Reply #30: Red baiting is easy, and it's stupid. [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Most DU'ers recognize Hugo Chavez is NOT a "Marxist."

We've had greasy wave after wave of trolls oozing in, to attempt to label everyone they hate as a "marxist" or flat out "commie," in the case of the less "eddicated" right-wingers. It stuns and perplexes most people seeing them spend so much vitriol, working so hard to smear leftists, to try to devaluate them.

Nearly all of us have heard various remarks Hugo Chavez has made which should shine a light for the semi-conscious people who remain in darkness, here's one example:

Parade Magazine's Chavez Smear
Venezuelan president a terrorist funder?

10/12/05

On October 9, Parade magazine--the Sunday newspaper supplement with a circulation of 34.5 million, making it the country's most widely distributed magazine--published an inaccurate smear against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The smear, appearing in the Q&A column "Walter Scott's Personality Parade," was a response to a letter writer who wanted to know "where Fidel Castro gets the dough to shore up his bankrupt regime." Scott's full answer was:

"In the wake of the collapse of the USSR, which bankrolled him to the tune of $4 billion a year, Castro has turned to Hugo Chavez, Marxist president of Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter. In addition to shoring up Castro, he's funding revolutionaries and terrorists throughout Latin America."

Scott's two-sentence response managed to misrepresent several issues. Chavez is not a Marxist; asked about his politics by the left-wing publication CounterPunch (8/16/04), Chavez replied: "I don't believe in the dogmatic postulates of Marxist revolution. I don't accept that we are living in a period of proletarian revolutions.... Are we aiming in Venezuela today for the abolition of private property or a classless society? I don't think so." Chavez describes himself as a Bolivarian, a follower of the 19th Century Latin American independence leader Simon Bolivar.

More:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2697