Political Pornography – New Dirty War in Venezuela

[Judi Lynn]

Political Pornography – New Dirty War in Venezuela
Monday, 24 November 2008, 10:02 am
Column: Julie Webb-Pullman


Political Pornography – The New Dirty War in Venezuela
It is not stretching a point to call the latest Venezuelan rightwing salvo political pornography. In a last-ditch attempt to resist the tsunami of support for PSUV candidates, a million copies of a video produced by an organisation called SYNERGIA began circulating throughout the country ten days ago, and broadcasting on rightwing television channel, Globovision.

SYNERGIA, the Venezuelan Association of Organizations of Civil Society, is composed of several organisations such as "Radar de los Barrios" ("Radar of the Neighbourhoods"), "Liderazgo y Visión" (Leadership and Vision"), and "Unión Vecinal para la Participación Ciudadana" (Local Union for Civil Participation").

Bush's dirty fingers in the pie
They openly admit to receiving funding from Banco Venezolano de Crédito, the Venezuelan Bank of Credit, but are more coy about their cosy relationship with big business, certain 'religious' groups, but especially their big foreign sponsors, USAID and Development Alternatives Inc. It is no secret that successive Bush administrations have been openly and increasingly funding the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to channel millions of dollars through USAID to local "NGOs" to destabilise various Latin American governments under the guise of promoting "democracy." (see Eva Golinger´s books The Chavez Code, and Bush versus Chavez - Washington´s War on Venezuela)

SYNERGIA's claim that this latest series of videos and pamphlets are "a tool put in the hands of the citizenship to contribute information and to reflection on topics of significance to the effectiveness of our democratic values and the full exercise of our constitutional law" sits uncomfortably with a "Leadership and Vision" – commissioned impact evaluation report produced by Data C.A. earlier this year on the first phase of their destabilisation campaign, carried out prior to the Referendum vote in December 2007.

As Data C.A. were able to report, the key messages of Leadership and Vision's "ideological education" in that "social pedagogy campaign" were "clearly understood and remembered by the different audiences, being later integrated into their thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours."

The main components of this 'ideological education' were, also unsurprisingly, "simple easily understood and remembered messages repetitively expressed through cliches or colloquialisms, and which can therefore be later integrated without problems into daily language and values, taking root in the subconscious. They shouldhide the ideological message while taking advantage of fears and atavistic prejudices, particularly about socialism, property, and the family."

Dirty-tricks videos are much less messy than cleaning up all that blood, they don't require political prisons, and they avoid the pesky problem of refugees spilling the beans in other countries.

It worked in NAZI Germany, so why not in Venezuela?
Having succeeded in generating doubt and confusion for last year's referendum, contributing significantly to three million people abstaining from the vote, this year's campaign seeks to convince last year's abstainers to vote for the opposition this time round, stealing Obama's catchphrase "Time for a Change". Resorting to a communication style familiar in Nazi Germany, where commentary about Jews was accompanied by images of rats swarming across the screen, SYNERGIA's first offering shows a school with overflowing rubbish bins next to it, and surprise surprise, a rat features in the first sentence. Flaunting 50 years of slick marketing and psychological warfare techniques, this campaign cynically refines psycho-political manipulation by using the language of the Constitution, and sometimes of Chavez himself, to distort the message and manipulate the less-politically savvy.

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0811/S00314.htm

[Peace Patriot]

1. People here who are hurting economically need to know where their tax money is going--

among other things to fund rightwing propaganda in Venezuelan elections. And Venezuelans really, really need to consider banning USAID-NED money from their country, especially when it is used politically. Venezuela does have a law banning foreign money in political campaigns. It was used prosecute leaders of the U.S.-funded group SUMATE who mounted the recall campaign in 2004 (which Chavez won handily), using our tax money. I don't know why items like this video are permitted around an election. It appears that the law is not strictly enforced. It should be. And it should be strengthened.

:grouphug: to Venezuela today, and to all citizens of good will, however they vote. I pray that it all goes peacefully and that these by-elections are not the trigger for the Bushwhacks' long planned Oil II in South America.

[Vogon_Glory]

2. Let The Venezuelans Decide For Themselves

I suspect that Venezuelans have much better BS detectors than DU's knee-jerk Chavez defenders give them credit for. Let Venezuelans have access to the videos, let them watch them (if they so choose), let Venezuelans decide for themselves whether the contents either have merit or are pure tripe (As they so choose), and let Venezuelans decide for themselves whether the videos (I suppose most of them are on DVD these days) are worth saving, whether they'd make good coasters, or whether to just toss them in la basura (As they so choose).

[Bacchus39]

3. the horror!!! next thing you know the oppostion will have their own TV show

we wouldn't want that now would we?

[Judi Lynn]

4. They do have their own many tv shows 24/7, as well as all the newspapers, radio stations. n/t

[Bacchus39]

5. is there an Aló Oposición program like Chavez has?? looks like most TV is state run

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2723008820070528

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_of_Venezuela