Most dictatorships supported by the USA served US imperialism very well. Latin America was a pro-American continent for many years. Military dictatorships rule with iron fist and used American tanks and machine guns to hunt liberation movements. In Colombia, the corrupt capitalist government is still hunting for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC-EP. This rebel movement is founded in the 60's as a resistance army against the Colombian ruling class. US imperialism is still supporting the corrupt Colombian government. Thanks to FARC-EP crimes against the people of Colombia, the right-wing political parties has been able to win elections, by calling the left-wing of the nation, pro-FARC and anti-democratic. It is also not save for revolutionary socialists to work. Many trade unionists and leftists are still getting murdered in Colombia!
The Republic of Venezuela was a loyal friend of US imperialism until 1999. Carlos Andrés Pérez was a capitalist president who used anti-capitalist rhetoric to win the presidential elections, only to turn capitalist again to rule for 4 years. In 1993, Pérez was finally forced out of office because he embezzlement more the 250 million Bolivar ( 39 million U.S. dollars ) from the presidential fund. Carlos Pérez first refused to stand down, but the National Congress of Venezuela voted him down and he was jailed for 28 months!
In 1998, Pérez was prosecuted again, this time on charges of embezzlement on public funds, after secret joint bank accounts held with his mistress, Cecilia Matos, were discovered in New York. Before the trial, he was elected to the Senate of Venezuela for his native State of Táchira, on the ticket of his newly founded party, Movimiento de Apertura y Participación Nacional (Apertura), thus gaining immunity from prosecutions. However, as the newly approved 1999 Constitution of Venezuela dissolved the Senate and created a unicameral National Assembly!
Hugo Chavez became the president of Venezuela in 1999 and was reelected president until his death in 2013. His first three years in office were moderate and not radical leftist at all. But the ruling class of Venezuela and their powerful media, hated and feared his socialist rhetoric. So on April 11 of 2002, anti-Chavez military personal arrest Hugo Chavez. Right-wing businessman; Pedro Carmona became the new head of state. The USA recognized the new regime as an ally against the rising leftist movements in Latin America!
Mainstream Venezuelan media outlets such as El Universal, El Nacional, El Nuevo País, Globovisión, Televen, CMT and RCTV supported the new right-wing regime. At the same time, only the anti-Chávez point of view was reflected in the news reports of international media agencies and organizations to portray Hugo Chavez as a bad leader!
But the people of Venezeula fought back. They rose up to defend Hugo Chavez and the military was forced to abandon the coup. Pedro Carmona fled to the USA along with the military leaders who started the coup. Thanks to the people of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez was freed and resumed his presidency. The failed right-wing coup was a huge victory over the forces of capitalism and imperialism. It was also a defeat for the capitalist media in the USA and Venezuela. Because all major television networks supported the coup, Hugo Chavez would never trust them again. The anti-Chavez news-station RCTV lost its broadcasting licence in 2007, because of its support to Pedro Carmona and the generals who wanted to destroy democracy!
A famous dictatorship supported by the USA was the Republic of Vietnam. This dictatorship was founded in 1954 when Vietnam was divided between a Stalinist north and a capitalist south. North Vietnam became the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, while the south took the name Republic of Vietnam. Ngo Dinh Diem was its only civilian president. He was a Roman Catholic and an anti-communist!
President Ngo Dinh Diem supported French imperialism since 1929. He worked with the French to hunt down peasant uprisings in Indochina. Because of his loyalty he was giving the governorship of Bình Thuận Province and in 1930/1931 suppressed more peasant revolts in Indochina. During the violent events, many villagers were raped and murdered by French colonial forces under Ngo Dinh Diem's leadership!
Since he worked with the French, Diem became a friend of US imperialism after the French left Indochina in 1954. He and the Americans started working on Operation Passage to Freedom. This operation was a huge propaganda victory. During the separation of Vietnam, people were allowed to choose were they wanted to live. Thanks to massive anticommunist propaganda and the fear of Ho Chi Minh's atheism, more then 1.000.000 Vietnamese left North Vietnam. Most of them were Roman Catholics like Diem!
South Vietnam became a corrupt capitalist nation. Poverty and corruption led many to hate Ngo Dinh Diem. A leftist nationalist group called the National Liberation Front was founded in 1954 and opposed Ngo Dinh Diem presidency from the start. In 1956 the Saigon Newspaper started calling them Viet Cong, this meant Việt Nam Cộng-sản ( Vietnamese Communists ). The anticommunists also called them Việt gian cộng sản ( Communist Traitors to Vietnam )!
Millions of dollars were send to South Vietnam and in 1955, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was created with American money and weapons. Ngo Dinh Diem also used American money to created a police state, were opponents of his regime were arrested and tortured. As a Roman Catholic he was biased towards Buddhists and the native Montagnard population. He ordered the arrest of many innocent Buddhists. In protest a monk called Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on 11 June 1963. This self-immolation marked the end of Ngo Dinh Diem who's corruption was not longer approved by the USA and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam!
On November 1 of 1963, the ARVN staged a coup against their president. Two marine battalions, two airborne battalions and two battalions of the 5th Division attacked the Gia Long Palace in Saigon. Special forces and the presidential guards tried to protect Ngo Dinh Diem. A battle erupted between rebel ARVN and loyalist ARVN troops. In the early morning of 2 November 1963 Diệm agreed to surrender. The rebel officers had a meeting intended to exile Diệm, having promised him safe passage out of the country into an "honorable retirement".
But the plans were changed. Both Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were put into an armed vehicle and then executed. The CIA knew of the coup and the killings, but their friend had outlive his usefulness. Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother died because the USA needed a new leadership in South Vietnam to fight the NLF. The ARVN choose to led the nation for two years, until general Nguyen Van Thieu became president in 1965. Thieu was a general and a loyalist supporter of US imperialism. Until April 1975, his government would murder 90.000 South Vietnamese.
Vietnam was not the first nation to be divided between a Stalinist north and a capitalist south. Korea was divided in 1948 between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north and the Republic of Korea in the south. The DPRK was created in the Soviet zone and the ROK was build in the American zone. Korea was part of the Japanese Empire until August 1945. Soviet forces liberated the north, while American soldiers took the south!
Americans and Soviets soon became bitter enemies. The Americans wanted an anticommunist Korea, while the USSR supported Kim Il Sung and the Workers Party of Korea. It was decided to divide the country. In the north, the Workers Party of Korea created a totalitarian Stalinist state. In the south the Americans allowed the formation of a totalitarian anticommunist state. South Korea was one of the few true totalitarian anticommunist states. Anticommunism was enforced very brutal in the Republic of Korea. School childeren were told to hate communists and the Marxist ideology.
Syngman Rhee was an old anticommunist and very autocratic. He became president of South Korea with the blessing of the Korean ruling class and the USA. By 1948 he already jailed 30.000 people in special concentration-camps. Most of these Koreans were supporters of the north, liberals and intellectuals. The conservative ruling class gave their full support to Syngman Rhee, allowing the old dictator to start a nationwide witch-hunt against leftists, liberals and stalinists. When North Korea invaded South Korea, more then 100.000 Koreans were jailed in camps by the anticommunists!
As the Republic of Korea collapsed in the first weeks of the Korean War, Syngman Rhee ordered the execution of all prisoners of the Bodo League camps. All 100.000 prisoners were executed and buried in mass graves. The CIA knew of these crimes, but they kept silence. After the Korean War the USA and South Korea, would call the mass murder in the Bodo League a ''communist'' crime. It was not until 2005 when the South Korean government finally told the true. That South Koreans killed those 100.000 prisoners!
The Republic of Korea remained a totalitarian dictatorship under Syngman Rhee. But students opposed the dictatorship. In 1960 they rose up, forcing the CIA to evacuate the president. Syngman Rhee spend his last years in the USA were he died. The students hoped for democracy and liberty, but the military took over and installed a military junta that would rule until 1987. The USA kept supporting the dictatorship of the Korean military. Never has the American government regretted the support to the dictatorship that arrested and tortured many innocent Koreans!
Another friend of US imperialism was Chiang-Kai-Shek. This anticommunist dictator became leader of the Republic of China in 1927. His first act was a wave of terror against members of the Chinese Communist Party! 70.000 people were murdered by the White Terror of Chiang-Kai-Shek. 50.000 communists were killed. This act of betrayal was the start of the Chinese Civil War that would last until 1949. Shek turned the leftist nationalist Kuomintang into a right-wing anticommunist party!
By 1945 the Second World War was over, but the Chinese Civil War resumed. The Chinese Communist Party had undergo some changes. The party was now led by Mao Zedong and his People's Liberation Army ( PLA ) were popular with poor peasants. Chiang-Kai-Shek was hated by most farmers who opposed the corruption of the Kuomintang. The Republic of China started to lose the civil war to the maoists. Although the USA supplied the right-wing nationalists with weapons, they could not stop the PLA. Chiang-Kai-Shek fled to the island of Taiwan and set up his nationalist government there!
Western nations and the USA did not recolonized the new People's Republic of China led by Mao Zedong. They viewed Chiang-Kai-Shek as the only genuine leader of China. In the United Nations, the Republic of China on Taiwan, remained the representative of China. For Shek it was necessary to build a strong defense. So he armed his army with the latest US weapons. Also the USA would help him to build a mighty economy. Because the Kuomintang was the dominate party, it enforced a capitalist market economy. Leftist opponents were arrested and jailed if they opposed the rule of the nationalist party. The USA did not opposed that, they had no problems with jailing and arresting of leftists!
In Europe a good friend of the USA, was fascist Spain. This remnant of European fascism was created in 1939 with the victory of general Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The State of Spain was isolated after the Second World War. As a fascist nation it was seen as the enemy in the 1940's. But this changed with the start of the Cold War. Anticommunism was now enough to gain support from the USA. Dictator Franco was very anticommunist and managed to get American support. In 1959, president Eisenhower visited Franco and both leaders greeted each other like good friends. Franco was responsible for the execution of 200.000 anti-fascists in 1939!
Fascist Portugal was also very anticommunist and a friend of US imperialism. The fascist Estado Novo period lasted from 1933 until 1974. António de Oliveira Salazar was the fascist leader of Portugal from 1932 until his death in 1968. Salazar was not a national-socialist like Hitler and less militaristic like Mussolini and Franco. He opposed communism, socialism, anarchism and liberalism. A conservative fascist and very colonialist. Salazar supported Portuguese imperialism by fighting against African liberation armies in Angola and Mozambique!
American money also went to corrupt Asian kingdoms. Like the Kingdom of Laos and the Kingdom of Thailand. These nations fought against communist movements. In Laos the Pathet Lao were fighting to expel US imperialism from Indochina. The Thai monarchy had its problems with the Communist Party of Thailand. Thai Maoists had started a people's war against the monarchist government. In the 1960's the Maoists fought a bloody war, but were not able to defeat the Royal Army of Thailand. Because of Maoist mistakes and intolerance towards peasants, the Communist Party of Thailand lost much support. In the 80's the royal government gave rebels amnesty who would give u p the fight. Many Maoists choose to give up the armed struggle. Today the Communist Party of Thailand is gone, the Maoists have disappeared from Thailand. Only in Laos were they able to win the war. In December 1975, the Lao Democratic People's Republic was founded!
Many Arab conservative kingdoms are supported by the USA. The Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia and the former Imperial State of Iran got millions of dollars. The USA put Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavī in power, after the Iranian government of Mohammad Mosaddegh was removed in an anti-democratic coup led by the CIA in Iran. Pahlavī was the Iranian monarch and became absolute leader after 1953. This angered many Iranians who still hate the USA because of this. In Saudi-Arabia the people have nothing to say, all political power belongs to the House of Saud. This medieval style kingdom is banning females from driving and showing their hair in public. Like in Iran, females are forced to cover themselves!
But US imperialism has no problems with Saudi-Arabia, although their government is just as authoritarian as the Iranian government. The reason why the USA is supporting Saudi-Arabia is because of tactical reasons. They need Arab allies against regimes who oppose US imperialism, also Saudi Arabia has something western capitalists always need; OIL. The Kingdom of Libya was also a conservative monarchy, supported by the USA since oil was founded there in the 60's. American and British oil capitalists soon controlled the Libyan oil fields because king Idris was pro-western. Libyans hated their king because of that and in 1969, a group of young army officers staged a coup and removed king Iris. The Libyan Arab Republic nationalized the oil fields and kicked the foreign oil capitalists out!
Modern dictatorships supported by the USA are also ex-Soviet republics. Nations like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are not criticized by the US government. The Republic of Uzbekistan is needed as an ally, because Americans use Uzbeki territory for a military base. From this military base, US bombers are attacking Taliban troops in Afghanistan. It is therefore that the US government is not criticizing the dictatorship in Uzbekistan!
For the United States of America, freedom and democracy are only propaganda values. Its criminal government led by Barack Obama ( also called George W Obama ) cares nothing about the privacy its people. Like the former KGB, the CIA and NSA are spying on the American people. Thanks to American hero's like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, we know the true nature of the US government. Revolutionary socialists knew it, but the revelations of Snowden have also shown to others how criminal the US government is. How little they care about privacy and human rights when it comes to fighting imperialist wars. This is why we oppose any government based on the capitalist system. You cannot change the nature of a capitalist state. A capitalist state must be demolished and rebuild as a workers state by a socialist revolution!
Five presidents who led the American Empire
From left to right:
Bush ( daddy ), Obama, Bush ( W ), Clinton, Carter
