A Lying “Left” Is No Left: the Case of Venezuela, In Historical Context

Maybe alerted by the grave Trump Derangement Syndrome about the collusion-delusion claiming that Trump was an agent of Putin, the New York Times is suddenly sensitive to the “Hands Off” campaign about Venezuela from the likes of Chomsky. In “What My Fellow Liberals Don’t Get About Venezuela, Stop sanitizing a tyrannical dictator. My country deserves change,”

in the New York Times, April 1, 2019, and not a joke, Joanna Hausmann, a Venezuelan-American writer and comedian observes a few basic truths:.

“From Noam Chomsky to Ilhan Omar, there is a growing movement on the American left known as “Hands Off Venezuela,” protesting America’s backing of the opposition leader Juan Guaido. Some of them even chant, “Maduro, friend, the people are with you.” In this video Op-Ed, a Venezuelan-American comic argues that these people are living on another planet and ignoring a dire humanitarian crisis.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/opinion/contributors/venezuela-us-hands-off-joanna-hausmann.html?

My comment (published!):

The European Union, allied to most Latin America, also wants to get rid of the Venezuelan dictator Maduro. It’s not just Trump. The EU has long understood that the safest bulwark against war is democracy. Right now more than 10% of Venezuela’s population has fled.

That tyranny helps We The People is a delusion which profits only the oligarchic system that this idea pretends to criticize. And this is what the plutocratic system the pro-dictatorial (pseudo-)left pretends to criticize promotes

The “left’ has long been adorned with clowns who pretend to defend We the People by pushing tyranny (as a way for We the People to impose itself). The notion dates back to Aristotle who thought monarchy was the best political system. Marx, furious that his wealthy family’s Rhine vineyards had been made less valuable by price competition with more productive vineyards from southern Germany, elaborated a theory that dictatorship was best, as long as it was made by individuals like him. After an alliance with the Kaiser, Lenin, a century later, did just that, ruining Russia and Ukraine in the process, and killing dozens of millions in the Gulag (according to Stalin himself).

Enormous Anti-Maduro Crowd, one of many….

Many self-declared intellectuals in Europe, when they didn’t follow Hitler, embraced Adolf’s ally, Stalin (until June 23, 1941). Later Mao, Castro and their ilk enabled said pseudo-intellectuals to express their resentment to the full.

This sort of “leftism” only help the wealthiest capitalists. As I said, that’s why it keeps on being promoted by the likes of the Kaiser.

Progress doesn’t come that way, but by compromising with capitalism, and indicating better ways. French MP Proudhon and Lasalle did just this, and Marx hated them (while stealing their ideas). In long conversations, Lasalle persuaded Bismarck to institute universal health care in Germany.

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For an Australian perspective (spiced at the end with ill-informed TDS, but never mind…):

I invented, and named, the notion of TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome (even Trump uses it). It is part of Moral Displacement Syndrome (a vast generalization of Scapegoat Theory, Girard, a French Stanford professor became famous from), itself a particular case of Cognitive Displacement Syndrome.

In other words people think and feel what’s more convenient to them. Once one has determined Trump invented evil, one is led to believe the Venezuelan electric grid fails because of Trump… And thus one can proceed in one’s own bad ways, without any culpability.

Granted, believing what’s convenient does happen to everybody, but one should try to put limits to it. It was pretty clear that Trump was saying, in the 1980s, the exact same things he says now, although, then, it was directed against Reagan… establishment’s democrats best friend (said Obama himself). Trump, a decade older than Putin and world-famous already when Putin was an obscure, low-level KGB agent in Germany, never took any lessons from Russia (it’s rather the exact opposite: Putin is a Russian Trumpist…)

Maduro is clearly a dictator. Allende, not a dictator, was thrown out by US maneuvers and various interventions, including military. Actually, since 1900 CE, the USA intervened many times to serve itself in Central and South America. But present day Venezuela is not one of them.

Instead of saying stupid stuff about Venezuela, US progressives should ask the European Union to take the lead: the EU succeeded to resolve many conflicts, through patient diplomacy (as I just suggested it should use with Great Britain, by the way). Trump has enough on his plate with North Korea and Pakistan (both nuclear states), it should let the EU lead.

Real progress is always founded on truth. And posing, or fake progress, doesn’t foster truth.

Patrice Ayme

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Note: As I have explained in the past, if this backing of tyranny by the (pseudo) left advantages the ruling oligarchy, why do they do it? Precisely because it’s their job, in the oligarchic order! Double agents are not a new notion. All the more as, in this case, being deeply delusional, they are sincere… So they don’t even know they serve the oligarchy. Not anymore than busy bees know they are serving the apiculturist….