Yesterday we began revisiting some of the useful stooges of Venezuela in the wake of that country’s promising November 6 parliamentary elections – as a result of which a national legislature with a pro-freedom, anti-chavista majority will begin serving today.
In December, American political commentator Eric Draitser – the logo of whose website, StopImperialism.org, juxtaposes the flags of Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union with those of the U.S. and U.K. – reassured his fellow fans of chavismo, who had naturally been unsettled by the Venezuelan vote, that the Bolivarian Revolution “is not a revolution that can be undone with one election, nor can it be simply legislated out of existence.”
On the contrary, wrote Draitser (a frequent contributor to Putin’s English-language TV channel, Russia Today), “the Revolution will survive. It will be resurgent. It will be reborn thanks to the commitment of millions of dedicated Chavistas.” This conviction on his part, Draitser explained, was “born of experience in Venezuela, one that is informed by dozens of conversations with activists and organizers whose words of love and dedication to the revolution are matched only by their actions to build it.”
Like any good chavista, foreign or domestic, Draitser was quick to shift the focus away from the country’s incompetent, crooked Marxist managers to the Evil Empire to the north – representing the U.S. as a threat to Venezuelan independence, prosperity, and stability and depicting the Bolivarian Revolution as a gutsy thumb in the eye to Uncle Sam on behalf of all Latin Americans, all oppressed peoples, and all victims of the evils of capitalism. If Venezuelan voters rejected Maduro’s party, maintained Draitser, it wasn’t because they were fed up with the sour fruits of its knavish, criminal stewardship, but because of anti-government propaganda that could be traced directly to U.S. support for Venezuela’s “right-wing media.” He might more aptly have said “independent media” or “free media,” thereby to draw a proper distinction between real journalists and the hacks who work for Maduro’s propaganda outlets.
“The right-wing media in the country ,” charged Draitser, “has done everything in its power to undermine the government.” In other words, they’ve reported honestly on the ruling party’s activities and provided a forum to members of the political opposition. In the mind of a dyed-in-the-wool chavista ideologue, such fidelity to the tenets of objective journalism is tantamount to betrayal of the Revolution. (There’s a reason why the chavistas look up to Castro’s Cuba, where there are no independent media, and where Internet access by ordinary subjects continues to be profoundly restricted.)
As for the economic devastation that has been Venezuela’s fate under Chávez‘s and Maduro’s destructive socialist policies, Draitser doesn’t try to deny the problems; instead, again following standard practice, he attributes them largely to “economic sabotage” by the regime’s opponents and their “patrons in Miami and Washington.” He sums up his ridiculous position as follows: “This is certainly not to absolve the government of all blame, but rather to point out that Venezuela and its Revolution have been directly targeted by the forces of the Empire…the U.S. and its proxies have done everything in their power to destroy the Bolivarian process.”
If only! The good news is that, with any luck, “the Bolivarian process” is on the way out. And when it dies, the diagnosis won’t be murder but suicide. Tomorrow, more on those chavistas who, whle feathering their own beds, have helped hasten their own system’s end.