It is rare for authoritarians of the Left to show their true colors so vibrantly. But where in the past it was possible to dismiss Chavez as a standard-issue demagogue, a charge his September bloviating at the United Nations about “the devil” President Bush did much to bolster, the latest developments make a compelling case that Chavez is what he always said he was: the next Fidel Castro.
Consider Chavez’s pledge to turn Venezuela into a “socialist state.” This is not, to be sure, the first time that Chavez has staked his country’s future on a discredited ideology. Never before, however, has he moved so dramatically to put his radical vision into practice. “All of that which was privatized, let it be nationalized,” Chavez announced this week.
He left little doubt about his sincerity. Private properties have already been seized for redistribution. Now power and telecommunications companies have been forced under state control; four prominent oil projects, currently administered by foreign companies, are next in line for official expropriation. Venezuela’s central bank also bids fair to become a holding of the state.
Naturally, wherever socialists tread, the American left is not far behind to praise the virtues of these heroes of the poor and oppressed.
Predictably, Chavez still has his defenders. In the United States, the task of condoning every new attempt to consolidate power as an affirmation of people’s democracy in action has been taken up most prominently by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. The center’s co-director, Mark Weisbrot, has reliably praised Chavez’s Venezuela as a “democratic” country and hailed the alleged success of the government’s economic policies.
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