Brave Redshirts Battling Fascist-Nazis in Venezuela

[Neysha]

Well the peaceful student led protests in Venezuela that started yesterday and this morning somehow turned violent. It'd be hard to hear about it of course, since many of the local media outlets ran out of paper. But there's a few videos that got out of the chaos that's spread across several states.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrpihh6mewQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3DS2uxihGk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mb97ZcOd8g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsjIb62_PoM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15xj1Tf3sU0

President Nicholas Maduro had this to say, clearly feeling legitimized by the one percent margin of victory he got in disputed elections ten months ago: "A Nazi-fascist current has emerged again in Venezuela, they want to lead our nation to violence and chaos," and “I've had enough. You can accuse me of what you want, I am obliged to defend democracy and the peace of the people.”

Fortunate some are brave enough to defend democracy and helping redistribute the wealth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNULcdQ6a0I

[IStateYourName]

Meh.  The leadership of Venezuela seems hell-bent on repeating every failed policy of the far-Left in Latin America since the middle of the 20th century.  So I'm immediately skeptical of them labeling the demonstrators "Nazis."  Perhaps someone who supports the government of Venezuela would be kind enough to provide objective cites to show which ethnic groups the demonstrators wish to herd into extermination camps, as well as their plans for seizing power, ramping up the military, and invading Brazil and Columbia to establish a Greater Venezuelan Reich or whatever. 

I think a more likely explanation is that the demonstrators were probably peaceful centrists or center-Right (by global standards), and hooligans and other opportunists hijacked the demonstrations for their own ends.

[Neysha]

Meh.  The leadership of Venezuela seems hell-bent on repeating every failed policy of the far-Left in Latin America since the middle of the 20th century.  So I'm immediately skeptical of them labeling the demonstrators "Nazis."  Perhaps someone who supports the government of Venezuela would be kind enough to provide objective cites to show which ethnic groups the demonstrators wish to herd into extermination camps, as well as their plans for seizing power, ramping up the military, and invading Brazil and Columbia to establish a Greater Venezuelan Reich or whatever. 

I think a more likely explanation is that the demonstrators were probably peaceful centrists or center-Right (by global standards), and hooligans and other opportunists hijacked the demonstrations for their own ends.

The protests this time were student led, and had the tragically typical grievances so common in Venezuela now, despite the "Bolivarian" miracle under Hugo Chavez. There have been two bid devaluations already IIRC since Maduro took power only ten months ago, in an effort to boost oil export profits while debt spirals upwards, inflation upwards of fifty percent, chronic shortages in food, toilet paper, electronics and car parts and other things such as the increasing crime rate, employment of gangs as political enforcers (or romantically referred to as urban guerrillas), and the fair and free Mayoral elections last December.

There's actually a lot of parallels to the Ukrainian protests actually, where the government alleges the liberal opposition are both stooges for the West, as well as Nazis.



This is clearly how the government views the choices in Ukraine and Venezuela.

[TheGlyphstone]

Apparently Ukraine thinks money is evil, based on the bottom there.

[consortium11]

To be fair, in the Ukranian protests a major part of the opposition... and the ones that have been most prominent and forward in the street protests... has been neo-Nazi's. That's certainly not to say the entire protests are or that's what the protests are about, but I don't think we should whitewash the role of Svoboda in the protests.

[Neysha]

To be fair, in the Ukranian protests a major part of the opposition... and the ones that have been most prominent and forward in the street protests... has been neo-Nazi's. That's certainly not to say the entire protests are or that's what the protests are about, but I don't think we should whitewash the role of Svoboda in the protests.

How much of the Svoboda Party are Neo-Nazis?

Plus the opposition has other larger parties like the Fatherland Party and Klitchko's, who is the most prominent figure, especially internationally, in the Euromaiden protests. From the last election it seems the Svoboda Party just managed to get a slice of the popular vote larger then the Government supporting Communist Party of the Ukraine as well, for comparison.

But the opposition protests actually seem to be rather diverse, though thanks to the Russofication policies for the past century or so, Ukraine has always been divided between the Russian and ethnic Ukrainian parts of the nation.

[Cyrano Johnson]

Venezuela's "opposition" is in fact dominated by foreign-funded wingnut oligarchs, by the way. That's not just Venzuelan gummint propaganda.

[Neysha]

Well if that's the case, then I'm relieved the riot police are beating them insensate. 

[Cyrano Johnson]

You would profit from actually reading the article I just linked, seriously:

Let’s get the facts straight: plenty of Venezuelans are taking to the streets with legitimate grievances about violent crime, high inflation and food shortages — and there is no doubt that the Venezuelan riot police are indeed behaving violently towards many of these protesters. All police brutality should be roundly condemned. The people of Venezuela should be allowed to freely express their indignation in public without fear of repression. But it bears emphasizing in this respect that at least two of the protesters’ main grievances have been deliberately escalated by the oligarchic elite itself: through extensive hoarding and smuggling of consumer products (giving rise to shortages and fueling price inflation) and massive speculation on the foreign currency market (pushing down the Bolívar and feeding into further inflation). This is precisely the type of economic warfare that the US-backed Chilean opposition drew upon prior to the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973.

Moreover, even though the protests initially began as a student mobilization on Venezuela’s national Youth Day (February 12), they have in the past week become effectively subsumed under the leadership of the most right-wing section of the opposition alliance, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), led by Maria Corina Machado and Leopoldo López. As the firebrand leaders of the most anti-democratic faction of the oligarchic elite, López and Machado have been actively calling for the overthrow of Nicolas Maduro’s democratically-elected government and have urged the continuation of violent protest until he resigns. In the last 15 years, these people have shown themselves to be intent on restoring their class privilege at any costs, even if it requires casualties among the general population. They are deliberately fueling violence and social unrest in order to delegitimize and oust the government.

[Neysha]

I did skim it when I was on the "fair and balanced" Venezuela Analysis website. My eyes started glossing over when the article seems to be stretching the truth. No admission or evidence of CIA or White House involvement, stretching the truth in that the Ford Foundation (which supported the Human Rights Watch studies on Chilean prosecution of Pinochet-era criminality) or never discussing why the Milton Friedman award was given to the one particular student. It was done because according to another of these wacky, overtly biased anti-opposition blogs...

In 2008, the US-based Cato Institute awarded the US$500,000 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty to student leader Yon Goicoechea for his role in mobilising protests against the suspension of private broadcaster RCTV’s licence.

Students took to the streets in opposition of Chavez era shutting down of RCTV and six other television media outlets? Why is the CATO Institute supporting those student actions a bad thing?

And it makes general allegations that the US is publicly and privately sending millions of dollars to Venezuelan opposition groups, while not even pointing out what those groups are, what they do, whose involved and again, most of the hyperlinks are to similarly slanted opinion blogs and commentaries from like minded bloggers. That's about as fair and balanced as Fox Nation or Venezuelan mainstream media. And it states that that Maduro's Party has won plenty of free and fair elections, that's great, especially when the media is dominated by government run media at pretty much anytime and the restrictions are only eased during the election cycle, regardless of what Jimmy Carter or George Galloway says. How you can have free and fair elections without a free and independent media seems peculiar to me. And the blogs source for it having had free and fair elections is pro-government think tanks.

And then it says the media supports the opposition due to ownership being overwhelmingly private... which is true but also incredibly misleading. All of the private pay television stations (which only 41% of Venezuelans have access to) still have to follow the mandate of airing government speeches and other press releases/conferences or be punished. Even covering the protests violates Venezuelan broadcasting law and this is what the opposition media has to operate under. Globovision earlier faced censorship for a brief spot that called for new elections if Chavez, due to his cancer treatment in Cuba, was unable to continue as President. As for the opposition led newspapers, one barely has a circulation of a quarter million and the other two barely have a circulation above a hundred thousand and all of them are under similar censorship due to Venezuala's odd broadcasting laws and furthermore... are running out of newsprint.

And that's just from two of the ten issues discussed in that blog.

Hypothetical, when you're just posting a blog entry from some progressive blogs which cites videos from Greg Palast of all people and engages in dubious sourcing which tends to be so expansive, how can one oppose every random tangent brought up?  Anyone with a lot of free time on their hands can waste their days blogging and finding tenuous hyperlinks to other progressive blogs to reinforce their point of view on pretty much any issue. It's pretty rich when the author says you can't even trust the Guardian with reporting on its bread and butter commentary wise. But why go for actual news articles when you can go with unbiased bloggers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt7D_hljpfM

I'm sorry, your small business is serving the fascist, anti-democratic oligarchs. If you can afford stylish polo shirts, you're supporting income inequality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df30kqbRsxU

I'm sorry, your niece who was shot and killed by the police was a Fascist and a Nazi, as was the Venezuelan Miss Tourism 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJAoLOYhA4c

I'm sorry, you work for Ted Turner, it's self explanatory. :p

[Neysha]

As for Ukraine, I was a bit unfair to Consortium11 earlier.

While Svoba does have a lot of 'right wing' association including those considered Ukranian nationalists and Nazis, my main contention with the Ukrainian opposition as a whole is with the fact that the opposition is only slightly less corrupt then Yanukovych and his supporters. This same thing happened similarly ten years ago and ultimately while there was a drift towards Europe and away from Russia, the opposition was shown to be almost as currupt and far more divided then Yanukovych's backers. Still, if deciding between two sides of kleptomania, I'd choose the opposition. The opposition tends to be more liberal, more respective of human rights, more Western and EU oriented and compared with its competition, less corrupt and authoritarian. And ultimately, closer contact with the less corrupt EU and West would hopefully have a moderating effect on the Ukraine, while stronger ties with the petrodollar and corruption and authoritarian Putinist Russia would exacerbate corruption issues, so for me, I show a strong preference for the opposition, even if pathetically sad right wing nationalist pseudo wannabe Nazis are included in their ranks. Reaching for perfection after revolutions just leads to disappointment.

[Callie Del Noire]

Neysha, as a side note..PLEASE cite your links differently, it's hard to track like that. I get that you were pointing out the hypocrisy of the situations but it's hard to track and follow like that.

That aside, Venezuela has had issues like this for years! they are just getting more pronounced that Chavez is dead. He didn't let anyone get the power, influence or competence to do anything while he was in power. Not to mention he had buckets of charisma and knew how to use it. There was dissent before, he'd moved on rival media sources and most of what is going on now is building on his work.

That being said the nationalization and seizure of land, industry and such have parallels with men like Idi Amin who seized businesses and nationalized them. It's not a complete paralle though since as far as I can tell Chavez didn't give them to allies to rob! pillage and plunder but at least SOME of the countries woes is from the seizure as you lose motivation to invest in a country that might seize your investment at a moment. It's a delicate balance between a region maintaining control of their own resources and profiting fairly and being an exploited 'bannna republic' that outside companies pillage at will. Delicate indeed since investors should expect a return on their investment while the local should get something on their resources, makes my head hurt and decide wiser folks than I are needed to balance that scale.

This increasingly heavy handed approach and a clear divide between the government and the opposition though will end badly I fear. I expect within 4 years there will be open revolts or a LOT of opposition members 'vanishing'

[Cyrano Johnson]

Neysha, your request for some independent sourcing on the article from ROAR, while framed... eccentrically... is valid, and I'll get on it later today. As for this:

I'm sorry, your niece who was shot and killed by the police was a Fascist and a Nazi

Just don't, okay? Doesn't help your case.

[Neysha]

Neysha, as a side note..PLEASE cite your links differently, it's hard to track like that. I get that you were pointing out the hypocrisy of the situations but it's hard to track and follow like that.

That aside, Venezuela has had issues like this for years! they are just getting more pronounced that Chavez is dead. He didn't let anyone get the power, influence or competence to do anything while he was in power. Not to mention he had buckets of charisma and knew how to use it. There was dissent before, he'd moved on rival media sources and most of what is going on now is building on his work.

That being said the nationalization and seizure of land, industry and such have parallels with men like Idi Amin who seized businesses and nationalized them. It's not a complete paralle though since as far as I can tell Chavez didn't give them to allies to rob! pillage and plunder but at least SOME of the countries woes is from the seizure as you lose motivation to invest in a country that might seize your investment at a moment. It's a delicate balance between a region maintaining control of their own resources and profiting fairly and being an exploited 'bannna republic' that outside companies pillage at will. Delicate indeed since investors should expect a return on their investment while the local should get something on their resources, makes my head hurt and decide wiser folks than I are needed to balance that scale.

This increasingly heavy handed approach and a clear divide between the government and the opposition though will end badly I fear. I expect within 4 years there will be open revolts or a LOT of opposition members 'vanishing'

Yes I do have to credit Hugo Chavez with doing the most of any previous administration in bringing the poor out of poverty, and closing the egregious and growing gap of income inequality which no previous administration really had the courage of tackling, but it's utterly tragic that Chavez still ended up tainted by megalomania. I was hoping that with his passing, a lot of his constitutionally mandated reforms would stay in place even when a more moderate regime was elected, but with Nicholas Maduro coming into power, it's clear that the "revolution" is still going to continue, regardless of consequences.

Chavez did a lot of good for Venezuela, especially it's most impoverished. But Nicholas Maduro has to keep this revolution going more and more that it's going to be sustained by self destructive behavior. Compared to Chavez, Maduro lacks much of Hugo's initiative, charm, charisma, intelligence, popularity, courage, astuteness, wisdom, experience, cunning, magnetism and pretty much everything else. He's a pathetic shade of what Chavez was or what he achieved, regardless if you agree with the poorly named Bolivarian Revolution or not.

[Callie Del Noire]

Yes I do have to credit Hugo Chavez with doing the most of any previous administration in bringing the poor out of poverty, and closing the egregious and growing gap of income inequality which no previous administration really had the courage of tackling, but it's utterly tragic that Chavez still ended up tainted by megalomania. I was hoping that with his passing, a lot of his constitutionally mandated reforms would stay in place even when a more moderate regime was elected, but with Nicholas Maduro coming into power, it's clear that the "revolution" is still going to continue, regardless of consequences.

Chavez did a lot of good for Venezuela, especially it's most impoverished. But Nicholas Maduro has to keep this revolution going more and more that it's going to be sustained by self destructive behavior. Compared to Chavez, Maduro lacks much of Hugo's initiative, charm, charisma, intelligence, popularity, courage, astuteness, wisdom, experience, cunning, magnetism and pretty much everything else. He's a pathetic shade of what Chavez was or what he achieved, regardless if you agree with the poorly named Bolivarian Revolution or not.

Sorry.. he didn't. That was as side effect of trying to set himself up as a tyrant. He died before the spiraling problems that are starting to hit the country hit. Short term.. yeah, he addressed a LOT of the post colonial era inequities but things won't last the way he set up in the country. The bubble WILL burst. You take away from one to pay another (others), when they don't have jobs, money, or a job..what happens later? Who do you take from next?

Chavez tried to seize power in a coup d'etat, went to prison, got pardoned for his crimes by the then current leader of the country to appease his supporters..where he promptly went into politics and eventually came to power. During his tenure in office he manipulated the government to stay in power (even pushing though amendments to ensure he could continue to stay in office). Many of the policies that are being used to crush the media and opposition parties ability to point out problems.. HE started.

If you study history.. there are very very disturbing parallels between his history and say.. Adolph Hitler.