Remember! The US backed the biggest genocide after the Holocaust - the Bangladesh massacre of 1972, where 30 million people are estimated to have been murdered. The reason was that the Pakistani dictator who instigated the genocide was their ally. And they didn't like Mujib-ur-Rehman, the newly elected East Pakistani (Bangladeshi) leader, because he was a socialist! The US even tried to intervene militarily to help the war criminals, nearly starting a nuclear world war.
Democratic leaders tend to be pro-people. And that makes them US's enemies. The antidemocratic tag that the US has is well-deserved.
The hardest part of establishing a socialist state isn't dealing with material conditions... it's dealing with the US constantly trying to overthrow it even if you're on the other side of the planet.
Fun fact, I’m actually in one of the few countries they thought of couping, that they didn’t. Portugal in 1974 had a military staged coup against the dictatorship that ruled back then. It looked a lot like we were going to turn red, and Kissinger even said “let them be, it’ll remind Europe why communism doesn’t work”. Long story short, after a few nationalisations, an attempted coup by radical left, and some general weirdness, we managed to get ourselves a mostly working republic that still lasts to this day
Leftwing coup examples in the US are limited as the authorities are not going to let any left wing movements get anywhere near coup stage. But both those examples are anti-authority.
My point was that political violence is not confined to the right.
The list was compiled in 2002 so it’s missing a lot of contemporary ones.
with the purpose of effecting “regime change,” attempted or materially supported by the United States—whether primarily by means of overt force (OF), covert operation (CO), or subverted election (SE):
