The CIA's Secret Global War Against the Left

[tecelote]

By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin

01 December 20

Forty-five years ago, under a cloak of secrecy, Operation Condor was officially launched: a global campaign of violent repression against the Latin American left by the region’s quasi-fascist military dictatorships. The US government not only knew about the program — it helped to engineer it.

In Buenos Aires, a former Chilean general returns home, opens his garage door, and is blasted thirteen feet in the air when his car explodes, incinerating his wife. A conservative opponent of the country’s military dictatorship and his wife take an afternoon walk on the streets of Rome and are swiftly gunned down. On a rainy autumn morning, a car blows up in the middle of Washington, DC’s Embassy Row, killing two of the three inside: a leader of Chile’s opposition in exile and his newlywed American friend.

These were just some of the most prized scalps claimed by Operation Condor, officially inaugurated forty-five years and two days ago. With South America in the grip of military dictatorships and rocked by the same kinds of social and political movements that were demanding change all over the world in the 1960s and ’70s, a handful of the continent’s governments made a pact to work together to roll back the rising tide of “subversives” and “terrorists.”

What followed was a secret, global campaign of violent repression that spanned not just countries, but continents, and featured everything from abduction and torture to murder. To say it was known about by the US government, which backed these regimes, is an understatement: though even this simple fact was denied at the time, years of investigations and document releases since then mean that we now know the CIA and top-ranking US officials supported, laid the groundwork for, and were even directly involved in Condor’s crimes.

Zooming out, Condor was hardly some uniquely shocking case of anticommunist paranoia spiraling out of control. As its connections to anticommunist terror in Europe have become clearer, it looks more like a particularly successful example of the covert war the US national security state had set into motion all over the world against democracy and the Left, a war that saw it get into bed with fascists and that, in some cases, arguably constituted genocide. It was the system working exactly as intended, in other words, and a stark reminder of the lengths the global centers of power will go to keep things the way they are.

World War Three

The middle of the twentieth century saw a flourishing of people’s movements in Latin America that threatened to upend the rigid hierarchies of the hemisphere: feminist and workers’ movements, movements for indigenous rights, peasant-led movements for agrarian reform, and leftist movements, to name a few. Naturally, they had to be stopped.


Read the Full Article:
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/66511-focus-the-cias-secret-global-war-against-the-left

[rickyhall]

1. My neighbor's family left El Salvador in the 70's because of that shit.

[SamKnause]

2. The United States has never been what it has advertised itself to be.

Thanks for the article.

[rso]

3. CIA

I entered the Foreign Service in 1978 and had initial assignments in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. At that time, at least in Latin America, the Carter Administration made the human rights issue a major factor in our bilateral relationships. I recall being in Guatemala in 1981 as Reagan was taking over, and the local right wing establishment hired a marimba band to play in front of the US Embassy in order to celebrate what they thought would be a suspension of our emphasis on human rights. To my pleasant surprise, the Reagan State Department continued to emphasize human rights, greatly disappointing the extreme right in Central America.

[Budi]

4. Consider the source . Branko Marcetic, writes for Jacobin.

Branko Marcetic, writes for Jacobin.

He holds nothing back as he Trashes Joe Biden & President Obama, along with the Democratic Party.

You can find more of his mocking Obama's Black race, along with a veritible anti-Democratic 'free speech' smorgasbord at his twitter.

I'll let you find it. I would never post a link to that kind of worthless demeaning mockery of some of the World's greatest Democratic leaders.

Branko Marcetic, writes for Jacobin.

True colors are revealed.

[friendly_iconoclast]

5. A 'stopped clock' moment for him, then-he's not wrong about Operation Condor.

[Budi]

6. His vile racist refs to Obama are enough.

I question everything he writes from there on.

He's shown himself.

[friendly_iconoclast]

7. I'll happily stipulate he's a shit- but he's a shit who is correct *in this one instance*

However uncomfortable it may be for some, the fact remains: Truth is not the sole province of the virtuous

[Budi]

8. He's a racist.

Pitiful that suddenly racism towards any person of color, much less President Obama is somehow excusable.

This author should be banned from DU

[Budi]

10. Haaaahaaahaaaa...😅

Feel better?

[friendly_iconoclast]

12. Are you defending Operation Condor, or just really like the genetic fallacy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy

The genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins or fallacy of virtue) is a fallacy of irrelevance that is based solely on someone's or something's history, origin, or source rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context. In other words, a claim is ignored in favor of attacking or championing its source.

The fallacy therefore fails to assess the claim on its merit. The first criterion of a good argument is that the premises must have bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim in question. Genetic accounts of an issue may be true, and they may help illuminate the reasons why the issue has assumed its present form, but they are not conclusive in determining its merits...