The Story is US Imperialism

Settler Nation

Photograph Source: Darin Russell – CC BY 2.0

As we continue to battle the police and those who depend on their “protection” in the U.S., including the major businesses who donate to anti-racist initiatives all the while continuing to reap gargantuan profits off our labor and limited consumer choices, there are thousands of Bolivians also standing up against a far-right wing government and its acolytes. In the last few weeks alone, there have been countless protests across Bolivia, led by indigenous Bolivians, demanding new elections take place and that the right wing abdicate their power in the government.

The right-wing have been in power in Bolivia since late last year, when a pro-U.S. movement, like a demonic force having been summoned, violently overthrew the democratically elected administration and the country’s first and only indigenous president, Evo Morales. Since the coup, the right-wing regime has continued to be complicit in major human rights violations, including the repression of Left-wing supporters of Morales and of his political party, MAS.

Since being sworn in, the fiercely anti-socialist Áñez has presided over the detention of hundreds of opponents, the muzzling of journalists and a “national pacification” campaign that has left at least 31 people dead, according to the national ombudsman and human rights groups. Washington has yet to comment.

Similar to what has been occurring within the U.S., the right wing in Bolivia have sustained their rule by stitching together a coalition across segments of its middle classes, its business class, and among right-wing activists, bent on subjugating Bolivians, especially indigenous Bolivians, for the sake of Christendom. Similar to its counterparts within the U.S., this coalition shares an intense disgust of poor and working-class people and desire a social order in which a handful of economic elites and their loyal allies dominate over others for the sake of preserving such things as property rights and the right for businesses to “thrive”.

None of this is coincidental. The reason why we’re facing similar enemies in the U.S. as in Bolivia and in countries across the world, like Brazil, the Philippines, India and Pakistan and in Israel, has a lot to do with the fact that all of these countries, and more, have been shaped by U.S. imperialists. Because of the influence of U.S. imperialism, at “home” and abroad, similar enemies have emerged globally. Hence, the struggle for liberation is global.

Since its inception as a “nation”, the U.S. has been an imperial project through its stealing of land from peoples marked as “savage”. The thirst for land and resources, however, didn’t stop at what we now perceive to be its formal borders. Instead, those at the helm of empire, especially its major business and bankers, viewed the rest of the world as the next “frontier” for them to “tame”. Over time, the U.S. has produced a nexus of repression and right-wing authoritarianism across the world.

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Sudip Bhattacharya serves as a co-chair of the Political Education Committee at Central Jersey DSA and is a writer based in New Jersey, having been published in Current Affairs, Cosmonaut, New Politics, Reappropriate, and The Aerogram, among other outlets. Prior to pursuing a PhD in Political Science at Rutgers University, he had worked full-time as a reporter across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

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