Remembervhs, you seem like a thoughtful person and I can tell that you've been reading about Venezuela. We seem to at least agree in that, as you put it, Chomsky's "behavior in regards to regimes that commit significant crimes against humanity is sometimes baffling." I'll reply to some of your points:
As bad as many "third world" dictators may be, everyone knows they're bad. There isn't this widespread belief that they are good people trying to make the world a better place.
I believe you're being a bit naive. Third world despots spend fortunes at home advertising themselves as heroes and many in their countries believe them. In Venezuela, President Maduro regularly refers to Chavez as "The Christ" and his government portrays him as a saintly figure on par with Jesus. (I'm not religious, but I find the comparison tacky and dangerous.) Their party enthusiastically defend the likes of Saddam Hussein, Libya's Gadaffi and Syria's Assad. They've decorated some of those dictators with Venezuela's highest honors. You'll never hear them admit that they're responsible for terrible attrocities. According to them, that's just the US government making up lies about the most distinguished world leaders.
Whether you like Chavez or not, he has closed some of the gap between the people and industry (namely oil).
Actually, there's more corruption now than ever before. That's one of the main criticisms of his government. The price of oil went through the roof, but Venezuela gained little from that bonanza.
If Chavez is so brutal and horrible, then how was he so popular? A lot of native Venezuelans who opposed Chavez seem to be in denial about a few basic facts:
-The poor in the country widely supported Chavez (and 70% of the country were poor--when I looked at the numbers, some time ago, I don't know if it's changed).
-The rich who opposed him were and are a significant minority.
It's true that Chavez's party has been more popular among the poor and uneducated. But their support declined more recently, as the government's failures became more evident. In this year's presidential elections, Maduro won by less than 1.5% of the vote, according to the official results. That means basically half of the country voted for Capriles, the opposition leader.
Also, the math is not as black and white as you put it. The opposition tends to win in the country's main cities, while Chavez's support is strongest in rural areas. Chavez has lost in some of the poorest neighborhoods of Caracas, the capital.
For some reason that your argument does not explain, the poor people in the country like Chavez. They love him. The explanations for this that I have read are that he has built public housing and he has nationalized the oil industry. Both of these things are highly popular, and public housing was very much needed.
Sadly, many bad leaders around the world have been very popular. If only good leaders were popular, the Earth would be a very different place. Mao is an example of a power-hungry, criminally incompetent leader whose policies resulted in starvation and the death of millions ā e.g. the Great Leap Forward ā yet remained hugely popular.
Chavez was full of promise when he started out and he offered a much needed and welcome change. He was charismatic and full of energy. But in reality, he disappointed and missed a fantastic opportunity. For 14 years, he had popular support, complete control of all three branches of the government, his own brand new Constitution (which he later changed according to his needs) and an unprecedented influx of money from oil. Unfortunately, he has little to show for all that. The result is a failed, corrupt economy. He actually built fewer houses than previous governments.
Don't get me wrong, I think Chavez did some positive things for the poor. To begin with, he brought attention to them and I applaud that. He developed some social programs that provide rudimentary health care and teach the poor how to read and write. And there's more. I don't pretend Chavez was 100% bad or "evil". He certainly was no Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot. But you have to look at the larger picture. Hospitals in Venezuela are overwhelmed and underfunded. There's scarcity of medicines. Also, of basic goods like milk, meat, sugar, flour, etc. as well as medicines. Crime is rampant. The economy is in tatters. They've created armed, popular militias and allowed the Colombian guerrillas to settle in Venezuelan territory. This can eventually explode in violence. The government keeps promising the poor houses, cars, money, etc. if they sign up with the party, but that kind of system cannot last in the long run.
I think Chavez's success in presidential elections was based more on the emotional than the rational. Notice that the less charismatic Maduro (who was handpicked by Chavez as his heir) was only able to win by less than 1.5% of the votes, according to the official results, only a few months after Chavez won by a larger margin. Chavez learned about the cult of personality from Mao and others.
The government was losing support for today's local elections, so they imposed new regulations on everything from the price of home appliances and cars to the rent of office spaces. This will give them the momentum they need, but it will be catastrophic for the economy. Things will be cheaper in the long run, but businesses will go broke in the longer run, because they cannot make a profit under the new laws.
I think you're exaggerating his duplicity and the evils of his regime to a bizarre level. One example of this is the idea that he cheated in the elections that he continually won. Sources that I have read say this isn't true. He won due to his popularity.
You're only right to some extent. Yes, Chavez was very popular and won the presidential elections handily. But there was serious cheating.
Just to give you one example: when Venezuelans collected thousands of signatures for a referendum against Chavez (which was perfectly legal according to Chavez's new Constitution), the government posted online a list of those who had signed the petition and had them all fired permanently from public jobs. This is no secret. Chavez defended the procedure on TV and only had the list removed and "buried" years later. You can look up the 'Tascon List' on Wikipedia. Now, if Bush had done that, Chomsky would have been up in arms! But if Chavez does it, it's cool, somehow. Chavez's party also suggested repeatedly that they'd be able to know who had voted against him in the following elections and that they'd have them fired as well. It's classic voter intimidation. Many videos have surfaced in which leaders of government institutions threatened to fire anyone who didn't show full support for Chavez.
Another example: When opposition candidate Antonio Ledezma won the 2008 Caracas mayoral elections, Chavez simply created a brand new position, Head of the Venezuelan Capital District, which took over most functions, funding, and personnel from Ledezma's office. Chavez then handpicked someone from his party, Jacqueline FarĆa, for the position, therefore virtually replacing Ledezma and bypassing the will of the voters. He could do things like that, because he had a majority of Congress and the Supreme Court on their side.
Chavez's party also set up the rules for congressional elections in such a way that the more rural states, where they have stronger support, count proportionally for more members of Congress than the more populous, urban states where the opposition is more popular.
Because they control the Supreme Court, they constantly decide who in the opposition can run or not for public office. (Meanwhile, they won't investigate the top leaders of their party who are accused of corruption ā e.g. head of Congress, Diosdado Cabello.)
Like I said before, in the most recent presidential elections, Maduro supposedly won by less than 1.5% (even after handing out money to supporters, having assisted voting, etc.) The opposition claimed that the number of voters recorded by the electoral machines didn't match the numbers shown in the electoral notebooks, where voters signed their names by hand and left their fingerprints. To prove it, they demanded that both records (machines and notebooks) be compared in public, but the Supreme Court refused, leaving doubts about the validity of the vote count. They only had the votes from the machines recounted.
Both Chavez and Maduro have been allowed to rule by decree for many months at a time, without the participation of the opposition in Congress.
This board is the wrong place to talk about this. The movie is almost explicitly not about politics.
The documentary is an interview with someone who's been very vocal about his political views, so I think it's fair enough to discuss them, even if the focus of the film isn't politics.
One last thing: news sources, unfortunately, tend to be biased. Most will either support or condemn Chavez consistently. I believe in reading different sites across the spectrum in order to balance things out. The Guardian, for example, is very pro-Chavez. The New York Times, on the other hand, is very critical of him and his party. Many news sources on the left (like The Huffington Post) have been critical in many instances. El Pais, a Spanish newspaper that strongly leans left, is also very critical. (For the English version:
http://elpais.com/elpais/inenglish.html)
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