The Truth About Chávez

[Judi Lynn]

The Truth About Chávez

Bernie Sanders is wrong — Hugo Chávez was no dictator.

by Gabriel Hetland

Dear Bernie,

Like millions of Americans, I’ve been watching your campaign with growing excitement. You’re spot on about the pernicious effects of rising inequality and absolutely correct that the United States now resembles an oligarchy more than a democracy. I applaud your willingness to directly and repeatedly denounce the billionaire class that runs this country. And I wholeheartedly support your call for universal health care.

It’s been a joy to watch you make Hillary Clinton squirm as your poll numbers rise. I smile every time I imagine the possibility of a self-described socialist calling for a political revolution winning the Democratic nomination. I’m encouraged that you have made fighting racism a priority in your campaign, alongside the rest of your progressive agenda.

So I was surprised and dismayed to see you label the late Hugo Chávez a “dead communist dictator” last week. I would expect this from candidates like Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, or Hillary Clinton — not from someone who supported the Sandinistas in the 1980s and accepted discounted heating oil from Chávez for low-income Vermont residents.

I know you’re busy these days, Bernie, so I’ve compiled a list of ten reasons why you might want to think twice before calling Chávez a dictator.

More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/chavez-venezuela-bolivarian-revolution-bernie/

[SamKnause]

1. Thank you for posting Judi.

I do not understand why Bernie referred to President Hugo Chavez

as a Communist dictator.

I support Bernie, but this troubles me.

P.S. I still miss him !!!

[Judi Lynn]

2. You're not alone, SamKnause. It shocked me, too. Odd. Maybe he panicked.

You can be sure the right-wing-owned "news" corporation "journalists" have been dying for a chance to red-bait him, and draw him out in some way which would allow them to devaluate him as a viable candidate. They've got a lot of Joe McCarthy fans among the owners of the "news" corporations, now, who are controlled by greed, not concern for the truth.

Same here, absolutely support Bernie. I imagine he just didn't feel up to a fight at that very moment, not prepared to handle the ####storm they want to hand him for his courage in being a socialist. They depend upon the deep ignorance and intellectual laziness of the public to not understand the meanings of socialism, and communism, and to despise both.

The public's fear is their handle in controlling them. They have to have it or they'll have to work for better news organizations, and probably a lot less money!

[Fred Sanders]

3. Chavez was a socialist Trump, a Latin version of Sanders. I hope he evolves on this issue as well.

[Scootaloo]

4. Sanders is Trump? really Fred?

[Fred Sanders]

5. Did you forget to read all the words again? Allegory can go right over the heads of some, but those

are not the heads I am aiming for.

[uhnope]

6. He was an authoritarian who destroyed democracy and crushed human rights

you want to mince words about how he technically doesn't fit the definition of dictator, go ahead. I think that's ridiculous. I stand with Human Rights Watch and against dictators, uh I mean authoritarians

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/hugo-chavez-wasnt-a-dictator-but-he-crushed-democracy/article9336246/

“By his second full term in office,” Human Rights Watch concludes, “the concentration of power and erosion of human rights protections had given the government free rein to intimidate, censor, and prosecute Venezuelans who criticized the president or thwarted his political agenda.”

In a series of detailed research reports published over the last decade, the respected rights organization has documented the crushing of judicial independence, the large-scale censorship and intimidation of the media, the quashing of opposition parties and banishment and silencing of opponents, and the imprisonment of human-rights activists. During an era when such excesses and abuses of power were disappearing in most other major South American countries, Venezuela stood nearly alone in its magnitude of demagoguery.

The authoritarianism extended into the economy. While he didn’t, contrary to popular myth, nationalize the oil industry (it had been government-owned since 1976, and he merely devastated its productivity and output by packing it with cronies and failing to maintain its infrastructure), he did manage to trash most of the non-oil economy. In a country that should be one of the great agricultural exporters of the Americas, he turned farming into a non-viable business by subsidizing consumption and controlling prices, and converted large swathes of commercial-agriculture land back into subsistence-level peasant farms. As a result, his country became heavily reliant on food imports and suffered from serious food shortages.

[Marksman_91]

8. Don't even bother with the likes of the Chavista sympahtizers in this forum

They're the kind of people who believe bullshit like Chavez's cancer being "inoculated" or something, as said by the most well-paid US spokesperson for Chavismo, Eva Golinger. They're unwilling to accept that a hard-left government (or at least one that claims to be as such) has utterly failed in their economic model and methods of governing.

[uhnope]

9. thx. hard left = extremist = kookoo & anti-democracy

it was DU that made me realize that those folks are still out there...pun intended.

[Judi Lynn]

12. All this from someone who doesn't know the U.S. knew how to "make the economy scream"

in leftist countries whose elected Presidents they intended to destroy long, LONG ago. Those were the words from U.S. President Richard M. Nixon to his C.I.A. head, Richard Helms during the 1970's. They could do it then, they still can do it, of course.

Speaking of anti-Democratic, you can't get more anti-democratic than that. Kissinger, Nixon's Secretary of State also said he couldn't stand by and allow Chileans to succeed in having the government they had voted to have with Allende. Kissinger doesn't seem to realize that Chile's electoral decision was NOT his business then, and it never will be.

This article, by the way, was written by Gabriel Hetland, not Eva Golinger.

[Marksman_91]

13. I was referring specifically to Golinger's BS about how Chavez's cancer was inoculated

Google it yourself, I can't be bothered with it.

And also, you keep using the same old "It happened with ALLENDE SO IT MUST BE HAPPENING NOW" excuse. Anyone with a decent knowledge of economics knows that is complete bullcrap when referring to the Chavista regime, especially now under Maduro. Hell, even Allende's daughter herself has said that Maduro's administration has been totally incompetent. All these "economic war" lies being preached by him and his ilk is just another attempt at them trying to shift the blame on someone else other than themselves for the horrible and corrupt-ridden mismanagement of the Venezuelan economy. Even the Chinese and Russians are starting to notice this now. Hell, at this point, with the way that Maduro's trying to distract everyone from noticing his horrible failure as a president, he'll soon be left without allies. Right now the Caribbean nations and pretty much all of Latin America are backing Guyana more than Venezuela in the whole territorial dispute, which is unsurprising considering how the shitty situation in Venezuela's oil industry has barely left them with anything to buy the support of those nations.

[roody]

7. Did he really say this?

[Judi Lynn]

10. I heard it mentioned on MSNBC several times over a couple of nights, unfortunately. n/t

[roody]

11. Oh well. He's probably wrong on

Palestine too.