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118 reviews for:
Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire
Jonathan M. Katz
4.3 AVERAGE
118 reviews for:
Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire
Jonathan M. Katz
4.3 AVERAGE
Pretty thorough examination of some of the US misbehavior abroad - building on my reading of How to Hide an Empire - through one man, Smedley Butler. Almost all of this history is new to me, but it was well written and the author interspersed the telling of history with revisiting some of these places. Butler’s genuine turnaround in his belief in the wisdom of the US government is very important and helpful in seeing how he progressed over time.
challenging
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sad
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informative
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reflective
medium-paced
Strong critique of American imperialism, but the attempt to weave together the biography of Butler, the history of the places he was stationed, and the author's travel stories didn't land with me. At times I was a bit bored, especially by the details of marine life and activity, and the history recaps felt rushed and were difficult to follow without more context.
adventurous
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adventurous
challenging
informative
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medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
Loved the information, sourcing, and perspective. Would have loved to get more information from some of the individuals the author interviewed. Was slightly disappointed that the author put off the Chinese experts on the Boxer Rebellion with politically charged questions about the CCP. Felt unnecessary and prevented some interesting expert perspective from making it into the book.
This book is primarily a biography of Smedley Darlington Butler, a now-obscure figure from the late nineteenth / early twentieth century who was once a household name as a military leader-turned-reformist. In fact, author Jonathan M. Katz opens his narrative with a tantalizing hook: after retirement, the former major general alleged that he had been approached by a secretive group of wealthy businessmen who wanted him to be the face of their fascist coup to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (a never-proven conspiracy subsequently known as the Business Plot). Writing in the aftermath of the Jan. 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Katz is quick to note the similarities between these efforts to overturn election results by force, including the sentiment of white resentment against perceived minority advancements that was calculatedly stoked in each case.
That's a fascinating subject, but as it turns out, not one we return to until around the last 5% of the text. Instead, we mostly follow Butler's career through the Marine Corps, a somewhat tedious affair that serves largely to illustrate how the U.S. armed forces of this time were deployed to further the interests of American capital and corporations, as he actually recognized and repudiated later in life, declaring in a famous speech, "War is a racket... [and] I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism." This element, too, is a more interesting topic than the man himself, effectively producing the very empire-building that contemporary politicians and diplomats claimed to abhor in our enemy nations like the Soviet Union. Via Butler, the writer highlights how America used its foreign wars to continually extend its frontier, always finding new marginalized peoples to exploit, and how when the troops were finally pulled back, that energy turned inward to target domestic populations and institutions the same way. On several occasions, he quotes French thinker Frantz Fanon, who asks, "What is fascism but colonialism in the heart of a traditionally colonialist country?"
It's a solid read overall, but I can't shake the feeling that I would have been more engaged if there were less Butler in it -- and less Katz, as he's the kind of historian who regularly includes details of his own research visits to the relevant sites, which does not produce my favorite sort of nonfiction. There are glimmers here of the account I want this to be, but you unfortunately do need to dig for them.
[Content warning for torture, rape, post-traumatic stress disorder, and racism including slurs.]
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That's a fascinating subject, but as it turns out, not one we return to until around the last 5% of the text. Instead, we mostly follow Butler's career through the Marine Corps, a somewhat tedious affair that serves largely to illustrate how the U.S. armed forces of this time were deployed to further the interests of American capital and corporations, as he actually recognized and repudiated later in life, declaring in a famous speech, "War is a racket... [and] I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism." This element, too, is a more interesting topic than the man himself, effectively producing the very empire-building that contemporary politicians and diplomats claimed to abhor in our enemy nations like the Soviet Union. Via Butler, the writer highlights how America used its foreign wars to continually extend its frontier, always finding new marginalized peoples to exploit, and how when the troops were finally pulled back, that energy turned inward to target domestic populations and institutions the same way. On several occasions, he quotes French thinker Frantz Fanon, who asks, "What is fascism but colonialism in the heart of a traditionally colonialist country?"
It's a solid read overall, but I can't shake the feeling that I would have been more engaged if there were less Butler in it -- and less Katz, as he's the kind of historian who regularly includes details of his own research visits to the relevant sites, which does not produce my favorite sort of nonfiction. There are glimmers here of the account I want this to be, but you unfortunately do need to dig for them.
[Content warning for torture, rape, post-traumatic stress disorder, and racism including slurs.]
Like this review?
--Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
--Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
--Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
--Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog
challenging
informative
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced