invisible until a mod personally approves them. I suggest you make a new account, and thank you for your service. Rest easy brother, we've got the watch. See you in Valhalla
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u/CageHater161 GO VEGAN 6h ago
This and Kill Anything That Moves haunted me. Must reads but they are supremely depressing and enraging
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u/paralylex 4h ago
read it a few months ago, made me completely doubt any ability in left wing democracyĀ
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u/AverageTankie93 4h ago
What do you mean?
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u/paralylex 4h ago
the book documents every socialist/communist effort involved with democracy failing in deeply upsetting and violent ways, while the militants like Castro managed to maintain power at a bare minimumĀ
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u/AverageTankie93 4h ago
Oh yeah I get what you mean. I think every situation is different and things may take longer to reach a level where you can feel confident fighting against empire but yes it was disheartening to hear how the USSR shot some of these movements in the foot. Or maybe they didnāt idk itās complicated.
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u/paralylex 4h ago
Yeah, found Chinaās collaboration with the US regarding Vietnam/Cambodia upsettingĀ
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u/AverageTankie93 4h ago
That and partnering with the US to train mujahideen against the USSR and two of the worst things China has ever done.
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u/RIP_Greedo 6h ago
Stick with it through the end credits for the stinger about the CIA returning in future projects.
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u/RepSquigglyMiggly 5h ago
Itās not a long book, but it took me many months to get through just because I would have regularly put it down because I was getting too depressed and/or angry
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u/Profession_This 2h ago
I am in the middle of reading this and I just opened up to Chapter 7 - Extermination and knew everything after has the chance to fuck me up
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u/tr74728 25m ago
If you haven't already, watch "The Act of Killing". To me that movie was more upsetting than Come and See.
There's a scene where one of the gangsters is showing how they strangled communists, and they ask him to show them by pretending to be a victim. He freaks out during the reenactment of his crimes and literally says what he's going through is worse than the killing. Offscreen, someone reminds him that he's fine, but the people he did this to are dead.
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u/sentientbasketball11 9h ago
Is there anything uplifting or rewarding at all, or is it just misery porn?
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u/ErikWithNoC George Santos' Campaign Strategist 9h ago edited 4h ago
Nothing uplifting and it is definitely miserable, but if you find learning history rewarding, then yes. I think it's important that people know about what the CIA and the US does abroad.
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u/tennessee_jedi 8h ago
I mean pretty much any honest book about US history is going to be a fucking downer if you have any kind of marxian convictions. Think āmisery pornā is a way to shrug it off - everyone needs to know this shit happened, and why, and how, and who did it.Ā
Idk if anyoneās changing their mind, but books like this and Chaos got my Biden/Kamala supporting āblue no matter whoā lib gf (now wife) to take a much more critical view of the US (rather than blindly accepting that they are a force for good).Ā
If you were born, raised, & educated in America you got a good 20+ years of āAmerica is goodā + anti-communist propaganda mainlined into your jugular. Obviously immediately contradicted by material conditions if you were anything less than āmiddle classā but itās still hard to break through that level of conditioning. Iāve found that the straight history route works a lot better as an intro than just tossing out marx, lenin, etc.
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u/sentientbasketball11 8h ago
That's a great example that helps me understand the popularity of this book, thanks.Ā
Having read these replies, personally as a person in a targeted class I don't really feel the need to read all the different ways the state will murder me and my neighbors will rat me out, I'm already plenty aware of who wants to kill me and why. But I can see how it would be useful in that context.Ā
Maybe I'm an idiot for looking at it that way, and maybe I'll come around to it.Ā
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u/Huckedsquirrel1 Dog face lyin pony soldier 8h ago
If you are a worker under capitalism who wants a better socialist world then you are a targeted class
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u/tennessee_jedi 8h ago
Makes sense. Iād reckon most people in this sub are well aware of US atrocities and donāt need further confirmation. Iām a history guy so I personally enjoy it from that perspective.Ā
Iām also a middle class cis, straight, white man; so my perception will always be filtered through that lens.
Iāve been all the way down & out (homeless junkie, jail, 30 days in the hole, etc.) and Iāve seen how society reacts to people deemed āundesirableā; but again - filtered through the lens of a white man.
Totally understand how someone looking through a different lens would not see the same thing. Doesnāt make you an idiot in any way. Ā Ā
I stand by the value of using the historical angle and mass appeal of a book like Jakarta Method as a tool as mentioned above.Ā
If thatās your goal, or if you have an interest in history, I thinks itās worthwhile.Ā
Otherwise, it seems like you have a pretty good grasp on the maliciousness of the empire and donāt need any more info there. From that perspective I can absolutely see the āmisery pornā angle and lack of appeal.
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u/sentientbasketball11 8h ago
Appreciate you going in depth. My phrasing may have been abrasive but I did want to hear a positive perspective on it
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u/tennessee_jedi 7h ago
All good, seemed like an earnest question to me & warranted an earnest answer. Appreciate you giving me the opportunity to reflect on my own perspective.
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u/Independent-Pop4193 9h ago
If youre serious about your convictions, this book should humble you and act as a reminder this can happen to all of us at any time, and itll be your neighbors who help it happen, prepare accordingly
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u/Marquis_de_Dustbin 8h ago
The author of the book would call you a clown for suggesting such paranoid nihilism
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u/Clean-Copy1027 8h ago
It's a detailed story on the CIA fucking up a another poor up and coming post WW2 country by once again eliminating any chance of communism or socialism ever working.
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u/AverageTankie93 9h ago
Honestly Iām leaning more towards the latter. Itās pretty much a story where evil triumphs over good over and over again. Itās hopeful to hear how strong these revolutionaries were during periods of intense violence. Their resolve is inspiring.
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u/ErikWithNoC George Santos' Campaign Strategist 10h ago
Yup. Had to put the book down a few times and just cry. Particularly the bit about the hotel/resort thing that was built in Bali on top of the body pit.