Rare News Desk
As Venezuela continues its downward spiral and the whole world is once again reminded of socialism’s horrors, it’s important to reflect on the power of ideas. For years, many mainstream commentators have forcefully disputed the country’s staggering economic problems, praising Bolivarian policies of radical redistribution as a model for the West.
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In 2013, an op-ed by Mark Weisbrot in the Guardian was published with the subheadline, “in this oil-rich country the only thing imploding is poverty.” Worse, David Sirota in Salon accused Western media of portraying Venezuela’s economic problems as worse than they are because of a capitalistic hatred towards socialism:
Just to get it out of the way, I’ll state the obvious: with respect to many policies, Chavez was no saint. He, for instance, amassed a troubling record when it came to protecting human rights and basic democratic freedoms (though as Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy notes, “Venezuela is recognized by many scholars to be more democratic than it was in the pre-Chávez era”). His rein also coincided with a boom in violent crime.
That said, these serious problems, while certainly worthy of harsh criticism, were not the primary reason Chavez became the favorite effigy of American politicians and pundits. In an age marked by America’s drone assaults, civil liberties abuses, and war on voting, it is not as if this nation’s political establishment sees an assault on democratic freedoms as deplorable. Likewise, that same political establishment is more than friendly with leaders of countries like Mexico and Colombia – countries which are also periodically hotbeds of violent crime.
No, Chavez became the bugaboo of American politics because his full-throated advocacy of socialism and redistributionism at once represented a fundamental critique of neoliberal economics, and also delivered some indisputably positive results. Indeed, as shown by some of the most significant indicators, Chavez racked up an economic record that a legacy-obsessed American president could only dream of achieving.
Note how Sirota starts off his analysis acknowledging Chavez’s poor legacy towards civil liberties before condoning the socialist regime. The title of Sirota’s piece was “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle,” a particularly disturbing distortion considering recent reports of dying infants in hospitals without medicine. The worst part is that these horrors are being witnessed in one of the most oil-rich countries in the world, a true testament to how bad the misallocation of resources can cripple an entire population.
But, perhaps the worst perpetrator of Western apologetics towards Venezuela’s tyrannical government is the popular American director Oliver Stone. Stone has produced — not one but two — documentaries praising Hugo Chavez’s brand of South American socialism since 2009.
With the abomination of socialism on full display, will any of these Venezuelan cheerleaders swallow their pride and admit their error?
