![]() ![]() He emerged from that journey the nation’s most celebrated pacifist, the man who first exposed the creation of the military industrial complex he would know, he said, because he built it - or at least he was the man at its center, who made sure that it did its work. He was involved one way or another in American interventions in Cuba, the Philippines, China, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Panama, and Haiti. Basically, we are who we are, for better or for worse, thanks to what Smedley Butler did over the course of his fascinating and bloodsoaked career. But what he did before that was also of enormous consequence for the development of our politics, of our foreign policy, of our presidency - everything. That may have been the capstone to Butler’s life. The problem came when the General, Smedley Butler, exposed the plot and turned them all in. The simple version, though, is that leading reactionary politicians and business leaders plotted seriously to overthrow FDR by marching on Washington with 1000s of disgruntled veterans led by an unimpeachably principled Marine Corps General. The plan was never executed thanks to Butler, and the political and media class kind of collectively decided not to talk much about it, so it has almost entirely faded from memory. Ryan Grim: So chances are you’ve never heard the name Smedley Butler before, but if you have, it’s probably in the context of one of the wildest conspiracies ever hatched against an American president. In a new book on Butler’s career, “Gangsters of Capitalism,” Jonathan Katz details Butler’s life and explains how it dovetails with the broader story of American empire at the turn of the century. “I was a racketeer a gangster for capitalism.” So declared famed Marine Corps officer Smedley Butler in 1935, at the end of a long career spent blazing a path for American interests in Cuba, Nicaragua, China, the Philippines, Panama, and Haiti. ![]()
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