Thatcher is Dead—Long Live Chávez!

[reorg]

Thatcher is Dead—Long Live Chávez!
by GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER

Two deaths with diametrically opposite meanings, evident from the immediate responses they provoked. One was greeted by millions of mourners packing the streets of Caracas, waiting for days to catch a glimpse of their departed leader. The other prompted spontaneous street parties in Brixton and Glasgow and a barrage of comical send-ups about the impending privatization of hell. But while revelers gathered spontaneously to celebrate the physical death of the Iron Lady of neoliberalism, Margaret Thatcher, voters in Venezuela are heading to the polls to drive nails into her coffin and bury her legacy by electing a revolutionary successor to Hugo Chávez.

“Children of 1989”

The Fourth World War started in Venezuela, and it was a war against Thatcher and her ilk. In February of 1989, Ronald Reagan had only recently handed the baton over to George H.W. Bush, and Thatcher was gearing up to impose the Poll Tax, which would see epic riots in Trafalgar Square the following year. Meanwhile in Venezuela, a seemingly different sort of government was taking power with a surprisingly similar outlook. Centrist social democrat Carlos Andrés Pérez had been elected on an anti-neoliberal platform that promised debtor-nation resistance and derided the IMF as a “bomb that only kills people.”

Once in power, however, the bait was switched and Pérez did an abrupt about face, instituting the neoliberal Washington Consensus to the letter: sweeping privatization and deregulation and the certainty that, for the poorest at least, things were about to get much worse. But while the populations of the United States and Britain were busily swallowing the bitter pill of neoliberalism under the illusion that there was no alternative, poor Venezuelans unexpectedly spat it back out and set about burning and looting to make the impossible suddenly possible.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/12/thatcher-is-dead-long-live-chavez/

Good read, with many links such as this one:

If Chávez was rarely respected by the foreign press in life – indeed, here was a figure about whom literally anything could be said, written, and published – why would we expect anything different in death? Thus alongside the popular ebullitions of grief over Chávez and joy over Thatcher, there were the reactions to the deaths of Chávez and Thatcher in the nominally progressive Guardian.

Whereas the paper’s obituary for Thatcher was polite to a fault, that pinnacle of absurdity that is Rory Carroll had only one month earlier granted a veneer of respectability to those who would bid the late Venezuelan President “good riddance.” Carroll is still evidently smarting from the day that Chávez himself subjected the journalist to a stinging history lesson. Despite the fact that he tells this story constantly, however, he can’t seem to remember what actually happened.

[SamKnause]

1. Hugo Chavez

Thanks for posting.

I still haven't come to terms with President Chavez's death. : (

Such a great loss !

[Demeter]

3. A Giant for All Times

and god knows, we need some.

[Arctic Dave]

2. K&R

[Judi Lynn]

4. It would be a crime to NOT read this article! Thank you, so much.

This totally capable, and well-focused writer has thrown a TON of thought into it, and conscience, and brought together a lot of things which have been pressing on our minds, recently.

It's necessary to read it, read it again, and store it away to share with others. Only one part from the article among many worth highlighting:

The Anti-Chavista Double-Bind

In fact, in light of such a certain defeat, much opposition posturing is little more than a performance for a foreign audience. Case in point: the opposition MUD coalition recently called a press conference to denounce purported irregularities in the electoral system, notably that: “a PSUV [United Socialist Party] member, was in possession of the password for the start-up and log-in and log-out of the machines.” But when pushed on the importance of this claim, the MUD’s Executive Secretary Ramón Aveledo conceded that the password “does not put the voting system at risk, it’s true, it does not put the electoral software at risk, nor the identification of voters, nor the vote count, nor the transmission of the results.”

What to make of this entire spectacle? If the goal was to discredit the electoral system, surely this task could have been accomplished less clumsily. The reality, however, is that these contradictory claims point to the contradiction that is the opposition itself. Not a majority, it cannot win elections, and unable to win elections, it is constantly tempted to abstain rather than competing in them.

It was this double-bind that led to the utterly hubristic coup against Chávez exactly eleven years ago today, which was reversed within 47 hours by the same masses that coup planners had so thoroughly underestimated. By attempting a coup, the opposition effectively handed the mantle of democratic legitimacy to the Chávez government, and many anti-Chavistas have spent years attempting to shed the label of golpistas, coup-mongers, with only limited success. Since Chávez wiped the floor with Manuel Rosales in 2006, the majority of the opposition has accepted the results of elections, casting their lot in with the ballot only because the bullet had failed so miserably.

Simply choosing to contest elections, however, did not solve the challenge of electability, and while attempting to silence the abstentionists in their ranks, the anti-Chavistas have simultaneously sought to move toward the center, in words at least. Thus Capriles and others have painted themselves as social democrats by suggesting that they would not abolish, but merely improve popular social programs like the Bolivarian Missions. This claim does not square, incidentally, with the reality of Miranda State, where as governor Capriles promptly assailed the Missions, especially the controversial Cuban-staffed health centers of Mission Barrio Adentro.

Nor did it help when Capriles supporters recently occupied and vandalized an apartment building being constructed to house the poorest Venezuelans through Misión Vivenda. Those who for so long have denounced as “invaders” homeless Venezuelans who occupied an empty building or an idle patch of land now reveled in invading a government project to house the poor. And while Capriles has avoided criticizing Chávez directly, instead assailing Maduro for not living up to the deceased leader’s example, it has not helped that some of his supporters daubed graffiti reading “long live cancer.”

Whoever spends the time reading this material will not have wasted one second.

We are lucky you shared this.

[bvar22]

5. Viva Democracy!

Our neighbors in Venezuela have given us the Blue Print for "CHANGE"!
I pray we get some here soon!



You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.
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