Posted on 08/23/2017 4:55:36 PM PDT by Jagermonster
Leftists like British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have long had warm words for Venezuela's chavistas. But as famine has racked the country and President Nicholás Maduro has turned dictatorial, those words are coming back to bite them.
PAMPLONA, SPAIN—An inspiration, a hero: these are the words leftists in Europe lavished on the late Hugo Chavez for his “Bolivarian revolution” in Venezuela.
For British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and left-wing parties like Syriza and Podemos in southern Europe, Chavez’s ascendance was long the clearest challenge to inequality in Latin America, neoliberalism in Washington, and austerity at home.
Today, it's a decidedly foggier picture.
A humanitarian crisis is enveloping Venezuela. The country is turning increasingly dictatorial under President Nicolás Maduro. And that has placed those like Mr. Corbyn who praised chavismo, Chavez's ideology, into a political minefield. Now, some on the left are calling for a more clear-eyed assessment in Europe of what is happening in the troubled nation.
“I think the left internationally is very confused around the question of Venezuela,” says Mike Gonzalez, a British historian and a former professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Glasgow. “It is very distressing to lots of people who have given their lives and hopes and commitments to that hopeful process of change to come face-to-face with reality,” he says.
Asa Cusack, managing editor of the Latin America and Caribbean Center blog at the London School of Economics, wrote in a recent Guardian piece: "For many academics on the left, broadly supportive of chavismo's aims, this democratic slide has been a cause for much heartache and soul-searching.”
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
European leftists can't seem to grasp things that should be plain as the nose on their face: The end state of socialism countries is catastrophe. Like a noose, it may be slow in the drawing, but it is quick and hard at the end.
But no, they still want to search for what minor tweaks would make socialism work. “The Left outside Venezuela can help rebuild the movement,” [British historian Mike Gonzalez] summed up in The Jacobin, “by participating in an honest accounting of what went wrong [in Venezuela].”
Next time we’ll do it right!
Coming soon to a theatre in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, etc.
Socialism would really be very nice, if it worked. Too bad it doesn’t, but that’s the way it is.
I see a big long term opportunity with Trump in office and Europe surrendering to the Moozlems.
The answer is simple: blame the USA/CIA/XYZ Corporation for quietly destabilizing Venezuela.
Look on any leftist blog - its there, and its the salve they use to ease their cognitive dissonance.
Exactly. They can’t accept that it’s an ideology that goes entirely against human nature, and will never work anywhere.
Establish a definition of a personality type that can function in socialism. Slaughter everyone outside of that personality type.
That’s who socialism is, always, eventually made to “work”.
Socialism will work when each and every human being in the society, each and every one, considers the best interests of all others in the society to be more important than his own best interests. It has zero chance to succeed until then.
The left wouldn’t know introspection if it ran up and bit them on the ass.
That’s why the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia beat or shot to death people who wore glasses (because it was thought that that showed someone who was too smart) or for excess happiness or being too lazy or for playing non Communist music.
Hopeful process of change...
Yeah, that's the ticket, Hope and Change.
Seriously, we've heard this BS before, and not just from Obama. Those distressed lots of people who thought that communism will FINALLY work are, generation after generation, fools who believe in a pipedream.
It is ALWAYS the same. Lies for the masses; riches for the party leaders.
The party, the ideals, the very talk of hope and change have one purpose.
To give someone power over others.
Actually there are many examples where such indoctrination has worked in the short term, i.e., one to two generations; but by the third generation, the populace notices that some are consistently more equal than others. In addition to the Soviet Union, There are examples in various 19th century American communities where ownership was in common.
Send every American professor to Venezuela for a year.
I had two communist professors at college.
One was a true communist. The money he made went to “the revolution”.
The other was a phony. He drove a sports car and screwed the college girls.
They were the epitome of communists.
The first was a true believer.
The second just claimed to be a communist to help himself.
What you are seeing in Venezuela is the natural outcome of putting communists in charge.
They take care of themselves.
Nope. It won't work even then. See Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Ludwig von Mises
The inevitable failure of a socialist economy has nothing to do with people's intentions or willingness to cooperate with each other. Socialist economies fail because they do not allow for market prices. Without market prices it is impossible to know if any sector of the economy is making progress or just consuming capital.
Hmm..."People are starving and dying in street riots, Comrades. Perhaps it's time to start thinking about this." Right on top of this, aren't you, guys? No, actually it's time to break out the guillotines. In Europe. And we could use a few in the States too.
I don’t believe that Europe’s leftists are have any introspection, uncomfortable or any other way. To them they don’t see Venezuela or any other socialist state as a failure but the culmination of success. The command and control economy and totalitarian rule over the masses.
“Maduro has turned dictatorial”
Surprise, surprise. It’s though the human race has a herd mind set.
Wake up! History repeats itself! And we are doing it again.
Our MSN and the rats are calling the Nazi’s “right wing” and Trump a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party. HUH!!!!
We are de-evolving. Maybe God will take out some of the moronic rat voters that cross streets with their faces planted in cell phone without even to bother to look up to see if traffic is coming but it’s up to us to wake up the rest. GET ACTIVE!
“They take care of themselves.”
BINGO
Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Portland, Seattle.....
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