Henry Kissinger, one of the world’s most notorious war criminals, has finally died. Let’s take a look back and remember him for all the things he did: 🧵👇
🟡 Orchestrated a military coup in Chile, installing the violently oppressive Pinochet dictatorship. Tens of thousands of people forcibly disappeared, executed and their children stolen and given away under false identities.
🟡 Gave the greenlight to the Argentinian dictatorship’s murderous crackdown which saw thousands kidnapped, tortured, and killed.
🟡 Told General Suharto “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly” right before the Indonesian army murdered at least a quarter of a million Timorese during the illegal Indonesian occupation.
🟡 Sabotaged Vietnamese peace talks for his own political gain. Expanded the war into Laos and Cambodia, advocating for the bombing of “anything that moves.” Estimated 2 million Vietnamese dead.
🟡 Carpet-bombed Cambodia indiscriminately hitting civilian-populated areas and killing hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. Official numbers cannot be verified. Kissinger also claimed they were unpopulated areas.
🟡 “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” — Kissinger’s philosophy summed up.
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Today marks 15 years since the death of George Habash, founder of the Marxist Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). After its founding in 1967, the PFLP rose to the forefront of the Palestinian resistance movement.
Habash's political ideology was deeply influenced by his upbringing under British colonial rule and the 1948 Nakba, where Zionist paramilitaries forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.
During the Nakba, Habash left his medical studies in Beirut to return to his hometown, Lydda, where he helped treat wounded civilians and defenders of the town during a savage Zionist assault.
Today in 1915, US Marines invaded Haiti and took control of Port-au-Prince, ordered by President Woodrow Wilson to "restore order". Although the US had military and economic motives, they also had the racist view that Haitians were unable to govern themselves. 🧵
The invasion led to a 19-year US occupation, with 15,000 Haitians being killed and 50,000 peasants losing their land. US Marines imposed martial law, seized homes, stole gold that was sent to Wall Street, and rewrote the constitution to give foreigners land rights.
Haitians had fought initially alongside US Americans in the American Revolutionary War in the 18th century. However, a slave revolt in 1791 which eventually led to the successful 1804 Haitian revolution frightened slave owners in the south of the US.
On 22 June 1948 the Empire Windrush ship arrived at Tilbury, Essex bringing hundreds of people from British colonies in the Caribbean to Britain.
The ship had a dark history itself as a Nazi vessel which took Norwegian Jews to their deaths at Auschwitz in 1942. 🧵
These migrants were critical to rebuilding post-war Britain whose economy was ravaged during WWII, working in key sectors like manufacturing, transport and the new National Health Service (NHS).
But what came to be known as "the Windrush generation" faced extreme racism upon arrival, including violence by white nationalist groups including Oswald Mosley's Union Movement all of which was enabled by Britain's systematically racist police.
Today marks the 82nd anniversary of Nazi Germany’s bloody invasion of the Soviet Union during WWII, also known as Operation Barbarossa, which initiated a war that would kill around 27 million people in the Soviet Union alone. 🧵
Operation Barbarossa directly violated the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact of 1939, in which the two countries agreed that neither would take military action against the other for the next ten years.
The attack, which is considered to have been the largest invasion force in history, involved 3.3 million troops along a 2,900 km front.
On this day, the Marxist feminist theorist and revolutionary Clara Zetkin died in exile in the Soviet Union in 1933. Her pioneering work in the international women's movement continues to shape today's class struggle and the fight for women's liberation. 🧵
During Zetkin's revolutionary period, she served as the editor of the socialist women's magazine "Die Gleichheit" from 1892 to 1917 and on the executive committee of the Third International from 1921.
Zetkin played a central role in founding the communist Spartacus League, which later evolved into the German Communist Party. She represented the party in Parliament until the Nazi takeover, which forced her into exile.
On this day in 1948, the Malayan War of Independence started, led by Marxist guerrillas against British colonial forces, a significant chapter in the history of liberation movements. We colorized some pictures of the anti-colonial struggle. 🧵
The British referred to the conflict as the "Malayan Emergency" instead of a war, a strategic choice to ensure insurance coverage for British corporations operating in the region.
The armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party, the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), led the revolutionary struggle using guerrilla tactics, receiving support from the impoverished Chinese population in Malaya, many of whom had been inspired by the Chinese Revolution.