Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave a speech at the United Nations. The press is going to focus on the fact that he called George W. Bush ‘the Devil’ and ignore everything else he said. That’s understandable, in a way, and Chavez does his cause a disservice by making the money quote a personal attack. If you read the transcript you’ll find a lot of interesting rhetoric and even some ideas about reforming the UN that deserve discussion.
What I take away from his speech is that the Cold War is no longer over. It has been re-started. The Cold War really involved two parallel battles. On one side were the Western Powers that stood for participatory democracy and human rights. On the other were the Stalinists and Maoists that stood for state ownership, atheism, and one-party rule.
But, at the same time that this fight was being waged, there was a secondary battle. The Communists seized on the aspirations of third world peoples, and promised them a better way where their resources would be developed more equitably than under Western tutelage. Appealing to populist principles, the Communists equated American business with raw imperialism. And, even though the Soviets were offering a false promise, the U.S. reacted with brutality anywhere our business interests were threatened by populists. We intervened in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile to overthrow Democratic populists, branding them dictators and demonizing modest socialist movements.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Latin America moved away from both pro-Western dictatorships and communism. Between 1975 and 1990, the following nations became liberal democracies: Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uraquay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. This should have been a great victory for America. It should have been celebrated with the same enthuisiasm as the liberal democracies that emerged in: Spain, Portugal, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. But the problem was that the US had not been at the forefront of promoting democracy in Latin America. We had been more concerned with protecting the interests of the United Fruit Company and ITT.
While communism remains a defeated ideology, the populist aspirations and anti-imperialist feelings, that were formerly tapped by Kremlin propagandists, have not disappeared. And Hugo Chavez’s speech is a clear indication that a new Anti-Americanism is taking root. This time it is not so easy to paint hostility to American business interests as communist, and thereby dismiss any validity to criticisms of American foreign policy. It is now necessary to raise the spectre of terrorism or terrorist sympathies.
Another tactic is to call people like Chavez dictators, even though he has been twice elected.
This is a new Cold War. Chavez mixes real populist appeals with overly hot rhetoric.
Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.
Meanwhile, the US media mischaracterizes Chavez, Morales of Bolivia, and others calling them dictators.
I’ve put part of the transcipt below the fold. Let’s have a discussion of the merits of Chavez’s critique.
Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother — he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there’s an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.
The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It’s not that we are extremists. It’s that the world is waking up. It’s waking up all over. And people are standing up.
I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.
CHAVEZ (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.
The president then — and this he said himself, he said: “I have come to speak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants peace.”
That’s true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They’ll say yes.
But the government doesn’t want peace. The government of the United States doesn’t want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.
It wants peace. But what’s happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What’s happening? What’s happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela — new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?
He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision?
CHAVEZ (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): This is crossfire? He’s thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.
This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, “We’re suffering because we see homes destroyed.’
The president of the United States came to talk to the peoples — to the peoples of the world. He came to say — I brought some documents with me, because this morning I was reading some statements, and I see that he talked to the people of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran. And he addressed all these peoples directly.
And you can wonder, just as the president of the United States addresses those peoples of the world, what would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given the floor? What would they have to say?
And I think I have some inkling of what the peoples of the south, the oppressed people think. They would say, “Yankee imperialist, go home.” I think that is what those people would say if they were given the microphone and if they could speak with one voice to the American imperialists.
