Jason Hickel Profile picture
Jan 12, 2021 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
This month US Americans got a small glimpse of what a coup might feel like, and they are rightly outraged. One might hope this would provoke some reflection on the *actual* coups that the US itself has perpetrated around the world. Here are some of them:
1953: Mohammed Mossadegh, the progressive, democratically elected leader of Iran, was deposed in a US- and British-backed coup because he sought to restore national control over Iran's oil reserves. Image
1954: Jacobo Árbenz, the progressive, democratically elected leader of Guatemala, was deposed in a US-backed coup because he sought to restore land to small farmers and Indigenous communities that had been dispossessed by US fruit companies. Image
1961. Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the Republic of Congo, was assassinated in a coup backed by the US, UK and Belgium, because he sought to restore control over the country's mineral reserves. They installed the Mobutu dictatorship in his place. Image
1964. João Goulart, the progressive, democratically elected leader of Brazil, was deposed by a US-backed coup and replaced with a right-wing military junta. Image
1967. Sukarno, the first leader of independent Indonesia, was deposed in a US-backed coup that installed a right-wing military dictatorship. As part of this operation, the US collaborated in the massacre of 500,000 left-wing peasants and workers. Image
1973. Salvadore Allende, the progressive, democratically elected leader of Chile, was deposed and assassinated in a US-backed coup that installed the right-wing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Image
This is not distant history. The US has been involved in coups and attempted coups against elected governments in the South well into the 21st century. US legislators are lining up to defend the "sacredness" of democracy, but unfortunately this standard is selectively applied.
If you want to know more about this story, I cover it in a chapter titled "From colonialism to the coup" in The Divide, looking not just at interventions by the US but also by Britain and France. penguin.co.uk/books/111/1113…
Another one I want to include: 1966. Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of independent Ghana, co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement and author of the book "Neocolonialism", was deposed in a coup backed by the US and Britain. Image
1964. Cheddi Jagan, the popular progressive leader of British Guiana, was removed from power by the US and UK. This was the second time Jagan was deposed; the first was in 1953, days after he won the election, in a coup orchestrated by Winston Churchill. Image

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More from @jasonhickel

Jun 29
I was honoured to write this for @tri_continental Pan Africa:

"One of the most damaging myths about the ecological crisis is that humans as such are responsible for it. In reality it's caused almost entirely by the states and firms of the imperial core." thetricontinental.org/pan-africa/new…
@tri_continental Because everyone always wonders about the China data, yes, as of 2019 (the final year of data in our analysis), China was responsible for only 1% of global emissions in excess of the planetary boundary. globalinequality.org/responsibility…Image
@tri_continental Curious users can check out the data for China and any other country they want using the interactive tools here: goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/related-resear…
Read 4 tweets
Jun 26
About Spain's tourism problem... it seems intractable but the solutions are actually quite straightforward.

First, we need to recognize that tourism is not a good allocation of real resources and labour. It means producing goods and services that do not themselves directly benefit the local population. In fact, they are actively harmful to locals... gobbling up public space, destroying neighbourhoods, driving housing prices up, worsening climate change, etc.

It is much more rational and beneficial to allocate all this labour toward creating things that people actually need, like public services, affordable housing, renewable energy, and so on.

So, why do tourism at all? Two main reasons.

One reason is to get foreign currency. In this sense, tourism is basically an export (but where the export factories are plunked disastrously right into the middle of your historic downtowns). Why do exports? To pay for imports.

The solution here is simple: reduce unnecessary imports. Reduce luxury goods imports (these only benefit the rich), reduce car/SUV imports (build up your public transit system instead), etc. There are many options here. This reduces pressure for obtaining foreign currency.

A second reason to do tourism is to create jobs. This one seems like a strong argument but in fact it's not.

The obvious solution here is to implement a public job guarantee. Not only does this solve unemployment (a major problem in Spain), it mobilizes labour around socially and ecologically useful things that benefit society, rather than allocating labour to useless things like serving tourists.

In other words, there are simple alternatives to the two main reasons people cite for needing tourism. Any political party that realises this can ride the current wave of popular discontent and translate that energy into real, practical social improvements.

This is not to say that tourism should be abolished, far from it. But it's clear to everyone that extreme dependency on tourism is socially and ecologically destructive and it has to stop.
And for anyone wondering how to go about the practical business of actually scaling down the tourism industry, the answer is the same as for reducing any damaging industry (eg, fossil fuels, luxury goods, SUVs, etc): credit guidance! jasonhickel.org/blog/2024/8/20…
And for the avoidance of all doubt, tourism is an absolute, unmitigated climate catastrophe: nature.com/articles/s4155…
Read 4 tweets
Jun 20
I'm excited to announce this new paper we have in The Lancet Planetary Health.

We show that the world is not moving towards a just and ecological future for all. Growth in energy and material use is occurring primarily in countries that do not need it and is not occurring fast enough (or is declining) in countries that do need it.

The capitalist world economy is not delivering for human needs and ecology. A substantial redistribution of energy and material use is required—both within countries and between them.Image
Here's the paper: thelancet.com/journals/lanpl…

And some key findings:

1. Globally, we use *a lot* of energy and materials. In fact, we use at least 2.5x more than would be needed to ensure decent living standards (DLS) for all.

DLS includes universal healthcare, education, modern housing, nutritious food, sanitation systems, transit, fridge-freezers, phones, computers, etc.
2. And yet, billions of people are denied access to DLS.

We find that 50% of nations do not have access to enough energy to ensure DLS, given existing national distributions. And for 20 of these countries, their consumption is actually *declining*. This is an extremely bad situation.
Read 8 tweets
Jun 17
Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce this new project: a website dedicated to research and data on imperialism and inequality. You're going to love this... (links in thread below): Image
It includes 14 topics and more than 100 interactive graphs, drawing on recent research published by our team and others, including on unequal exchange, gender, climate, military power, financial flows...

Freshly launched! Here's the link: globalinequality.orgImage
Here's the page on global income inequality: globalinequality.org/global-income-…Image
Read 12 tweets
Jun 16
I did this interview for @rosaluxglobal with several brilliant colleagues. We talk about liberalism, socialism, strategy, and the urgent need to overcome the capitalist law of value. I think you'll like it: rosalux.de/en/news/id/535…
"We live in a world of immense productive potential, and yet we face deprivation and ecological breakdown. Why? Because under capitalism, production only happens when and where it’s profitable. Social and ecological needs are secondary to the returns to capital."
"The law of value explains why we experience shortages of socially and ecologically essential goods, even in an age of unprecedented productive capacity. If something isn’t profitable, it doesn’t get made — no matter how necessary it is."
Read 13 tweets
Mar 10
US politicians commonly claim that the US has been a "beacon of democracy" for the past 250 years, at home and abroad. Let's have a look a the evidence. 🧵 Links at the end.
The US was an apartheid regime at its founding, and governed as an oligarchy.

US states generally limited voting to white males who owned property (about 6% of the population). Working class people, women, and people of colour overwhelmingly did not have the right to vote.
Virtually all Black people (some 20% of the US population) were subject to mass enslavement and had no rights whatsoever, and Indigenous Americans were targets of government-sponsored ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Read 14 tweets

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