From: word_chemist@hotmail.com   
      
   ...that, although both give you a kick in the ass, in the communist system   
   you have to applaud, while in the capitalist system you can scream. And I   
   came here to scream."   
      
   The Sunday Times - Review   
      
      
      
   The Sunday TimesMay 14, 2006   
      
      
   Thank you, my foolish friends in the West   
   Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is only the latest dictator-in-waiting to bask in   
   adulation from western 'progressives', says Ian Buruma   
      
      
   When the Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas managed to escape to the US in 1980,   
   after years of persecution by the Cuban government for being openly   
   homosexual and a dissident, he said: "The difference between the communist   
   and capitalist systems is that, although both give you a kick in the ass, in   
   the communist system you have to applaud, while in the capitalist system you   
   can scream. And I came here to scream."   
   One of the most vexing things for artists and intellectuals who live under   
   the compulsion to applaud dictators is the spectacle of colleagues from more   
   open societies applauding of their own free will. It adds a peculiarly nasty   
   insult to injury.   
      
      
   Stalin was applauded by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Mao was visited by a   
   constant stream of worshippers from the West, some of whose names can still   
   produce winces of disgust in China. Castro has basked for years in the   
   adulation of such literary stars as Jose Saramago and Gabriel Garcia   
   Marquez. Even Pol Pot found favour among several well-known journalists and   
   academics.   
   Last year a number of journalists, writers and showbiz figures, including   
   Harold Pinter, Nadine Gordimer, Harry Belafonte and Tariq Ali, signed a   
   letter claiming that in Cuba "there has not been a single case of   
   disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959 . . ."   
   Arenas was arrested in 1973 for "ideological deviation". He was tortured and   
   locked up in prison cells filled with floodwater and excrement, and   
   threatened with death if he didn't renounce his own writing. Imagine what it   
   must be like to be treated like this and then read about your fellow writers   
    in the West standing up for your oppressors.   
   None of this is news, and would hardly be worth dredging up if the same   
   thing were not happening once more. Hugo Chavez, the elected strongman of   
   Venezuela, is the latest object of adulation by western "progressives" who   
   return from jaunts in Caracas with stars in their eyes.   
   Chavez is not yet a Castro, let alone a Pol Pot. His fiery populist rhetoric   
   is more in the line of Juan Peron, the Argentinian "caudillo". Chavez, by   
   the way, rather relishes this pejorative term. Neither quite left, nor quite   
   right, he is a typical macho Latin leader, whose charisma is meant to stand   
   for the empowerment of his people, mostly poor and darker-skinned than the   
   urban elite.   
   Unlike many traditional caudillos, but like Silvio Berlusconi (who cut his   
   coat from the same cloth), Chavez was democratically elected, in 1998, after   
   having tried and failed to take the more traditional strongman's route to   
   power, by armed force in 1992. Chavez is the Latin American version of a new   
   type of authoritarianism (Thailand's Thaksin Shinawatra is the Asian   
   version), built on a mixture of showbusiness, intimidation, paranoia, huge   
   wealth, and public handouts to the poor. The ideal is democracy by   
   referendum, stripped of messy party politics or independent courts.   
   As Ali, the ubiquitous applauder of Third World blowhards, put it:   
   "Democracy in Venezuela, under the banner of the Bolivarian revolutionaries,   
   has broken through the corrupt two-party system favoured by the oligarchy   
   and its friends in the West." But whether the corrupt two-party system will   
   be replaced by a functioning democracy is the question.   
   Ali was lavish in his praise of Venezuela's new constitution, which allows   
   people to recall the president before he has completed his term of office.   
   "A triumph of the poor against the rich," he called it. In 2004 Venezuelans   
   exercised their right to do just that by circulating a petition for a   
   referendum. Chavez survived, but soon the names of the petitioners were made   
   public, and anti-Chavistas were denied passports, public welfare and   
   government contracts.   
   In 2004 a law was passed that would ban broadcasting stations on the grounds   
   of security and public order. Chavez, as well as his cabinet ministers,   
   appears on television to denounce journalists who dare to criticise the   
   revolution. Most ominous, though, is the way Chavez has expanded the 20-seat   
   supreme court by adding 12 sympathetic judges.   
   Worse causes have been served by western enthusiasts than the Bolivarist   
   revolution, and worse leaders have been applauded than Chavez. One only   
   needs recall the abject audiences at the court of Saddam Hussein by George   
   Galloway, among others, who flattered the murderous dictator while claiming   
   to represent "the voice of the voiceless". Even now, such publications as   
   the New Left Review advocate support for a global anti-imperialist movement   
   that would include North Korea, surely the most oppressive regime on earth.   
   The common element of radical Third Worldism is an obsession with American   
   power, as though the US were so intrinsically evil that any enemy of the US   
   must be our friend, from Mao to Kim Jong-il, from Fidel Castro to Mahmoud   
   Ahmadinejad. And if our "friends" shower us with flattery, asking us to   
   attend conferences and sit on advisory boards, so much the better.   
   Criticism of American policies and economic practices are necessary and   
   often just, but why do leftists continue to discredit their critical stance   
   by applauding strongmen who oppress and murder their own critics? Is it   
   simply a reverse application of that famous American cold war dictum: "He   
   may be a bastard, but he's our bastard"? Or is it the fatal attraction to   
   power often felt by writers and artists who feel marginal and impotent in   
   capitalist democracies? The danger of Chavism is not a revival of communism,   
   even though Castro is among its main boosters. Nor should anti-Americanism   
   be our main concern. The US can take care of itself. What needs to be   
   resisted, not just in Latin America, is the new form of populist   
   authoritarianism.   
   That Chavez is applauded by many people, especially the poor, is not   
   necessarily a sign of democracy; many revolutionary leaders are popular, at   
   least in the beginning of their rule, before their promises have ended in   
   misery and bloodshed.   
   The left has a proud tradition of defending political freedoms, at home and   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)