Hugo Chavez: Champion of the Poor or Unhinged Megalomaniac?

That's the question posed by the BBC on the death of Chavez.

3/6/13 circa 8:25 am London (GMT): BBC female anchor announces the big story is the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who just died. “Was he a champion of the poor or an unhinged megalomaniac?” Those are the choices, as framed by the BBC. (Yes, that's an exact quote. Given the BBC's unrelenting anti-Chavez bias to date, his death must be a moment they were eagerly awaiting.) Then the male announcer reads a handful of very brief listener comments on Chavez, which either praise him in general terms or damn him with invective.

Following that, we get to hear him comparing Bush to the Devil in a UN speech. He also denies being a dictator because he was elected, and “the rich” tried to overthrow him in a [failed U.S.-backed] coup.

Next, to figure Chavez out, while totally ignoring any discussion of his actual policies, they bring on, of all people, Jon Lee Anderson from the New Yorker. The discussion with Anderson focuses on Chavez' alleged personality- a typical way the bourgeoisie avoid discussing actual issues and policies, in this case the reality of economics, politics, and U.S. Imperialism's role in Latin America. (Anderson does allow in passing that “the poor,” Chavez's constituency, are the majority in Venezuela.) Anderson authored the recent hatchet job titled “Slumlord” in the New Yorker, which was mainly a hatchet job on Venezuela's poor, who it presented as criminals. Facing the first page of the article was a full-page picture of a close-up of Chavez' face. He looks dour and vaguely menacing, as anyone photographed in that fashion while not smiling might look. Don't be too subtle, New Yorker! “Slumlord” indeed! Guess you decided to exchange your usual stiletto for a meat cleaver this time.

On the BBC, Anderson calls Chavez “thin-skinned.” Why? Because when Anderson repeated to Chavez's face racial epithets that his “opponents” use against him, Chavez “became visibly upset.” I guess you'd have to call all African-Americans “thin-skinned,” because if you called them “nigger” (or “asked” them to “respond to” their “opponents calling you nigger,” as Anderson must have phrased it or something like that) they'd get upset. That's the sole evidence Anderson presents for Chavez's thin-skinnedness. He may very well have been thin-skinned, but Anderson damns himself in my book with his gross racial insensitivity, at best, or racist baiting. As a Head of State, Chavez sure got no respect from bourgeois media hatchet men like Anderson!

But if you want to prove that someone was a dictator, showing that they couldn't handle their “opponents' criticism” without getting upset is a useful tactic, I suppose! What says "dictator" better than "volatile" and "quick to anger"?

The BBC also treats us to the U.S. ambassador's take on Chavez. (Guess. Let's just say he's not a fan.)

[The BBC, in all its hours of interviews and blather, didn't have time to talk to any ambassadors from countries friendly to Chavez. Unimportant countries like, oh,  Russia, whose UN Ambassador offered praise for Chavez and regrets over his passing. Not what the BBC or the rest of the Western media pack is looking for. Hey, you gotta prioritize when you're in the media biz!]

The BBC did mention at one point that Chavez provided subsidized oil to 18 countries. This was either an act of solidarity with the poor of those nations, savvy politics, or “bribes,” depending on one's attitude towards Chavez. Or a combination of some of the above. Unmentioned by BBC: Chavez provided cheap fuel oil to poor Americans. This act of generosity got short shrift in the U.$. media, predictably. The U.S. Government didn't provide the oil. (In fact heating oil subsidies are on the budget chopping block, as are all programs aimed specifically at the poor.) None of the numerous rich plutocrats in the U.S. did it. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn't (and doesn't) do it.

NPR launched “Morning Edition” with co-anchor Steve Inskeep proclaiming Chavez championed the poor “and demonized his enemies.” (Just paying them back in kind, no Steve?) An hour later (6 am Washington D.C. time) he's saying Chavez beat a coup and recall attempt, “but he couldn't beat cancer.” Which just goes to show that there's more than one way to skin a (red) cat, huh U.S.?


Later, co-anchor Renee Montagne “interviews” NPR's U.S.-imperialism-beat reporter Tom Gjelten, who speculates about harm to Cuba from the possible loss of subsidized oil. Maybe there'll be unrest! he speculates. The previous afternoon (3/5), NPR's Audie Cornish “interviewed” him on their afternoon "news" show All Things Considered. Topic: “Rivalries And Infighting Could Follow In Wake Of Chavez's Death.” That's how it's titled on NPR's website. You can read or listen to it there, but why bother? The title says all you need to know. Yes indeed, rivalries and infighting could follow after Chavez's death. How right they are. Or maybe they won't follow. NPR did say “could,” after all. Who knows? We'll just have to wait and see. (Don't worry, the U.S. will do its best to exacerbate rivalries and infighting. Look how well that worked to help destroy the Black Panther Party.)


And here's how loutish Obama is: his “statement” on Chavez's death doesn't even offer condolences to the Chavez family, instead putting in a barb about “democratic principles” and “respect for human rights.” Shut up, man. Can the bogus ideological cant for once. You got what you wanted. You could at least be gracious enough to offer a normal condolence message to the family of the dead. If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, Obama is so morally cheap he won't even cough it up. (1)

It's obvious from all this, and from Obama's "statement" [see below at (1)] that the U.S. is eager to take advantage of Chavez's passing to get rid of the Chavez party and put back in power the rightful rulers of Venezuela, Venezuelan rich and their political representatives. That is who the U.S. sees as the rightful rulers of every country on earth.

An Aljazeera man made the odd comment that when Chavez took office he “intended to provoke” the U.S. He certainly did provoke the U.S. But that doesn't mean he set out to do that. I think he set out to push back against U.S. domination and indeed oppression of Latin America. The U.S. has been doing that for over a century. (Indeed, it tacitly announced its intention to do so with the Monroe “Doctrine,” which brazenly declared This is Our Hemisphere.) The U.S. has been imposing its will on Latin America by force at least since its 1898 conquests of Cuba and Puerto Rico, then Spanish colonies. That was also when it foisted the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and Prison/Torture/Show Trial Center on Cuba. Inevitably the U.S. finds resistance to its will “provocative.” That should be on the U.S.' head, not Chavez's. And in a piece by Patty Culhane on Aljazeera, we get a soundbite of Donald Rumsfeld delegitimizing Chavez by saying “Chavez was elected. Hitler was elected.” Ergo, elections don't count when you're a Bad Guy.

Culhane also includes an Obama soundbite, attacking Chavez as “authoritarian” who's “repressing dissent.” (Good one, coming from him. Obama's been no slouch in the domestic repression department.)

Only problem with Rumsfeld claim is, Hitler was never elected to anything!! He was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President (and former Field Marshal and head of the German general staff in World War I) Paul Hindenberg, in January 1933. Then the Nazis arranged the burning of the Reichstag (national legislature building), which they used as a pretext to imprison all the leftist members of the Reichstag and “vote” to give Hitler dictatorial powers. (It was an emergency, don't you know!)

This right-wing trope, that “Hitler was elected,” started some years back in the U.S. I first noticed the American Tory George Will pushing this disinformation. No one ever corrects it or demurs. Now Aljazeera is (unwittingly?) putting it out there. Thus do lies gain currency and become “truth,” through uncontradicted repetition.

And by the way, the Nazis never got more than about a third of the vote for Reichstag seats. They were never voted for by a majority of Germans. (You can look it up. Try a reputable history book. Every one I've ever read has the same facts.)

I won't waste time scraping the bottom of the propaganda barrel, except to note one bit of poison poured into my ear when I was looking for the weather and had to endure this, from WINS, a CBS property in New York City, that used to brag it was “the most listened to station in the nation.” One of their long-time hacks was saying “he's been in this country for 12 years, during which time he says Huge Chavez divided his country.” Then we get a guy with a foreign accent- evidently a Venezuelan- saying “He created a lot of hatred, a lot of resentment.” Well man, if you hate someone, whose fault is that? I guess it depends on whether they did something to deserve it.

WINS plumb “forgot” the rule from Journalism 101, about providing “balance.” But hey, Propaganda 101 says always be one-sided.

I'd love to see an objective, balanced critique of Chavez's policies and accomplishments (if any- I believe that at the very least the political mobilization of the Venezuelan majority alone is an advance in human progress) anywhere in the U.S. media. But that is like looking for a needle in a haystack. There may be one in there somewhere- good luck finding it. (Hint: don't waste your time looking for it in the self-appointed “newspaper of record,” the New York Times. They've had it in for Chavez since Day One. Others have documented this well, such as the people at fair.org. Or you could go the NYT online and read their shit. I've had the misfortune to do that for years.)

So Chavez, dead at 58 from cancer. Now, did the CIA give him that cancer? Very possibly. With the available information, it is impossible to rule that in or out, rationally. What seems obvious is that it was a form of cancer guaranteed to be lethal from the outset. Even from the beginning two years ago, when the cancer became publicly known, the prognosis appeared poor. Despite the attempts of the Chavez regime to obfuscate the details, this is how it seemed to me.

But that question will never be taken up by the capitalist propaganda system. Except if it generates a certain level of interest among “conspiracy theorists” (aka “kooks). Then the system will deign to notice the question and ridicule it, without actually engaging with it either factually or logically. This might include speculation as to the weird psychological problems of people who are attracted to such crazy ideas. (Perhaps they should do as the Soviet Union did, and lock up people with “crazy” political thoughts in mental “hospitals.” Why not? They've already called them nuts. Locking them up would be the next logical step.)

I'm not a particular fan of Chavez. I believe Venezuela's majority, who are poor, need a government that serves their interests. Chavez tried, but he wasn't very competent in the realm of policy, it seems. While his showmanship and extroversion were necessary to inspire people and get them to follow him as a leader, the downside was the creation of a personality cult and the absence of a strong movement and organizational structure that is guaranteed to survive his death. He would have needed a deeper understanding of economics and politics to be truly successful. In short, it would practically take a superman/woman, a perfect person, to overcome the obstacles to progress put in place by the existing social order there, backed by a global economic-political power system. (Now that Chavez is dead, get ready for increased attempts at subversion by the rich and the reactionaries there, in league with the U.S., the global patron of those types.) Also some of the alliances of convenience Chavez made with the likes of the Iranian regime, while perhaps necessary as a defense against the hostile U.S. and its Euro-lackeys et al, provokes moral queasiness in me.

But his ties with Cuba (and Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Nicaragua) are fine and completely justified on the other hand, and are based on genuine ideological and political affinity. Yes, Cuba is a one-party oligarchy. But Cuba is such a long-standing victim of the U.S. that it has to get a pass on its undesirable political system. And the Castros are far and away the most benign dictators in Latin America, ever. It's the only Latin America dictatorship without death squads, for example. And in all the anti-Cuban propaganda in the U.S. media over the years, I don't see descriptions of horrible torture, as is the case in every other Latin dictatorship. (Have there been stories of people dying under torture in Cuba, as they have under U.S. torture during the never-ending “war on terror”? The U.S. media would be waving such stories like bloody flags if they existed.)

Colombia, today, in which the murder of union organizers and many others (lawyers, activists, peasants, whoever) is still routine and ubiquitous, is far, far worse than Cuba in human rights terms. Yet Colombia's government is beloved by the U.S. media and BBC, among others. (Those media reflect the political and ideological alignment of their respective governments in matters of foreign policy, not 100%, but 90-95%.)

In terms of economics Cuba would function better with more small-scale entrepreneurship. More capitalism, sure.

But I'm not sure that should even be called “capitalism.” There have been merchants trading, buying, and selling goods and services for millennia. Small-scale independent farming has co-existed with various forms of serfdom for ages. Yet “capitalism” as a system is commonly dated as only a few centuries old. Perhaps the Cuban Communist Party is overly allergic to anything having to do with making a profit. I don't think there's anything wrong with people accumulating some wealth. There's something wrong with people accumulating grotesque amounts of wealth (and power), like billionaires, for example. There's something wrong when 400 people on a magazine list (Forbes) control two trillion dollars of wealth, while tens of millions of others struggle in unnecessary economic insecurity. 

But now we're wandering off the topic of BBC/New Yorker propaganda. Propaganda that is obviously ideologically motivated. The ideology in turn is designed to defend, protect,and uphold the economic interests of billionaires, multi-millionaires, and the large corporations that are the vehicles of the ruling economic class, against all challenges, actual and potential.

Yes, we wandered off the topic there, but I believe the scenic detour was edifying in heuristic terms, don't you agree?

1. One might argue that Obama is hypocritical many a time. No, he's cynical. A hypocrite cons himself. Obama is a conscious manipulator and liar. For example, when he prattles on about global warming, and then promotes more fossil fuel consumption, he's being cynical.

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

Statement of President Obama on the Death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

At this challenging time of President Hugo Chavez’s passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/03/05/statement-president-obama-death-venezuelan-president-hugo-chavez]

Just take a look at the U.S.' murderous policies in Honduras, Colombia, Bahrain, and scores of other nations to see what unadulterated, cynical balderdash that last sentence is.

As far as U.S. “support for the Venezuelan people” goes, if the word rich were added before people, then it would be an honest assertion.

Here's a timely coincidence: Aljazeera has a program on their website dated today about Operation Condor. Kissinger gave the global terrorist murderers a green light, which led directly to the murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in D.C., among other victims.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2013/03/2013367461442124.html