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, SPAINAn 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, Chavezs 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 ...
Leftists are incapable of real introspection.
Period, end of story.
[Send every American professor to Venezuela for a year.]
Seems like 7-10 years would do the trick.
“Now, some on the left are calling for a more clear-eyed assessment in Europe of what is happening in the troubled nation.”
How about a clear eyed assessment of what’s happening to Europe?
Mustnt do that!
That would be racist!
They would have to admit that letting in all of the refugees was a bad idea!
“...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.
That’s because they are so damned smart, they have to concoct yet another, deeper, yet subtler nuance for the SAME OLD GARBAGE that has not only never worked, but it has led to the slaughter of so many tens of millions in its indomitable efforts to bring utopia to earth. No matter how many times it has failed, it must be re-spewed, reformulated, reimagined, revised, revitalized, with only the slightest of tweaks here and there and of course only the very special people in charge.
Because they are so damn smart they are completely unable to imagine that there is anyone smarter than they are and there is no philosophy better than the one they espouse. Remarkably, this, they have in common with the stupidest people on earth.
But as grandiose and perfect as their philosophy is, it (1) obviously needs tweaking and (2) requires extra extra smart people (like they themselves have decided they are) to guide those tweaks to fruition. Only they can make perfect perfecter. This is the very hallmark of socialism. Only the elites can optimize life, so the non-elites must continuously give their lives over to the elites to optimize. It’s called tyranny. It’s called slavery for the non-elites. This is the only nuance 99% of socialists cannot see. For those who exalted few who *can* see it, it becomes the focal point for them to acquire as much power over others as they can muster. And that is Maduro and all his wonderful predecessors and precedents.
Too delusional to know that they're stupid.
and for having an education, or being able to speak foreign languages, or simply just because a quota needed filling.
“I dont believe that Europes leftists are have any introspection, uncomfortable or any other way. To them they dont 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.”
I think they see it as bad PR.
——I see a big long term opportunity with Trump in office -—
Of course Trump sees the opportunity. The opportunity lies East of Suez. Lands eastward from the Arabian Gulf Arabs of the GCC into Asia and the Pacific Rim are ascendent.
Europe is ill with a malignant cancer that is incurable and must just be written off
Venezuela? Why are the presstitutes of the Old Gray Whore permitting the horror to the people of Venezuela? Why are they not demanding American action?
Soon Eurabians will have to ask the local mullah what to like
Uncomfortable introspection by socialists?
Never happens.
They look for revanchists, saboteurs, capitalist tools, and Christians to slaughter as impediments to “True Comminism/Socialism”. Every time.
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