Herrschaft 15

No government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators who blocked the authorities from approaching the area in front of the main government building. (…) A crackdown was therefore inevitable. But its brutality was shocking (…)

Henry Kissinger (1. August 1989): The Caricature of Deng as a Tyrant is Unfair. Washington Post.

Henry Kissinger (born 1923) is a Republican politician and has held many positions, including that of US Secretary of State. He has been internationally criticised for his involvement in numerous government overthrows and for supporting authoritarian regimes (Argentina, Chile, Indonesia/East Timor). In 1973, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2013, an endowed professorship was set up at the University of Bonn in his honour at the initiative of the Federal Republic of Germany's then Interior Minister de Maizière and Foreign Minister Westerwelle.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was known for his support of authoritarian regimes around the world. He is accused, amongst other things, of being linked to the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 and the illegal bombing of Cambodian territory during the Vietnam War. In 1989, the pro-democracy movement in Beijing demonstrated in Tiananmen Square. The Chinese military brutally crushed protests, killing an estimated 2,000-7,000 and injuring 30,000. In the aftermath, 40,000 people were arrested and hundreds executed. According to Naomi Klein (2007: 185f.), referring to historian Maurice Meisner, China's communist government cracked down hardest on factory workers. The liberal economic reforms in China in the 1980s (president Deng Xiaoping had taken advice from Milton Friedman, the neoliberal icon) did not produce the hoped-for political liberalisation.

*Democracy Now (11.08.2016): Declassified Documents Show Kissinger Role in Argentine Dirty War. *Naomi Klein (2007): The Shock Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Toronto: Knopf Canada.

1989