Venezuela Under Fascist Threat
Elio Delgado Legón
HAVANA TIMES — I am not exaggerating: the Venezuelan Right has already shown us its fascist credentials on more than one occasion. Now, it charges once again, with a (recently frustrated) plot to stage a coup and assassinate the nation’s president. The most disquieting thing isn’t the fascist-like nature of those who are desperate to recover their benefits and distribute amongst themselves the country’s oil profits, today used to improve the life of Venezuela’s humble, a people who have been forsaken and neglected for nearly 200 years.
The most disquieting thing is that they enjoy the moral and material support of an imperial power that claims to defend democracy. Can the actions against a legally constituted government that was democratically elected by the people be called democratic? Are the violent protests and the murder of more than 40 people who were loyal to the government democratic? Is the economic war, the hoarding of products and the artificial shortages staged to destabilize the government democratic?
We cannot forget the coup against President Hugo Chavez staged in April of 2002, with full support from Washington, a coup that was thwarted thanks to the intervention of the people and the armed forces that were loyal to the president and defended both legality and democracy, restoring the government legitimately elected by the people.
We must also recall how the fascist actions and atrocities carried out by those who attempted the coup were never condemned by the White House, the State Department or the US Embassy in Caracas. On the contrary, Washington offered those behind the coup attempt support to continue with their plans.
I still recall the images of the fascist hordes attacking the Cuban embassy in Caracas, led by former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles.
They are the people who have lost the elections on several occasions and are now once again betting on a coup, to take power illegally and dismantle all of the programs developed by the Bolivarian revolution, such as free healthcare and education for all, mass construction efforts aimed at providing all Venezuelans with a decorous home, sporting and cultural development programs and many others.
To pave the road towards their fascist coup, they have been waging an economic war, emptying markets of products to lay the blame on the government and using a media campaign loaded with lies to create confusion among the population, as the media at the service of the oligarchy and imperialism tend to do.
They have followed the same roadmap used in countries such as Libya, Syria and the Ukraine: they have created public disorder to accuse the government of repression, secure economic sanctions that weaken it and obtain support for those responsible for the chaos, as though this were the tried-and-true method of so-called representative democracy.
Violently overthrowing a government that was elected by the people will never bring positive results. We need only look at the recent history of countries where these formulas have been applied.
Sowing chaos in Venezuela is not convenient for anyone, not even the United States, which has supported destabilizing efforts and coup attempts. Nor are the revolutionary people of Venezuela, who are prepared for victory, going to allow such a coup to take place.
John, you are truly misinformed. I can understand that if you have not been in Venezuela. It is easy to be misinformed by reading articles like this.
And lets not put a tag on it. What Griffin said is 100% accurate. Call it heaven, if you want. It won’t stop being a hell.
Did you not say to us a while back that you woudl no longer be commenting on these pages? Why tease us like that John
It appears that those are the only three books you have ever read. There are other books out there John. I suggest you expand your literary horizons.
I read your post carefully, I peruse your favorite web sites, and still I can find no facts, no evidence, no proof…..just the rhetoric of a failed government, what evidence, however small do you have? The proof of burden lies with you.
What do you expect. he’s created an entire fictional account of the Cuban revolution and the reason behind it in his head.
What is killing the Venezuela economy are not free market policies. Madura is putting on a clinic on why overly centralized state control economies don’t do all that well. Smart socialized policies of self governed people on education, medical and a common defense has been made to work. Toilet paper production and distribution is best left to the private part of an economy.
Eliot, you are a victim of misinformation. The missing toilet paper from the shelves is not a right wing plot. It is the result of incompetence leftist governance. The left could do a lot better than Maduro. It is not the right that will overthrow Maduro, it is his own people that will soon show him the exit.
….still waiting on the specific evidence that the US government is involved in an attempted coup against the Maduro regime. Tick, tock….
Oh wait, please don’t go…:)
“. Goodrich dislikes Religion. Goodrich dislikes the Male-dominated family structure. Goodrich dislikes the US economic system. Goodrich dislikes the US political system. Ergo, Goodrich dislikes America.”
Nice try.
What I actually have always said is that I dislike /hate all the totalitarian aspects of the United States and the imperialism that you so love just as I oppose/hate Cuban totalitarian systems .
Since you cannot face the facts that I always present to support my claims of totalitarian-mindedness in the U.S. and in you who professes to love democracy while existing under religion, oligarchy, capitalism and the normally male-dominated nuclear family and loudly professing your love for these totalitarian institutions.
It’s a pity you can’t deal with facts as they are.
Okay, this will end our exchanges for the near future.
There are plenty of rational people I prefer to deal with.
Today’s (2/27) ZNet carries an article by John Pilger on the rise of fascism .
For those who really want to know what fascism represents, you probably won’t do any better than this extensive article.
In it he says that some 69 around the world countries have suffered U.S. interventions .
I have a number of books that document a great many of them.
I usually post 70 countries as an estimate so we’re in the same FACTUAL ballpark that you insist on sitting outside of.
You’re in the position of Whitey Bulger’s defense attorney on this one .
” Whitey would never do things like that “
Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. In other words, if you don’t have all the facts, let the grown-ups talk without your interruption. Goodrich dislikes Religion. Goodrich dislikes the Male-dominated family structure. Goodrich dislikes the US economic system. Goodrich dislikes the US political system. Ergo, Goodrich dislikes America. It comes as no surprise that US ‘excepcionalism’ draws the ire of those who disagree with our policies but imitate our lifestyles. If what we represent disturbs you this much, move to Cuba to fully engage in the life that Castro has condemned the Cuban people to for 56 years. Or is that you enjoy your Netflix subscription too much.
While I have continuously justified my comments as a reflection of my SUPPORT for the Cuban people and my rejection of Castro tyranny, you are here because you hate the US. You have written, “I support any nation when they defy U.S. imperialism”.
It’s telling that this US imperialist troll is perfectly capable of making a distinction between Cuba and the policies of its leadership (“the Cuban people” versus “Castro tyranny”) but is completely blind to the parallel distinction between the US and US imperialism.
Moses’ risible triumph at his supposed exposure of John Goodrich, achieved by fatuously equating Mr Goodrich’s opposition to US imperialism with “hating the US,” actually exposes only Moses himself. He has made a fool of himself in public.
Moses’ unselfconsciously idiotic conflation of the United States with the imperialist policies and practices of its ruling class perfectly reflects the odious fusion between US chauvinism and worship of US imperialism evident in what passes for his own thinking.
Venezuela is under a “red fascist” regime. That is the biggest threat.
It is the regime that is using violence against the opposition and the people, not the other way around.
Fascism is another form of socialism, with an ugly nationalistic militaristic flavour. Such as in the Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party, better known by their shorter nickname, the Nazis.
That description fits the thuggish regimes of Cuba and Venezuela like a jackboot.
In the past week alone, six students have been killed by Nicolas Maduro’s Cuban-trained riot police.
They are:
18 Feb.– José Daniel Frías Pinto & Julio Alejandro Adonis García
19 Feb — Jhon Barreto Ramírez
23 Feb — Yamir Tovar & Luis Fabián García”
24 Feb — Kluiver Roa, 14 years old
“Todos ellos con disparos en la cabeza” (All of them shot in the head).
http://www.bbc.com/news/31616847
You have finally admitted it. While I have continuously justified my comments as a reflection of my SUPPORT for the Cuban people and my rejection of Castro tyranny, you are here because you hate the US. You have written, “I support any nation when they defy U.S. imperialism”. Your comments reflect a lack of authentic and homegrown concern for the Cuban people and their future. You only hope to see the demise of America and our way of life. Unlike my hope that Cuba will soon be rid of the Castros and on their way to democracy and freedom, which I can expect to be made manifest in the next few years, your hope that the US fade away is measured by millennium. Good luck waiting it out.
Easy for you to say. You have all the toilet paper you need. At least I suppose that you do. Meanwhile, Maduro just cut a deal with Trinidad and Tobago to trade oil for toilet paper. He still owes these tiny island neighbors the amount due for their Caribbean Airlines flights that land in Venezuela. http://www.diariodecuba.com/ So while you are foolishly optimistic, Venezuelans are crushing old newspaper (learned from their Cuban puppetmasters) in lieu of toilet paper. By the way, OPEC and Forbes, you’ve heard of them, forecast oil prices to only reach $60 by 2017. That’s two years from now and well below the $95 that Venezuela needs under current economic conditions to remain solvent. As inflation worsens, that number goes up. Even under long-term forecasts, oil is not expected to exceed $95 per barrel until 2020. http://knoema.com/yxptpab/crude-oil-price-forecast-long-term-2015-to-2025-data-and-charts
So, as usual, you gotta’ stop making this stuff up.
Hahaha! In other words, there is no SPECIFIC evidence of an attempted coup. Rather, and this is the best ya’ got, the US MUST be guilty because of what happened twenty years ago in some other banana republic. How compelling! As far as the value of your time….who cares?
Given your previous posts, I have a fairly good idea of where you stand on things and can extrapolate from there on other things fairly accurately .
Your thinking is not so novel as to be obscure to me or the world .
Again, I support any nation when they defy U.S. imperialism which is, by far, the greatest threat to world peace and democracy in the world today.
Not North Korea, not tiny Cuba, not Iran not any other nation or bunch of nations combined has done to the world what U.S. imperialism has done.
As an anarchist I oppose all undemocratic movements and free enterprise capitalism is IMO one of the most totalitarian and stultifying forces in the world today and second only to organized religion in its manifestations of totalitarianism .
Again, the situation vis a vis establishing democratic ( socialist) forms in Cuba is still up in the air until the embargo and all other clandestine attacks on Cuban society have ended .
As an anarchist, I expect the worse but hope for the best.
Moses,
I read ZNet and other sources like venezuelanalysis along with watching CNN , MSNBC, FOX as you do so I have information you must necessarily avoid to maintain the fictions you choose to believe.
For instance: the US government has intervened scores of times in the world in just the way that things in Venezuela are occurring.
You can’t make the link because it would destroy your feeble arguments .
To repeat: you are not worth my time.
You have never represented any sort of intellectually valid challenge to my belief sets and that is what I’m looking for in these fora.
In the past 100 years the U.S. has made some 70 interventions and many that are either exactly the same as what they are doing in/to Venezuela as to make any suggestion that the U.S. is NOT involved and deeply, just totally illogical.
To believe what you posted requires a profound historical amnesia and obviously a bias that prevents using history and logic to make your case.
The corporate media on which you rely does not, will not, cannot tell the truth about U.S. intervention methods .
The government here lies and the press dutifully reports those lies as truth.
Here. A few books for you to help you understand both U.S. foreign policy and the corporate (lying) media .
“Killing Hope” by William Blum ( book and website)
“Manufacturing Consent” by Chomsky and Herman
“Necessary Illusions” Noam Chomsky.
Also: you SHOULD check the daily stories at ZNet that relate to subjects you’re interested in just to get a view that you can’t get in the corporate media you rely upon for your information.
Compare their facts , their aspects of various situations with what you have come to believe and make your own decisions as to where the truth lies.
Often this requires days, months and years of waiting for the outcome but like Iraq today, we all know who lied and where the problems of today came from.
ZNet is a very good site for views that factually and intellectually challenge views like yours.
It is why most people like you can’t or won’t go there .
I will check out the counterpunch article next.
Thanks for the reference. It will help to understand your thought processes.
Fascists are traditionally another way ; a euphemism for defining right-wing Catholic-led movements like Mussolini’s Italy, Salazar’s Portugal, Franco’s Spain and Hitler’s Germany (yes, Hitler was a good Catholic as were most members of the SS -look it up )
A socialist country or one attempting to be socialist can hardly be defined as fascist .
You guys have a real hard time accurately defining terms like fascist, communist, socialist, democracy . You attach any meaning to these words you happen to need at the moment and this makes your arguments look like the intellectual shit they are.
I measure how the poor are doing when I judge any society.
The programs instituted by Hugo Chavez and being continued by Maduro are very popular amongst the poor as is the government.
The drop in oil prices will never hold at the 50 dollar price and the constantly harder-to-get decreasing oil reserves coupled with , increasing demand through population growth and increased industrialization ensures a dramatic rise in the price of oil in the very near future.
Venezuela depends on its oil revenues ( no secret) to finance its social programs and so is temporarily stretched .
I would not bet any serious money that Venezuela’s problems will do anything but decrease in that near future.
Venezuela’s might be analogous to Cuba’s situation with the embargo doing what the oil price drop has done there.
Absent either….. and both are near certainties……, Cuba and Venezuela will be much better off in a short while.
IMO
Depending on the basket of goods being measured, inflation in Venezuela is somewhere between 70 and 80%. The street exchange rate for Bolivars to USD is 183 while the government’s official rate is 12.3. By the Maduro regime’s own measurements, the economy needs oil prices to remain above $95.00 and current prices are around $50.00. The economy is in very bad shape by any independent measure. How do you argue with that?
– what ever happened to the secret air force that was suposedly create by the USA to attack Venezuela?
– what happened with the supposed mercenary army created in northern Venezuela to attack Maduro?
– what happened with the supposed electrical grid sabatage evidence that Maduro was going to “show the world”
Every month there is a new fictional account of some sort of plot against Venezuela. No evidence is ever bought forward and eventually the government quietly puts it to bed. At the end of the day, Maduro makes this crap up! Here is an example (are you reading this John?) of an article from Counterpunch (US Plot Against Venezuela) that has absolutely no meat to it….as usual.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/01/25/the-us-colombia-plot-against-venezuela/
Mauro is governing by emergency, as there is no policy in place to actually run the country of Venezuela. The Cuban model, imported to Venezuela, a country that has no “embargo”, has brought the country to ruin.
The only Fascist threat to Venezuela comes from the authoritarian government of Nicolas Maduro, the corrupt narco-military gangsters who surround him, and the Cuban secret police who prop up this tyranny.
What coup attempt? Like so many times in the past, Maduro has made unfounded allegations. There has been no public vetting of the evidence that supports claims of an attempted coup. Moreover, Maduro has produced not even one splinter of evidence connecting this so-called coup to the US government. Maduro is a joke but no one is laughing
Have you seen proof of an attempted coup or are you just parroting the anti-freedom party line you seem to enjoy repeating?
John, you have no idea what I approve of and what not I do not approve of. I do not approve of coup attempts in Venezuela. That includes the 1992 coup attempt by a certain colonel Hugo Chávez. I do not approve of your apologizing for neo-stalinists in the vain hope that it will mysteriously lead to democratic socialism. I do not understand how you can ignore the systematic oppression of Cuban anarchists by the Castro regime and still make excuses.
Yes and that mayor will face a judge and jury unlike what would have happened to Maduro had the coup you undoubtedly approve of had succeeded .
You fascists just don’t quit, do you ?
A very good article Elio.
It can only be a secret to those who don’t wish to acknowledge the scores of U.S. interventions to stamp out democratic and humanitarian movements over the past 100 years that the U.S. is up to it’s ears in any such coup attempts, at least in this hemisphere.
You can get additional non-U.S.media -fashion stories on Venezuela at venezuelanalysis and ZNet to counter the bullshit from the U.S. media and some of the empty-headed knee-jerk, anti-socialist commenters here.
Elio, I would first state that you should concentrate more on your country than Venezuela. The mantra from your side has always been the embargo, which I’m against but in Venezuela’s case, it’s a country with vast oil reserves at at a time
when oil hit record highs, used the money to support your country and begin a downward path to where it is today. Venezuela depended also from the USA to
sell it’s oil and I’d say they got a very good deal in doing so. In any case the country has isolated its business base and the middle class so the results are
happening and sadly, will be deadly. Regrettably, but not at all unexpected. Like Cuba, in 1959, no reconciliation with the business interests that should have remained and prosper. We’re on a different planet!
How can a country that has so much oil wealth adopt policies which have led to economic ruin? an official exchange rate of 6.5 to the dollar while a market rate is 170 to the dollar? never heard anything like it. no wonder most of the products are smuggled to colombia, curacao and trinidad. maduro blames the US for all his own self inflicted problems.
Elio, look at the facts. Your friend Maduro has just staged a successful armed coup against the elected mayor of Caracas.