Lessons & Truth from Coup 53 Documentary
Recently I had the pleasure of pre-screening Coup 53, a documentary directed by Taghi Amirani, edited by Walter Murch, and featuring a brilliant character reenactment by none other than Ralph Fiennes himself, who is somewhat of a legend in the film world (he played Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter, for instance).
This film was a revelatory masterpiece covering the 1953 CIA + MI6 staged coup in Iran that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. This story blew the doors off my mind and taught me so much that I – shamefully – did not even know about the dirty history of my own country.
I don’t want to give too much away from the film because I believe that to do so, would be to take away from the immense amount of research and editing that went into making the film (which took more than 10 years to produce!). However, I want to quote one section from some of the final minutes of the film, which will become the basis of this article. This quote is from Stephen Kinzer, an award-winning journalist and former bureau chief for the New York Times, as well as the author of “All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.”
“The 1953 coup in Iran is shaping politics to this day. We have a government in Iran and a political system in Iran that probably never would have emerged, American-Iranian relations might never have deteriorated this way.
Think of it this way: Had we not overthrown Mossadegh in 1953 and had allowed democracy to grow, we might have had a flourishing democracy in the heart of the Muslim Middle East all these 60 years.
And I can hardly wrap my mind around how different the Middle East might be if that was the example we had set. Instead, we set the opposite example. Here was the message we had sent to the rising generation of leaders throughout the Middle East:
‘The United States does not want democracy. Because democracy in the Middle East is going to lead to demands for controlling resources. What we want is a dictatorial leader who can repress his people as much as he wants, and we will help him do that, as long as he gives us free access to oil.’
That was the message of the Iran Coup. And that was heard all over the Middle East and lead to the emergence of all the kinds of regimes in the Middle East that have created the crises we now live with. So, this was a decisive, historic episode.
When you read a history of the 20th Century in many cases you’ll be lucky to find one line on this coup – but it should be a big chapter!”
— Stephen Kinzer, Coup 53 Documentary
The moment he stated the fact that the United States does not want democracy, I about fell out of my chair. It made so much sense, yet my mind didn’t want to believe it.
What! The United States LIVES for democracy! We fight countries to instate democracy! We kick down dictators, shun communists, and go to war over injustices. Right? . . . RIGHT??
Wrong.
The US wants leaders that it can control and manipulate, not who want to nationalize their own resources and centralize their country’s powers. The US wants resources, not freedom. But it’s not just the US by the way – it’s nearly all colonizing countries, including Australia, Great Britain, and many European nations. Capitalism demands resources like oil. Capitalism demands power and control. And our governments are more than happy to feed the machine what it demands by overtaking anything it wants, depleting and razing people and lands, until there’s nothing left.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at some of the other coups that the US has been involved in facilitating and endorsing for strategic and capitalistic purposes:
- 1954: Jacobo Árbenz in Guatamala
- 1960: Patrice Lumamba in Congo
- 1961: Rafael Trujillo in Dominican Republic
- 1961: Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs
- 1963: Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam
- 1964: João Goulart in Braziló
- 1967: Sukarno in Indonesia
- 1971: Juan José Torres in Bolivia
- 1973: Salvador Allende in Chile
- 1976: Juan Perón in Argentina
- 1983: Bernard Coard in Grenada
- 1981-89: Sandinista government in Nicaragua
- 1988: Hugo Chavez in Venezuela
- 1959 – present: Iraq war
In nearly all of these instances, there was also an element of the US wanting to overthrow these leaders (who were all elected by their people) due to a conflict of ideology. Essentially these leaders wanted to create more independence for their countries, “nationalize” their resources (as was the case with Mossadegh when he decided that his country should be being paid much more for the countless amounts of oil being extracted and sold by the British), and they were more left-aligned.
The US simply couldn’t handle this because then — *gasp!* — those countries might actually succeed in governing themselves and become self-reliant, prosperous, educated, and – most terrifying for the US government – anti-American. Who then would we exploit? Who would we control? How could we actually negotiate with countries who might even have a slight advantage on us – as is the case with many South American and Middle Eastern countries — in terms of natural resources and exports? Far too much work. Better to just intervene and stomp them out and replace their leaders with those who are willing to sacrifice their people’s well-being in exchange for the economic prosperity of a few elite individuals and continue to hold favorable status with the imperialist countries like the US.
All this to say, don’t believe the propaganda and rhetoric for one minute. The United States isn’t about establishing democracy or fighting for the little guy. It’s “our way or the highway” and we’ll stop at nothing – even a 10+ year war in the Middle East – to secure our fighting position in the world.
Again, my sincere thanks to the Coup 53 documentary team for creating a film that helps bring this situation to light for myself and so many others as well. I personally still have a lot of research to do on this topic, but the basic understanding that not all is as it seems is a wildly important starting point.
I encourage you to please watch the film and support the makers, who were turned down by every single funding and distribution agency in Hollywood and beyond, as nobody had the courage to help tell this story. Visit https://coup53.com/screenings/ to find a screening location (and due to COVID-19, you can likely select any theater and purchase an at-home screening, so no worries if you don’t find a theater in your exact location). You can also watch the Trailer here: https://coup53.com/trailer/
