Thread by @InsideEdition

For our 2nd edition of #IETheIssue, we’re examining the modern misinformation landscape. In this piece, we report on how the CIA used disinformation to support the violent “Jakarta Method” in order to influence global politics. THREAD:
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1/ On Oct. 1, 1965, in Jakarta, Indonesia, military officials said they believed their superior officers were organizing a coup, and so they kidnapped some of them.
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2/ Six generals ended up dead. A general named Suharto immediately took control of the country against orders from then-President Sukarno. 
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3/ Suharto’s actions would eventually lead to the mass murder of at least one million people in the country who were accused of being communists, with the assistance of United States CIA, in what became known as the “Jakarta Method.”
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4/ “He immediately gets the full backing of the United States materially and ideologically as he begins to spread a story that the Indonesian Communist Party was responsible for this and had engaged in horrible torture of these six generals.” – @vinncent
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5/ “The U.S. also pressured Western media outlets to spread this story that the Indonesian Communist Party, specifically the women's wing of the party…”
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6/ “…at the time one of largest feminist organizations in the world, had taken these generals and performed a bizarre kind of tantric, satanic torture ritual in which they literally castrated these Indonesian men and threw them into a well.” – @vinncent
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7/ Suharto then spread the message that the PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party, needed to be eradicated. In the following months, millions of people were arrested and accused of being leftists. Prisoners were then executed and thrown into rivers.
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8/ “For the other side of the world's political spectrum, the side of the radical anticommunists and the U.S.-allied dictators, this was an inspirational achievement. This was something that they could do in their own backyards, and…”
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9/ “…not only would it work, as it clearly worked in Indonesia, they would get the full backing of the United States as they attempted to launder their own reputations afterward.” – @vinncent
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10/ @vinncent says in at least 20 countries, U.S. allies employed “the intentional mass murder of civilians in the construction of a U.S. backed authoritarian capitalist regime…”
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11/ “…the Jakarta Method was such an important part of the way that the Cold War was won that it profoundly shaped the world that we live in today.”
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For the full story How the US Used Disinformation and the ‘Jakarta Method’ to Change the World for #IETheIssue:
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