What a book to have gotten into over the last couple months - fuck America, of course.

The tiniest of silver linings is that, through reading this book, we now have a better perspective on these sorts of actions by the US, how the US has done things historically, and how these periods are somewhat cyclical and also signify the general attitude of American imperialism. Though, this time, Palestine was the key mask-off moment that let us all know what this new stage of imperial decline will entail (wildly illegal and cruel bombing campaigns and invasions as the financial tools of sanctions, tariffs, and blockades begin to fail).

Imperialism Reading Group Ping for Chapter 11!

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It’s fine, I think a lot of people have gotten busy as fuck - including myself, though I’m also just consciously spending less time online for my mental and physical health.

It’s likely that we’ll take a more extended break after this, perhaps a couple months, both because the news is going to get pretty dire pretty soon I think and I probably won’t want to read general books and instead want to drill down into specifics, and also to give myself (and everybody else) time to properly recharge.

Next thread is up.

Imperialism Reading Group Ping for Chapter 10!

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Imperialism Reading Group Ping for Chapter 9!

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Next thread is up!

Happy Holidays!

Imperialism Reading Group Ping for Chapter 8!

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Next megathread is up!

Imperialism Reading Group Ping for Chapter 7!

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Next week’s megathread is up here.

Imperialism Reading Group Ping!

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Next thread is up!

Next thread is up!

Imperialism Reading Group ping!

In Chapter 5, Nixon and Kissinger arrive on the stage, ready to overthrown democratic governments across Latin America. Allende takes power in Chile democratically, and his successful socialist policies create an enormous problem for both the Cold War propaganda narrative against communists as being fundamentally opposed to democracy, and also for American control over the continent more generally as Allende opposes various American groups. In particular, Allende’s efforts to take back the excess profit stolen from their country by Western corporations, as well as the proliferation of computing technology (vis a vis Cybersyn in Chile) earn him the personal ire of Nixon and Kissinger, who follow the anti-Arbenz framework to overthrow Allende from within with a massive covert campaign to sew fear, disorder, and dissent. Allende does not take the advice of Castro, and his fall is rapid and brutal because of it.

This, in addition to the ongoing dramatic failures in Vietnam, cause a domestic and global anti-war movement to rise, but despite fears from within the American establishment, its power overall appears limited to a degree of harm reduction and the revealing of American plots and campaigns via e.g. the Church Committee, rather than a movement that meaningfully provides room for anti-American/democratic/socialists governments to rise to power. All these events are also taking place simultaneously with the efforts to divide the USSR and China, though as both of those countries’ influence is fairly limited in Latin America at this time, this dynamic is not that relevant to this particular story (at least, not yet).

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Imperalism Reading Group ping!

In Chapter 4, the beginning of the Cold War (and especially the Chinese Revolution), as well as the creation of the CIA, marks a shift from the Good Neighbour policy. The wave of constitutional democracies are gradually overthrown as the US seeks more pliant regimes that are entirely anti-communist and thereby pro-imperialist, with Arbenz’s Guetamala successfully couped after a propaganda and terror campaign. Meanwhile, Cuba’s Batista is himself overthrown by Castro, who successful resistance (Bay of Pigs) and popular support providing a beacon of resistance around which Latin American revolutionaries can be guided and aided by. Kennedy’s inauguration, despite the rhetoric of progress, institutes only a new wave of anti-democratic terror and kidnappings throughout the continent.

This continues the cycles of the US growing heavy-handed, inspiring pro-democracy insurgents to resist them, which then causes major problems for the US both materially and legally, which causes the US to back off a bit, and then new people come to power who do not understand the lessons of a decade prior. All the while, hundreds of thousands of people are killed and many millions more live in fear of America-backed death squads.

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Next thread is up!

I’m always on guard for the present-day parallels while reading through these books, and for this week’s chapter, all I can really say is: imagine the present day US allowing countries around the world more political/economic sovereignty? Such a voluntary imperial decline wouldn’t necessarily have to be all that terrible for everybody involved if it was managed - though a LOT of capitalists would still lose a LOT of money. Of course, such a hypothetical, while interesting to consider, isn’t all that helpful as the US administration regardless of party seems to pick a different country each week to threaten with invasion or sanctions.

@[email protected] In response to your comment last thread - any thread can be used to discuss any chapter discussed so far. In general, I wouldn’t really advise people commenting in the older threads as you’re unlikely to get anybody but me reading and responding to them and it’s harder to moderate old threads, but there’s nothing really wrong with doing so. Feel free to post your links here too!

Imperalism Reading Group ping!

In Chapter 3, we see the United States caught in the mire of the Great Depression at almost the same time as the (quite anti-American) Mexican Revolution, and the failures of their military intervention in Nicaragua. Roosevelt is forced to take a more neighbourly policy of non-intervention and allow a degree of independence across the continent, lest the upstart American Empire meet the same end as the European empires. Such a relationship would not last too far beyond World War 2, but this period was nonetheless a key development in the concept of soft power.

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