Democratically elected leftist president who enacted a minimum wage and was going to redistribute land owned by The United Fruit Company to the people, since they owned most of the nation’s land.
Couped with the support of the CIA and replaced by a dictator who went on to lead a genocide of the native people.
Hence why I said leftist, yes. It was an example of what happens to any leftist government, including but not limited to socialists.
Anyone who goes against the interests of capitalists is scary to them. They say (similar to what you said) that they must always fail. If this were true, they wouldn’t be so scared.
It’s important to take the broader context into account. This happened at the start of the Cold War, so anything that looked remotely connected to the USSR was suspect. Árbenz legalized a communist party, and that seems to be what pushed Eisenhower over the edge.
It had nothing to do with the actual ideology of the Guatamalan government, but suspected ties to USSR. At the time, “communism” meant “USSR,” and anyone that was sympathetic to communism in any form was suspected of being in league with the USSR.
If the Guatamalan Revolution happened just 10 years or so later, the US probably would’ve been an ally instead of an enemy of someone like Árbenz.
Lol reread your comment and tell me you aren’t at least slightly influenced by propaganda.
You’re literally giving a pass, an asterix to something you just don’t wanna agree to.
If socialism has only existed for a short time, and really only considered during the cold war then has it really ever been actually tried since outside powers kneecap it at every turn?
Then I wanna ask, how many died from the introduction of capitalism/destruction of imperial European powers? We have no record of it but I’d bet my britches it’s a lot of people
The justification doesn’t really matter. The point is this is the situation the makes “all socialist countries are bad” a belief people hold. It’s wrong. It’s “the only socialist countries who could survive capitalist intervention also did bad things. The ones that didn’t last are forgotten and we can’t know how they’d fare.”
The reason why the Cold War was happening at all was because the US shoved themselves into a role of preventing “communism,” which extended to any leftist government, from spreading. They needed to ensure socialism couldn’t achieve its goals, because if it could then other capitalist countries would see the benefits and follow suit. Obviously the owner class in capitalist nations couldn’t let that happen. You can even see it even within the US with the dismantling of leftist policy.
Socialism isn’t bad. It’s what capitalists forced socialism to be in order to survive that’s bad. Capitalists are the issue with socialism. To use it as an argument for capitalism seems pretty fucked up. It also ignores all the harm done by capitalism. This mostly happens outside of the rich countries though, so most of us don’t interact with it.
How about Guatemala.
Democratically elected leftist president who enacted a minimum wage and was going to redistribute land owned by The United Fruit Company to the people, since they owned most of the nation’s land.
Couped with the support of the CIA and replaced by a dictator who went on to lead a genocide of the native people.
For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America
Arévalo wasn’t socialist, he was actually anti-communist and generally pro-capitalist. He had way more overlap with FDR than Stalin or Castro.
That wasn’t “capitalists keeping the socialists down,” it was cronyism and FUD from United Fruit Company, which Eisenhower bought into.
Hence why I said leftist, yes. It was an example of what happens to any leftist government, including but not limited to socialists.
Anyone who goes against the interests of capitalists is scary to them. They say (similar to what you said) that they must always fail. If this were true, they wouldn’t be so scared.
It’s important to take the broader context into account. This happened at the start of the Cold War, so anything that looked remotely connected to the USSR was suspect. Árbenz legalized a communist party, and that seems to be what pushed Eisenhower over the edge.
It had nothing to do with the actual ideology of the Guatamalan government, but suspected ties to USSR. At the time, “communism” meant “USSR,” and anyone that was sympathetic to communism in any form was suspected of being in league with the USSR.
If the Guatamalan Revolution happened just 10 years or so later, the US probably would’ve been an ally instead of an enemy of someone like Árbenz.
Lol reread your comment and tell me you aren’t at least slightly influenced by propaganda.
You’re literally giving a pass, an asterix to something you just don’t wanna agree to.
If socialism has only existed for a short time, and really only considered during the cold war then has it really ever been actually tried since outside powers kneecap it at every turn?
Then I wanna ask, how many died from the introduction of capitalism/destruction of imperial European powers? We have no record of it but I’d bet my britches it’s a lot of people
The justification doesn’t really matter. The point is this is the situation the makes “all socialist countries are bad” a belief people hold. It’s wrong. It’s “the only socialist countries who could survive capitalist intervention also did bad things. The ones that didn’t last are forgotten and we can’t know how they’d fare.”
The reason why the Cold War was happening at all was because the US shoved themselves into a role of preventing “communism,” which extended to any leftist government, from spreading. They needed to ensure socialism couldn’t achieve its goals, because if it could then other capitalist countries would see the benefits and follow suit. Obviously the owner class in capitalist nations couldn’t let that happen. You can even see it even within the US with the dismantling of leftist policy.
Socialism isn’t bad. It’s what capitalists forced socialism to be in order to survive that’s bad. Capitalists are the issue with socialism. To use it as an argument for capitalism seems pretty fucked up. It also ignores all the harm done by capitalism. This mostly happens outside of the rich countries though, so most of us don’t interact with it.