Protest in Venezuela: The Difference Between the Violent and Nonviolent Right Is Smaller Than You Ma

[Judi Lynn]

Protest in Venezuela: The Difference Between the Violent and Nonviolent Right Is Smaller Than You May Think
Friday, 20 June 2014 11:52
By Steve Ellner, North American Congress on Latin America | News Analysis

Schemes designed to demonstrate that governments considered hostile to U.S. interests are ruthless and undemocratic span many decades and continents. There is one highly effective type of manipulation that is frequently employed: Peaceful protests are combined with violent ones as the media and opposition conflate the tactics used by security forces against the former and the justified use of force against the latter. The key actors in this display of deception know exactly what their role is and how to act in order to ensure success. Often, support for regime change opens opportunities for blatantly anti-democratic political movements, some of which employ terrorist tactics.

Consider the following examples. In Chile under Salvador Allende, upper-class women gathered to bang on pots and pans while in their shadows members of the right-wing paramilitary group Patria y Libertad used violence to provoke security forces. The message was clear: The Marxist government of Allende did not tolerate free expression of opinion and, in addition, Communists beat up on decent, respectable women.

More recently, uprisings in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine were all preceded by a first phase of mass protests, which in some cases put forward legitimate grievances. The media, Washington spokespeople, and human rights NGOs uniformly condemned the government’s violation of basic democratic rights and soon expressed sympathy for those who engaged in violence and called for regime change. In the case of Ukraine, the second phase of mass protest consisted of armed revolt that included a large contingent of neo-fascists. In Syria, the second phase involved a diversity of terrorist groups including Ahrar al-Sham tied to Al Qaeda, but the U.S. narrative singled out the government as the true “bad guy.” Indeed, Washington has put forward the implausible argument that material support for the “good” rebels committed to democracy will allow them to gain the upper hand against the “bad” ones, that is, terrorists.

The sanctions against Venezuela approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee in May must be seen in this larger context. Pro-sanctions lawmakers make no reference to the violence perpetrated by Venezuelan government adversaries, thus fitting a decades-old pattern that ignores any evidence of wrongdoing by those considered to be friends. Moreover, the congresspeople who favor sanctions claim that the measure would force the Maduro government to come to the bargaining table to negotiate in earnest, thus leaving the impression that it is the Chavistas, and not opposition leaders, who are refusing to talk.

More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24491-protest-and-destabilization-in-venezuela-the-difference-between-the-violent-and-nonviolent-right-is-smaller-than-you-may-think

[Marksman_91]

1. Sorry, but most of the violence has been perpetrated by pro-government colectivos and security

There's more than enough evidence to show it. Just for the fact that most of the victims have been opposition kind of makes it obvious. Or weren't all the hundreds of videos and pictures we posted on this forum not enough?

[COLGATE4]

4. The response to your post: Crickets

The motto of the Chavez idolizing folks is "My mind is made up - don't confuse me with the facts".

[delrem]

2. Good analysis.

neo-con. neo-lib. neo-fascist. ....
"neo-..." is such a strange qualifier, it seems so benign.
But it doesn't mean "new", it means "with a facelift".

It perfectly explains how those supporters of López and Machado and Capriles who have settled down in DU LA group to do their pro-coup, pro-wrecking, anti-socialist, anti-leftist, Free Republic stuff can get away with it.

[Judi Lynn]

3. You're right on the prefix "neo." The effect has been to imply the same as "fascist-lite."

The oligarchy slaves seem to be depending upon the US government to overthrow the people's will in Venezuela, just as it has in many other places, and they receive compensation for their propaganda efforts, probably promises of advantages in the dirty world ahead, if things go their way.

You can't say they are standing up for their principles, since their intention is to steal what is not theirs from the people of the country and throw the masses back into poverty. That is what we've seen from the right-wing everywhere. We see them trying so hard to pull it off here, as they have been for so long. They are the enemies of a world of honest human beings.

I appreciated this part from the O.P.:

..... When President Richard Nixon issued his famous order to the CIA to “let the economy scream” in Chile in order to bring down the Allende government, he at no time ruled out armed action as well. This was particularly necessary because in spite of economic disruptions, Allende’s Popular Unity coalition increased its vote percentages (from 36.3 in 1970 to 43.4 in the March 1973 congressional elections). The forces of reaction prodded by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger planned a coup at the outset in 1970 and a successful one three years later. Similarly, in the case of Venezuela, the wave of violence designed to bring about regime change demonstrates that the opposition does not believe in its own discourse. According to opposition leaders the economic difficulties that plague Venezuela are unsolvable and irreversible. If that were the case, insurgency tactics would have been ruled out as unnecessary since economic disaster would discredit the Chavistas and lead to their being voted out of office.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Venezuela: it’s the opposition that’s anti-democratic

Venezuela: it’s the opposition that’s anti-democratic
by Jerome Roos on February 21, 2014

I’ve been away for the past week so I wasn’t able to write anything on the unfolding turmoil in Venezuela, but I’ve been following the situation closely and in recent days have grown increasingly frustrated with (a) the total lack of balanced reporting on Venezuela in the international media, including left-liberal publications like The Guardian; (b) the seeming ease with which comrades on the libertarian left ignore the events in Venezuela as if it were somehow “irrelevant” to our cause, simply because we’re not supposed to have any close ideological affinity with chavismo; and (c) the ill-informed basis on which many activists and even several major movement pages have taken the side of the protesters against the government, unquestioningly sharing the propaganda of the right-wing opposition and echoing dangerously superficial and wrongheaded interpretations about the protests. I intend to write more on this later, but here are some initial reflections:

1. Just because there’s people in the streets doesn’t mean they’re on our side. We live in the era of the protester, and violent protest has become a media spectacle par excellence. In the wake of Tahrir and Occupy, we have been conditioned to automatically feel sympathy for all men and women taking to the streets and facing down lines of riot police. Now there’s a YouTube clip floating around the web of a Venezuelan girl with an obnoxious upper-class American accent recounting the story of Venezuela’s heroic student uprising against an “illegitimate government”. At first sight, the video — which garnered over 2 million views so far — seems to neatly fit the narrative of the global uprisings. But anyone who cares to do some fact-checking or background research will quickly discover that the protests in Venezuela are rather different from Occupy or the Chilean student movement.

2. The protests in Venezuela are (at least partly) orchestrated by the right-wing oligarchy. Let’s get the facts straight: plenty of Venezuelans are taking to the streets with legitimate grievances about violent crime, high inflation and food shortages — and there is no doubt that the Venezuelan riot police are indeed behaving violently towards many of these protesters. All police brutality should be roundly condemned. The people of Venezuela should be allowed to freely express their indignation in public without fear of repression. But it bears emphasizing in this respect that at least two of the protesters’ main grievances have been deliberately escalated by the oligarchic elite itself: through extensive hoarding and smuggling of consumer products (giving rise to shortages and fueling price inflation) and massive speculation on the foreign currency market (pushing down the Bolívar and feeding into further inflation). This is precisely the type of economic warfare that the US-backed Chilean opposition drew upon prior to the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973.

Moreover, even though the protests initially began as a student mobilization on Venezuela’s national Youth Day (February 12), they have in the past week become effectively subsumed under the leadership of the most right-wing section of the opposition alliance, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), led by Maria Corina Machado and Leopoldo López. As the firebrand leaders of the most anti-democratic faction of the oligarchic elite, López and Machado have been actively calling for the overthrow of Nicolas Maduro’s democratically-elected government and have urged the continuation of violent protest until he resigns. In the last 15 years, these people have shown themselves to be intent on restoring their class privilege at any costs, even if it requires casualties among the general population. They are deliberately fueling violence and social unrest in order to delegitimize and oust the government.

More:
http://roarmag.org/2014/02/venezuela-protests-opposition-coup/