Hello, Owen Jones, welcome to podcast, now a few weeks ago we were all, well I hope we were all shocked by the events in the capital in Washington, when there was an attempted coup, that's just ballot out, that's what happened, that's what they were seeking to do, they were seeking to overturn a democratic election in the United States, pretty gruesome scenes, but, and this isn't a part of the kind of, well it wasn't that bad, this is a part of, you know,

there was this whole kind of, well this isn't very American, maybe not in the United States, American, but US backs coups, let's just pull it this way, are not a novelty, I wanted to explore this topic, because as an example, I grew up with a family who, who had taken, in Chile and refugees, who'd fled Augusto Pinochet's regime, a regime installed with the support of the United States, and that was not the only one, there were lots of these examples, so I

chatted to Vincent Bevins, who wrote a book called The Jigata Method, which was inspired by the US backed coup in Indonesia in the 1960s, and I wanted to talk to him about that history, which is not spoken about enough, this is extremely insightful and educational, and I think everybody needs to listen to it, so when you listen to it, send it to someone else, because we all need to learn this history, if you want to help us do more and more of these,

educational, politicising podcasts, and often alternative to the right remedia, we really appreciate your support, either on the support function in the description, or on patreon.com, 4-slash-01984, that way you can help have a say over what we talk about, who we talk to, that kind of thing, please give us five stars on iTunes, just helps get the message out there, and spread the word, with all of that, enough of that, here's Vincent and me.

The world was shocked by scenes of Trump supporting extremists, insurrectionists even, storming the US capital, and what's widely been described as a coup attempt, and there was a lot of shock and outrage from the law of the traditional American elite, according to George W. Bosch, this is how elections are disputed in a banana republic, not our democratic republic, it was very, very un-American,

this is not how Americans do democracy, well, we're going to talk about it, I'm very glad to be joined by a phenomenal expert, the award winning journalist, Vincent Bevins, he's covered Latin America, South East Asia, for newspapers like the Financial Times, for Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, he's the author of the must read, the Jakarta method, which documents US support for the bloodbath following the Indonesian coup in 1965, that received ray review, so do get yourself a copy.

Vincent, hello.

Hello, yeah, thanks for inviting me.

Yeah, it's a pleasure, it's a pleasure, good to have some great expertise on, so look, come on, what happened in the US is pretty bad, I think we'd all agree on that.

Some people describe it as an attempted coup, it was described by Joe Biden as an insurrection, but while US politicians, they've decried this as alien to the traditions of their country against everything the US stands for, is that true?

No, absolutely not, I think what's different is is where you saw it happen, right, so that quote you, you cited from George W. Bush is really interesting because he used banana republic, which is a pretty obvious thing to say, especially when in a former president of the United States, because if we take those words on their own terms, banana republic, as it was coined by Owen Henry, the being of the 20th century, was meant to describe the countries who had political systems that were,

corrupt as a result of the specific intentional intervention of US foreign policy and American companies, specifically the United Fruit Company.

And I think it's pretty ironic and fitting that as we all sort of struggle to decide, is this a coup, is this not a coup?

Any conversation like that in the 20th century, sorry in the 21st century, will inevitably refer back to the sort of classics of the genre, the real sort of the right wing coups that really defined what it means to carry out this kind of an incorrect insurrection.

And these are the US backed regime change operations that took place largely after World War II in the global south, these are the ones that we're going to refer to always when deciding whether or not what happened in Washington on January 6 was indeed some kind of an attempted coup, those are as is for the classics of the genre.

So US interventions in foreign countries are very extensive, very, very widespread. What we're going to do is talk about five major examples of US backed coups that people generally are not talk about properly.

And we're going to talk about that history, what happened and what the consequences were.

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's great. I think, I think that's a good idea, not only at this moment for, but for the United States and Britain in general sort of confronting this history is really important to conducting any kind of responsible politics going forward.

And yeah, when the five that come to mind, I think Iran 53, Guatemala 54, Brazil 64 in Indonesia 65, and then Chile 1973.

So it's Iran is 1953, who's in power and what's going on?

Yeah, no, so this is a really important coup. It's actually the one that I know the least about of the five because I don't speak far so you haven't met people who were directly affected by us and did the case of the other four, but the context is really important.

Right, so the United States has just finished a merchant world war to was by far the most powerful country on earth. And this is a new role for it.

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