- 06 Jun 2013 18:43
#14249947
I have noticed a lot of threads here that disparage Chavez and his successor, Madura. These politicians are considered to be autocrats and fascists, and it is thought they have been turning Venezuela into an undemocratic and totalitarian society. Occasionally, someone will dispute this. Various articles and reports are cited and linked to by both parties to the debate. Each side claims to base their assertions on concrete evidence, and each side denounces the evidence of their opponents as ideological and overly tendentious. For example, a certain study can be discounted because it was published by a right-wing think-tank, or a certain report should be discarded because it comes from a left-wing organization. In such an environment, the evidence itself acquires an uncertain character, and the constant roar of propaganda makes it difficult to evaluate the facts in a cool and deliberate fashion.
The confusion is increased because these events are unfolding in Venezuela right as we speak. With the passage of time, however, the facts become more soundly established - the sources are enumerated, their credibility is analyzed, and so on.
The condemnation of Chavez reminds me of the vilification of the Sandinistas 30 years ago. Here is a typical extract ("Nobody Won in Nicaragua," New York Times, November 7, 1984, http://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/07/opini ... ragua.html):
The author bases his assertion on a few pieces of "evidence":
Let's examine these claims about Arturo Cruz and his 1984 candidacy. Thankfully, Cruz himself has put his story on record. I refer you to Tim Rogers, "Electoral Farce or Imperfect Democracy?", Nicaragua Dispatch, November 4, 2011. It can be found at http://www.nicaraguadispatch.com/news/2 ... e-cia/1132.
Thanks to historical hindsight, we now know. Arturo Cruz was definitely not "an opposition democrat whose candidacy could have produced a more credible contest." By his own admission, his candidacy was deliberately designed to do the exact opposite. If the plan all along was to withdraw from the race in order to embarrass the Sandinistas, how can the Sandinistas be blamed for breaking off negotiations?
I fear I have already lost the right-wingers. The lefties may be nodding their heads in agreement, because I seem to be in support of Chavez and the Sandinistas. Ideologues from either party may fail to understand my basic point here, however, because I am talking about facts. There is no such thing as a right-wing fact or a left-wing fact. A fact is either true or false, and that is independent of our ideological beliefs.
It is a fact, established by his own free confession, that Arturo Cruz was a CIA stooge and that his candidacy was not serious. Thanks to the documentary record, these things are well established. We are not talking about "The Electoral Process in Nicaragua : Domestic and International Influences," Nov. 19, 1984, http://www.williamgbecker.com/lasa_1984.pdf. This report from LASA can safely be dismissed because it comes from a "liberal" source, right? But how can you dismiss the confession of Cruz himself?
As long as we are discussing the LASA report, why not see how they measure up in evaluating Cruz and his candidacy, versus the editorial board of the Times?
It looks like LASA got it right. The author of the Times editorial turns out to be a gullible sucker who actually believed that Cruz was a serious and legitimate candidate, whereas the authors of the LASA report could see Cruz for what he was - a joke candidate who only pretended to run, while in reality he was pursuing his political goals "outside of the electoral process." The editorial can partially be excused for this factual error, because it was written in the heat of the moment, in the very year and month that these events were unfolding, and the author did not have access to Cruz's memoirs and later public statements. However, LASA did not have access to these things either, and somehow they got it right. This suggests that the LASA report is more trustworthy.
Here is a highly revealing quotation from the report.
We are through the looking glass here. If the yardstick can be changed whenever we want, that is the same as saying that there is no yardstick. If we declare an election to be a sham, then it is a sham, and the facts about that election mean nothing. If we hail Arturo Cruz as "an opposition democrat whose candidacy could have produced a more credible contest," then that must be true as well. We need not compare him to other candidates who are considered to be more legitimate, in order to see how he measures up. Why do that, when we can apply any standard of measurement we desire? And Cruz's political opponent, Ortega, he is measured by the same yardstick that we apply to people like Castro, Stalin and Hitler. Does it matter if he actually resembles these infamous dictators and tyrants? Should we make a concrete comparison between the elections in Nicaragua and elections in Cuba or Nazi-Germany? Of course not, because we can use any yardstick we want, whenever we want. Besides, such a comparison could be dangerous, because we might find out more than we wanted to, such as the fact that the 1984 elections were "a model of probity and fairness."
Propaganda is more effective when it is timely, in the uncertainty of the present. As time passes, a documentary record is established, and that helps us separate fact from fantasy. There are people who will refuse to avail themselves of this resource, of course, and they can be expected to cling tenaciously to the propaganda construct, regardless of the facts. I suppose that the facts established by LASA can be discarded easily enough, but how do you dismiss the words of Arturo Cruz himself? With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can evaluate these things more accurately, and thanks to Cruz's own contributions to the historical record, we can achieve a high degree of certainty in these evaluations.
On current events in Venezuela, we do not have the benefit of deep historical hindsight. I really know less than I should about Chavez. I have observed his career throughout the years, but only as filtered through the nightly news or the occasional newspaper report. Needless to say, these sources are highly suspect. One thing that has always struck me is the hysterical hatred of Chavez which is typically expressed. I can understand why he would be disliked, but is he a totalitarian monster on the order of Hitler, or even Castro? Because in the right-wing punditry, that is how he is described. In the so-called left-wing media, say the CBS nightly news, the attitude always seemed to be disapproving and critical, at the very least. This is very reminiscent of the vilification of Ortega in the 1980's. I call your attention again to the editorial above, and I remind you of the source - The New York Times, which is supposedly the principle organ of the leftist propaganda machine. But Ortega was not liberal enough for the Times, and his election in 1984 is openly called a "sham."
To compare Ortega or Chavez to Hitler is meaningless. Even the comparison to Castro is a stretch. Does Castro allow elections that were as open and fair as those held in Nicaragua in 1984? Would Castro allow someone like Cruz to run around, criticize the government, and almost openly try to poison the electoral process? Has Communist Cuba ever had an election with "seven parties, three to the right and three to the left" of the ruling regime? In the cool light of history, if we apply a single objective standard, then Ortega looks nothing like Castro. If we apply a double standard, if we measure everything by an arbitrary yardstick that can be changed at will, then, of course, anything is possible.
I strongly suspect that the vilification of Chavez and Madura is based on the same kind of double standard. I am less certain about this than I am about Nicaragua in the 1980's. The historical record, enriched by the admissions of Arturo Cruz, allows me to reach a conclusion that is rock solid - it was Cruz whose candidacy was a "sham," and in evaluating this candidacy and putting it in the context of 1984, the US certainly used a double standard. The jury is still out on Chavez, perhaps. Maybe he really was the totalitarian monster that he is portrayed to be. However, this seems unlikely.
The confusion is increased because these events are unfolding in Venezuela right as we speak. With the passage of time, however, the facts become more soundly established - the sources are enumerated, their credibility is analyzed, and so on.
The condemnation of Chavez reminds me of the vilification of the Sandinistas 30 years ago. Here is a typical extract ("Nobody Won in Nicaragua," New York Times, November 7, 1984, http://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/07/opini ... ragua.html):
Only the naive believe that Sunday's election in Nicaragua was democratic or legitimizing proof of the Sandinistas' popularity... The Sandinistas made it easy to dismiss their election as a sham.
The author bases his assertion on a few pieces of "evidence":
The result was ordained when opposition parties tamely accepted terms that barred them from power... [The Sandinistas'] decisive act was to break off negotiations with Arturo Cruz, an opposition democrat whose candidacy could have produced a more credible contest...
Let's examine these claims about Arturo Cruz and his 1984 candidacy. Thankfully, Cruz himself has put his story on record. I refer you to Tim Rogers, "Electoral Farce or Imperfect Democracy?", Nicaragua Dispatch, November 4, 2011. It can be found at http://www.nicaraguadispatch.com/news/2 ... e-cia/1132.
In the forthcoming second installment of his political memoires, “Chronicles of a Dissident,” Cruz dedicates an entire chapter to what he calls the “absurd” role he was unwittingly suckered into playing in the “electoral farce of 1984”...
Despite taking a vocal stance against the ‘84 elections, Cruz was identified by the CIA and several prominent Nicaraguans, including business leader Enrique Bolaños, as an ideal candidate to run against Ortega.
The CIA’s plan, however, was to get Cruz to campaign against Ortega just long enough to rally anti-Sandinista sentiments in the countryside, but drop out of the race before the vote. The plan, Cruz says, was to use the elections as an excuse to campaign openly against the Sandinistas, but then withdraw his candidacy to deny Ortega the satisfaction of winning a legitimate poll.
After a series of secretive meetings with CIA handlers in Washington-area bars and in his home in Bethesda, Maryland, Cruz says he started to warm to the idea of running a fake candidacy, and started to seriously contemplate his counterfeit campaign. But before he could make up his mind whether or not to run, Cruz discovered that the CIA and [the] extreme right were already moving forward on the plan by publically announcing his candidacy in Managua.
At that moment, Cruz writes in his yet-to-be-released memoires, “I was for the first time forced to cross the bridge that the CIA had laid out in front of me.””
Thanks to historical hindsight, we now know. Arturo Cruz was definitely not "an opposition democrat whose candidacy could have produced a more credible contest." By his own admission, his candidacy was deliberately designed to do the exact opposite. If the plan all along was to withdraw from the race in order to embarrass the Sandinistas, how can the Sandinistas be blamed for breaking off negotiations?
I fear I have already lost the right-wingers. The lefties may be nodding their heads in agreement, because I seem to be in support of Chavez and the Sandinistas. Ideologues from either party may fail to understand my basic point here, however, because I am talking about facts. There is no such thing as a right-wing fact or a left-wing fact. A fact is either true or false, and that is independent of our ideological beliefs.
It is a fact, established by his own free confession, that Arturo Cruz was a CIA stooge and that his candidacy was not serious. Thanks to the documentary record, these things are well established. We are not talking about "The Electoral Process in Nicaragua : Domestic and International Influences," Nov. 19, 1984, http://www.williamgbecker.com/lasa_1984.pdf. This report from LASA can safely be dismissed because it comes from a "liberal" source, right? But how can you dismiss the confession of Cruz himself?
As long as we are discussing the LASA report, why not see how they measure up in evaluating Cruz and his candidacy, versus the editorial board of the Times?
External critics of the Nicaraguan process have argued that, because legitimate opposition groups (especially Arturo Cruz and his Coordinadora coalition) were "excluded" from the process, the elections were illegitimate and uncompetitive. The facts do not support this notion of exclusion. No major political tendency in Nicaragua was denied access to the electoral process in 1984. The only parties that did not appear on the ballot were absent by their own choice, not because of government exclusion. The weight of the available evidence suggests that the Coordinadora group made a policy decision to pursue its political goals in 1984 outside of the electoral process.
It looks like LASA got it right. The author of the Times editorial turns out to be a gullible sucker who actually believed that Cruz was a serious and legitimate candidate, whereas the authors of the LASA report could see Cruz for what he was - a joke candidate who only pretended to run, while in reality he was pursuing his political goals "outside of the electoral process." The editorial can partially be excused for this factual error, because it was written in the heat of the moment, in the very year and month that these events were unfolding, and the author did not have access to Cruz's memoirs and later public statements. However, LASA did not have access to these things either, and somehow they got it right. This suggests that the LASA report is more trustworthy.
Here is a highly revealing quotation from the report.
Upon reviewing the whole course of U.S. conduct in relation to the Sandinista government since 1981, as well as the specific actions taken this year to discredit an electoral process which by Latin American standards was a model of probity and fairness (at least to all candidates who chose to register and submit themselves to a popular test), we must conclude that there is nothing that the Sandinistas could have done to make the 1984 elections acceptable to the United States Government. In dealing with the FSLN regime, the Reagan Administration, by its own admission, applies a double standard.
When asked by our delegation why the United States enthusiastically endorsed the 1984 elections in El Salvador (where all political groups to the left of the Christian Democrats were unrepresented) yet condemned the more inclusionary electoral process in Nicaragua (seven parties, three to the right and three to the left of the FSLN), a senior U.S. official in Central America explained that
"The United States is not obliged to apply the same standard of judgment to a country whose government is avowedly hostile to the U.S. as for a country, like El Salvador, where it is not. These people [the Sandinistas] could bring about a situation in Central America which could pose a threat to U.S. security. That allows us to change our yardstick."
We are through the looking glass here. If the yardstick can be changed whenever we want, that is the same as saying that there is no yardstick. If we declare an election to be a sham, then it is a sham, and the facts about that election mean nothing. If we hail Arturo Cruz as "an opposition democrat whose candidacy could have produced a more credible contest," then that must be true as well. We need not compare him to other candidates who are considered to be more legitimate, in order to see how he measures up. Why do that, when we can apply any standard of measurement we desire? And Cruz's political opponent, Ortega, he is measured by the same yardstick that we apply to people like Castro, Stalin and Hitler. Does it matter if he actually resembles these infamous dictators and tyrants? Should we make a concrete comparison between the elections in Nicaragua and elections in Cuba or Nazi-Germany? Of course not, because we can use any yardstick we want, whenever we want. Besides, such a comparison could be dangerous, because we might find out more than we wanted to, such as the fact that the 1984 elections were "a model of probity and fairness."
Propaganda is more effective when it is timely, in the uncertainty of the present. As time passes, a documentary record is established, and that helps us separate fact from fantasy. There are people who will refuse to avail themselves of this resource, of course, and they can be expected to cling tenaciously to the propaganda construct, regardless of the facts. I suppose that the facts established by LASA can be discarded easily enough, but how do you dismiss the words of Arturo Cruz himself? With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can evaluate these things more accurately, and thanks to Cruz's own contributions to the historical record, we can achieve a high degree of certainty in these evaluations.
On current events in Venezuela, we do not have the benefit of deep historical hindsight. I really know less than I should about Chavez. I have observed his career throughout the years, but only as filtered through the nightly news or the occasional newspaper report. Needless to say, these sources are highly suspect. One thing that has always struck me is the hysterical hatred of Chavez which is typically expressed. I can understand why he would be disliked, but is he a totalitarian monster on the order of Hitler, or even Castro? Because in the right-wing punditry, that is how he is described. In the so-called left-wing media, say the CBS nightly news, the attitude always seemed to be disapproving and critical, at the very least. This is very reminiscent of the vilification of Ortega in the 1980's. I call your attention again to the editorial above, and I remind you of the source - The New York Times, which is supposedly the principle organ of the leftist propaganda machine. But Ortega was not liberal enough for the Times, and his election in 1984 is openly called a "sham."
To compare Ortega or Chavez to Hitler is meaningless. Even the comparison to Castro is a stretch. Does Castro allow elections that were as open and fair as those held in Nicaragua in 1984? Would Castro allow someone like Cruz to run around, criticize the government, and almost openly try to poison the electoral process? Has Communist Cuba ever had an election with "seven parties, three to the right and three to the left" of the ruling regime? In the cool light of history, if we apply a single objective standard, then Ortega looks nothing like Castro. If we apply a double standard, if we measure everything by an arbitrary yardstick that can be changed at will, then, of course, anything is possible.
I strongly suspect that the vilification of Chavez and Madura is based on the same kind of double standard. I am less certain about this than I am about Nicaragua in the 1980's. The historical record, enriched by the admissions of Arturo Cruz, allows me to reach a conclusion that is rock solid - it was Cruz whose candidacy was a "sham," and in evaluating this candidacy and putting it in the context of 1984, the US certainly used a double standard. The jury is still out on Chavez, perhaps. Maybe he really was the totalitarian monster that he is portrayed to be. However, this seems unlikely.
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