1965 Indonesian Coup and Mass Killings

The 1965 Indonesian Coup and Mass Killings are a recurring historical example in Noam Chomsky’s critique of selective moral judgment in international politics. He describes a U.S.-supported army taking control of Indonesia and the subsequent killing of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly landless peasants. The episode’s significance in his account lies not only in the scale of the violence but in the contrasting Western response: celebration at the time, followed by the event’s disappearance from public memory.

The violence and its international setting

Chomsky presents the killings as following the army’s takeover of Indonesia in 1965, with U.S. support. The victims, he emphasizes, were predominantly landless peasants who had done the United States no harm. He says the CIA compared the slaughter to crimes committed by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, underscoring that its gravity was recognized even within U.S. institutions.

The episode is introduced not as an isolated Indonesian account but as evidence in a wider argument about how powerful states and their publics perceive violence. Chomsky says the killings were described in detail and met with unrestrained enthusiasm in the West, including in the national press. That reaction stands in stark contrast to the later treatment of the episode: in revisiting Indonesia, he says the memory had effectively been erased.

Public celebration and selective memory

Chomsky brings up Indonesia while answering a question about anger toward the United States after the September 11 attacks. His comparison reverses the perspective of that question. While images of people celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center could fuel demands for revenge, he argues that Western audiences had themselves celebrated immense violence against people who posed no harm to them.

The Indonesian killings also recur in his response to talk of a “clash of civilizations.” He points out that the world’s most populous Islamic state was Indonesia, a country the United States had favored since Suharto came to power in 1965. In his account, that favor persisted despite the army’s mass killings and Suharto’s record of murder, torture, and other abuses. The phrase “our friend,” as Chomsky reports the Clinton administration describing Suharto, crystallizes the tension between the language of alliance and the violence tolerated in an ally.

Role in Chomsky’s argument

For Chomsky, the episode exposes a double standard: violence by an adversary is condemned, while comparable or greater violence by a supported government can be welcomed, excused, or forgotten. He places Indonesia alongside the U.S. war against Nicaragua as an example of Western celebration of devastation inflicted abroad. The comparison does not make the cases identical; it shows how public approval and political memory can depend on the identity of the perpetrator and the victim.

The Indonesian case therefore challenges the idea that political violence can be understood through a simple opposition between Western and Islamic civilizations. Chomsky uses it to direct attention instead to alliances, state power, and the unequal application of moral standards. Its recurring place in his discussion turns the forgotten killings into a test of whether judgments about violence are applied consistently.