John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“Bolivia’s White Supremacist Coup Regime Determined to Quench Resistance in Blood
"The fury of Bolivians cheated of their elected government has to be subdued with terror"
While I am in sympathy with much of this article, I very much object to the following:
"The one time there is an actual white supremacist takeover the liberals predictably line up behind it"
First, the word "liberal" is misused so often today, it is becoming meaningless, and this quote represents just another misuse.
No liberal can possibly support the coup. Liberals don’t ignore democratic principles, they are defined by them.
The fact is that there are almost no liberals in the United States and in many places under its dominance. But isn't that what you expect to find at the heart of an empire? Its people all nurtured on twenty-four-hour-a-day political cant and corporate press propaganda?
America is a place, after all, where a football player can't even make a brief, respectful gesture of protest against police violence without literally being booed and heckled, even insulted by high officials.
Empire- and Pentagon-loyalists like Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden and most of the Democratic contenders are not liberals, no matter what views they may hold about social programs.
In fact, America’s political party system leaves almost no room for careers in opposition to empire and the crushing weight of the military and security services.
By definition, empire and the military represent the antithesis of democratic and human values. They represent telling others what to do and using force if they don’t.
Second, we have had other "white supremacist" takeovers. Very much so.
As in Ukraine. That coup could not have happened without the work of Right-wing extremists like the Azov Battalion.
America’s covert support of such outfits in 2014 was publicly displayed by photos of America’s appointed Proconsul to the Coup Government, Joe Biden, smiling broadly, while vigorously shaking hands with the commander of that dreadful outfit.
You could argue that all American-induced coups and interventions abroad are of that nature, even if some of the actors used inside the target country are not white. You do have to use the material at hand for a coup, don’t you?
The guys running the show from Washington could very much be viewed as sympathetic to many of the world’s "white supremacists." Just look at photos of the faces gathered around the Cabinet table or sitting in attendance at the Oval Office.
And the long-term record supports that impression. Until the actions of others in the world made it no longer sustainable, Washington vigorously defended and cooperated with the former white Nationalist government of South Africa, just as today it vigorously supports the brutality of Israel’s apartheid government.
Washington has had a hand in many coups and interventions against genuinely democratic governments over the years, but they were democracies with either “non-white” majorities or major “non-white” components of support, as in Egypt or Iran or Libya or Guatemala or Panama or Chile or Haiti.
