Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_the_Whitlam_dismissal
Like I guess we all just collectively agreed to not talk about this?
Apparently the Queen and the CIA thought Australia was getting a little too progressive in 1975. They were pulling out of Viet Nam and doing things like welcoming refugees from Chile (who were fleeing a different coup engineered by the CIA).
The 50th anniversary of the coup just passed (Nov. 11th), and Consortium News republished an article originally written in 2020:
Gough Whitlam was driven from government on Nov. 11, 1975. When he died six years ago (2014), his achievements were recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. The truth of the coup against him, it was hoped, would be buried with him.
During the Whitlam years, 1972-75, Australia briefly achieved independence and became intolerably progressive.
The last Australian troops were ordered home from their mercenary service to the American assault on Vietnam. Whitlam’s ministers publicly condemned U.S. barbarities as “mass murder” and the crimes of “maniacs.” The Nixon administration was corrupt, said the Deputy Prime Minister, Jim Cairns, and called for a boycott of American trade. In response, Australian dockers refused to unload American ships.
Whitlam moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement and called for a Zone of Peace in the Indian ocean, which the U.S. and Britain opposed. He demanded France cease its nuclear testing in the Pacific. In the U.N., Australia spoke up for the Palestinians. Refugees fleeing the C.I.A.-engineered coup in Chile were welcomed into Australia.
I wouldn’t consider it a coup. Coup typically means an unlawful takeover of a government, in the case of Whitlam, it was and still is in the power of the governer general (who is directed by the king or queen) to appoint or dismiss a prime minister.
This is what happens in Australia when there’s our equivalent of a govt shutdown. A shutdown implies the leaders have failed at their jobs, so the governer general just dismisses the PM via the king and appoints one who can do his job properly and get things working again.
Confounding this was the fact that both the PM and the GG have the ability to appoint and dismiss each other, in a roundabout way. The PM advises the king or queen to appoint a GG and the king is obligated to follow that advice. The GG advises the king to approve the ascendency of the elected PM, but can advise the king to dismiss them as well. Ultimately it’s the king or queen who calls the shots, but by modern etiquette, the monarch is just a conduit for that advice.
When both try to dismiss each other, it really comes down to who gets their letter into the king’s hand first. In this case, it was Kerr.
I don’t doubt that the CIA interfered and manipulated circumstances, but I don’t think the term “Coup” fits.
The queen and the CIA conspired to overthrow a democratically elected leader in a foreign nation, and replace him with someone that would fall in line with their policies.
That is the basic foundation of every CIA coup that has ever occured.
The Queen’s Coup
Is it a foreign nation if it’s under the monarchy of the UK? Foreign to the CIA yes but not the Queen.
It’s an independent country though.
If people in Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, etc. found out Prince Charles was working with the CIA to interfere with local politics in order to establish more conservative leadership, would they view this as foreign interference? I guess it might depend on the individual, but I have a hard time believing it would be seen as simply an act of tough love from their overbearing mum and her dickhead boyfriend.
I’m talking about technically not individual opinions. That is, it’s not a foreign coup.
Agreed. And even if it wasn’t an independent country, the monarch should not EVER be getting involved in ousting an elected political leader. Including here in the UK, if it came to it (as it could have when Johnson tried to prorogue parliament - that was outrageous, but if the queen had stepped in that would have been much worse IMO)