U.S coup on Bolivia and Future of Imperialism
Liberal groups that expanded especially after 2016, continued their attacks towards imperialist symbols in the recent anti racism protests. Statues were taken down, flags were changing in some states.
If you look at the western media, new generations were quite opposing to imperialism. Was the western world finally getting redeemed from past crimes? Unfortunately I can not be optimistic that way.
Elon Musk and Bolivian Coup
You all recognize Elon Musk at this point. If you follow him on social media, you know his humourous and reckless behaviour. Yet sometimes same behaviours brings him trouble. Especially couple posts he did on twitter lately stirred a lot of backlash.
During Covid-19 quarantine, U.S government was giving stimulus checks to people and nowadays a new one was talked in public. Musk tweeted that “it won’t be in best interests of people”. A follower answered quite heavily;
“You know what was not in the best interest of people? The U.S government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain Lithium there”
Really, a U.S supported coup happened in South America not even a year ago. Neither media outlets care nor “anti imperialistic” protesters. Then what exactly happened in Bolivia? Before getting back to Musk let’s take a look.
There was an election in 20th of October 2019. Evo Morales won the first round easily. Despite his popularity waned slightly in years he was still the most popular candidate and polls seemed to be right. Yet opposition made strong claims of Morales manipulating the results.
When the voice of opposition grew stronger, Morales had to invite U.S controlled “Organization of American States” (OAS) to inspect the election results. Everybody expected OAS to determine if election will go to the second round or not. Yet they did something unexpected. OAS claimed that they spotted election fraud and a new election was needed. Western media reacted to this demand with joy.
From Washington Post to NY Times, liberal or right wing, many media outlets celebrated the “victory for democracy”.
Meanwhile, generals that were conspiring for a coup long before the election who also got trained in School of Americas ( a training camp for South American generals for coup purposes by U.S government) began their action. Morales had to resign on 10th of November and escape the country. To his position, a lesser known far right politician Jeanine Anez has been brought. Even this was enough for some media outlets in the west to convince them as this was not a coup.
“Army has not even declared themselves as head of state, how can we call this a coup?”
In that specific day, a companies stocks went sky high, Elon Musks Teslas. Tesla had opened a factory in Brasil and required much needed lithium for producing electric car batteries. Yet socialist Morales preferred using their resources for the people. When he was overthrown with coup, Teslas stocks got out of hands suddenly.
Months later, we learnt that OAS results were fake. In fact, Evo Morales did not cheated in the elections. Western media went into dead silence. Only NY Times managed to write a piece mentioning failure of OAS results but even them avoided self criticism.
They not only manipulated both American and World public, but also presented a military coup to a socialist leader due to capitalistic motivations as a victory for democracy.
Sad part is that Donald Trump, who get lynched in media for pretty much any reason, barely faced a backlash after Bolivian coup. “Anti Imperialist” generation Z was not really interested in Bolivia. Well, since their organizations were embracing any immigrants coming from countries ruined by U.S, they had a clear conscience.
Meanwhile, chaos continues to rule Bolivia. Native Bolivians are replaced with white christians and the rich. The head of state after coup, Anez is afraid for another election. Scheduled elections were to take place in 3rd of May but it postponed to 18th of October due to Covid-19. Morales’ choice for his own seat in Movement for Socialism Party (MAS) Luis Arce defeating Anez easily in recent polls. Yet I have my doubts on how democratic the elections will be after a military coup anyways.
So here is what happened in Bolivia. I believe now is a good time to return to Elon Musk. His reply to the follower above was even more harsher than him;
“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
Maybe Musk was just joking, maybe not. Honestly, it does not even matter. He deleted this tweet after the backlash but we already have seen the ugly reality of capitalism once again.
Musk was a person who does not really care about what people think about him . Yet there are many others who think like Musk, and benefits from bloody wars of imperialist powers in foreign lands. Unfortunately they do not word what they think or do as openly as Elon Musk. They put a rainbow logo once a year and tweet about “Black Lives Matter”. And all these are enough for western left wing to ignore same companies using child labour in China, benefitting from coups in South America or simply destroying environment.
Woke Imperialism and George W. Bush
The word “Woke” became quite a definitive adjective used to describe people obsessed with identity politics. You know it comes from the movie Matrix, where taking the red pill “wakes” you to ugly reality in front of you. Unfortunately, it had an opposite effect in todays left wing politics. For the future foreign relations of western world, i prefer to use the term “woke imperialism”. Let me explain.
Countless statues were torn down in the latest George Floyd protests against racism. These statues belonged to symbol names of imperialism in the west. Now I would like to ask, how did the anger managed to turn against imperialists from stones and marbles while the ones from flesh and blood are right in front of us?
The architect of the bloodiest imperialist intervention of 21. Century, responsible of half a million dead Iraqi and American people George W. Bush was visiting talk shows laughing and joking around and nobody bat an eye!
I am not even talking about him being protested or anything, many liberals demand a coalition, a common message from ex-presidents including Bush, to critisize Donald Trump since he is the “bigger evil”. It is simply outrageous.
In 2008, a book who asking for Bush to face trials as a war criminal managed to sell 130.000 copies. So what has changed in 12 years that Bush turned into a woke grandpa who paints immigrant portraits from a bloody war criminal?
U.S liberals approach towards Bush actually tells us about the future of American Imperialism. In new age, imperialist powers do not want to invade with their own armies. Giving casualties and the vision of “White man versus Brown man” causes lots of trouble for them back in home.
That is why they need “ good brown man”. They need proxies that will let them build bases for further operations, open their homelands resources and be able to buy weapons from them. And the worst part of all, since this concept puts check marks on the paper of identity politics fetishists, it will not cause a huge backlash in the left wing anymore, maybe even gain some support. Just like it happened in Bolivia… In Syria…
After Trump, I do not know how much power U.S will regain in foreign seas but It’s obvious they will try to overthrow more undesirable governments in future. It is no longer age of imperialism, but it is the age of Woke Imperialism. See you next Sunday on a new article…
