...free, universal education through college and graduate school, everybody having a job, food and shelter, "fascism," is beyond me. But then, like Donald Rumsfeld, you compared Hugo Chavez to Adolph Hitler...
Rumsfeld, here...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11159503/You, here...
(first comment)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x40695 So, considering the company that you have placed yourself in, and your posts at DU, to this point, what we can expect from you--and what we have gotten from you--are the sort of "Alice in Wonderlandish" upside down, inside out, backwards statements that Rumsfeld perpetrated upon the world. Freedom = the freedom to loot. Dead Iraqis? What dead Iraqis? WMDs? No, no, no, what we meant were "WMD program-related activities!"
Crazy guy, that Rumsfeld, thinking that big majorities of Venezuelans would elect and re-elect Adolph Hitler, and even vote to let him run for a third term, if he wants to, in honest, aboveboard, transparent, internationally monitored and certified elections. Somehow I don't think Adolph Hitler would let the Carter Center into the country. Odd, too, how someone like Lula da Silva can't recognize Adolph Hitler when he sees him, and said, of Chavez, "They can invent all sorts of things to criticize Chavez
but not on democracy" That's your hero, by the way--Lula da Silva, the kind of leader you said that you think should be elected all over Latin America--a leader too stupid to see the storm troopers and the ovens coming to Venezuela.
Upside down, inside out, backwards, and so twisted into Mobius strips that we can't find the beginnings and ends of your disinformation. Castro a "fascist"? He'd probably die of a heart attack to hear that--despite one of the best health care systems in the world. I've called him a monarch, and I think he does fulfill that role in some ways, but that doesn't make him a fascist. To be revered as the wise and strong figure who stands for "the land," who slays the Dragon, secures the realm and holds the society together does not make you a fascist.
Fascism, in the classic sense, means cementing the state with PRIVATE corporations and moneyed elites. Hitler and Mussolini added the ovens, invading peaceful countries and fomenting the mass slaughter of world war. Franco, the Latin American dictators and Ronald Reagan added killing leftists in sometimes bizarre ways, such as throwing them out of airplanes, eviscerating parents in front of their children, rounding up thousands and 'disappearing' them, slaughtering whole villages, murdering pregnant women and passing their newborn babies around to fascist families, and sending in death squads to shoot teachers and mayors. Granted, Stalin also murdered millions, out-Tsaring the Tsars. But Fidel Castro never has. Nor has Hugo Chavez. In fact, Chavez has not killed
anybody at all. And the main perpetrators of mass slaughter in our era are the Bushwhacks, Rumsfeld in the lead, who hate Chavez and Castro with the kind of visceral hatred that real fascists project onto, um, humanitarians, social reformers, leftists, democrats with a small d--leaders who actually do something about poverty and empowering the poor majority. Real fascists, like Rumsfeld, SLAUGHTER the poor, bomb virtually helpless cities, conduct random roundups for imprisonment and torture prisoners, to terrorize entire societies, in addition to targeted assassinations; rob the poor of their resources; rob the poor even of billions intended to help them. Real fascists, like Rumsfeld, ARE "terrorists," and they perpetrate wars to make Exxon Mobil & brethren even richer and more powerful.
Castro and Chavez are NOT fascists. They oppose private corporate power and moneyed elites; they side with the poor majority; they advocate peace; they foster cooperation among Latin American countries. Their popularity and political power are based on their genuine implementation of these policies--unlike our Democrats, who pay lip service to the poor while taking money from corporate lobbyists with both hands, and claim to be for cooperation while they continue the Bushwhack policy of placing war assets all around Venezuela's oil coast and northern oil provinces, and continue funding of the two worst governments in Latin America--the fascist U.S. client states of Colombia and Honduras. There we have two REAL fascist states in operation--with the moneyed elite cemented together with private corporate power, enforced by the military and its death squads. THAT is fascism.
Elites of various kinds develop in
every society, no matter how un-elitist they try to be. Some people are more skilled at what they do, or are better at social/political maneuvering. Sometimes elites develop simply because leadership is needed. It is quite natural to turn to competent people and organizers to get things done. I am sure that there are such elites in the Venezuelan and Cuban governments, as there are in every government in the world and throughout history. It is called being human. But to exaggerate beyond on all reason--to go ape-shit--over this human condition, and call Castro and Chavez "fascists"--because they are popular leaders, because elites develop around them--and to go further, and call Chavez "Adolph Hitler"--history's most psychotic mass murderer--is YOUR PROBLEM, not theirs. It is fantastical and absurd and dangerous the way Rumsfeld was fantastical and absurd and dangerous. Up is down. War is peace. Looting is freedom. Socialism is fascism. "WMD program-related activities" justifies slaughtering a hundred thousand people and not bothering to count the dead. Confusion. Chaos. Lethal absurdity. "Tea parties" in service to corporate power.
I think we know who the fascists are, here at DU and elsewhere. So do the people of Venezuela, and the people of Latin America, who have had their bellyful of real fascists--the Batistas, and the Pinochets, and the Uribes. If they give leftist leaders sufficient power to lead them out of fascist hell, that is their right--just as it was our right, here, as the people of the U.S., to give FDR sufficient power to rescue the country from "organized money" (as FDR put it). Strong leftist political leadership, in service to the will of the people, is the
opposite of fascism.
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