Coop Scoop: Do Progressives Really Support Free Elections?

Coop Scoop Election Zoom Monday 5 pm PDT Link inside

August 4, 2024

By Marc Cooper

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I had a great day at the beach yesterday when local temps in the Portland area hit 96. Not as hot today and taking it easy reading and listening to the global events popping around us while sipping some ice tea and looking at the towering pine forest across the street.

I HAVE to say something about Venezuela. Too much of the American Left along with a few groupuscles in Latin America are the only people in the world still believing that the Maduro Dictatorship in Venezuela is actually an anti-imperialist beacon of socialist solidarity and prosperity.

In fact, it is a hell hole from which a full quarter of the population — some 8 million— have fled. And having run into some of the 700,000 who are now in Chile, these are poor people who were plain hungry and tired of the Chavista-Maduro bullshit.

Maduro has created a new class of wealthy government lackeys, parasites, and favored loyalists who are swimming in money — and not exactly short on cocaine (google Maduro’s wife and family for that one). As Chavez dubbed his regime Bolivarian, the new rich are called the Boliburgueses.

Since the election a week ago Sunday, hundreds of thousands of protesters have come into the streets denouncing the obvious fraud perpetrated. Around 20 have been shot dead. Among the various election observers, many from progressive Latin American organizations, the Carter center, the international press, and the opposition itself, it appears that Maduro actually lost by a margin as big as 2 to 1 but simply declared victory. The AP has concluded he really lost. Duh. So has everybody else. Well, almost everybody. There are still American progressives like acrobats in pain, contorting themselves to justify one of the most fixed elections in recent history.

Much of the American Left cannot articulate a strong critique of regimes like Venezuela or Cuba for that matter, and currently not even Russia, because there is a large percentage of American lefties who are wittingly or otherwise, are what we Old Leftists call “campists.”

They believe in their hearts that only the US has imperialist or military agency and that any country in the world, regardless of its regime, is to be supported if it is “anti-imperialist” which in the end translates as anti-American. So… for these campists, yeah, Iran and China and even Russia and certainly Venezuela, are seen ONLY as victims of US imperialism with absolutely NO regard for the living conditions of the respective populations. Nor is any independent agency ever assigned to these “anti-imperialist” states because whatever they do, whatever evil they perpetrate on their own people or others, is rotuinely justified by these campists as legitimate resistance to.. multiple choice: a)the cia b) the state department c) NATO, D) and generally, US Imperialism.

And while leftists are properly quick to point out all the anti-democratic aspects of American elections they are usually dead silent on these sort of chronic human rights violations imposed by various dictatorships — so long as they call themselves socialist (they are not) or, simply engage in phony anti-Imperialist rhetoric. The case study for the latter is Nicaragua where the dictatorial Ortega family has buried both the Sandinista Revolution and basic democracy and in the name of Sandino has imposed a ruthless pro-capitalist dictatorship with socialist rhetoric. I guess that is the China model. Savage capitalist dictatorship with enormous inequality all in the name of Chinese socialism. I mean, how do these reptiles get through a party convention without cracking up in laughter (but dont ask Code Pink about Chinese democracy because China is a victim of US Imperialism — and also a pretty direct funder of Code Pink!

This chronic inability to liberate themselves from these Stalinist impulses, their ability to apologize for brutally anti-democratic dictatorships so long as they are a thorn in the American side. render this sort of American leftist politically inert at best — radioactive at worst.

Let’s have a bit of fun with this…ok?

I turned to what is supposed to be the flagship magazine of the American Left — The Nation — where I worked as a staff writer from 1994 to 2009. (and quite content now to not be associated as the mag declines) How were they handling the Venezuela story a week after the fraudulent vote?

I cracked up reading the headline: THE MADURO GOVERNMENT IS PROBABLY STEALING THE ELECTION.

Pretty daring to say probably stealing when the entire rest of the world concluded he absolutely DID steal the election a week ago. But not wanting to suggest to its readers that Maduro himself just might have something to do with the pickle he’s in is put to rest by the 100% predictable sub-headline which reads: BUT MAINTAINING ECONOMIC WARFARE BY THE US—INCLUDING SANCTIONS ONLY HURTS THE VENEZUELAN PEOPLE.

This is like Left Mad Libs. The Russians are um, I dunno but NATO made them do it! Cuba has not had free elections in 60 years because …. of the embargo? Are paper ballots held up in the US blockade?

Come on, folks, grow up. No doubt US sanctions do damage the Venezuelan people. But not nearly as much as the repression and violence and economic deprivation of the highest order rained down on them by the dictatorship. And if voters were so angry and hurt by the US sanctions, then why did 2/3 of Venezuelans vote for the opposition which Maduro has branded a cat’s paw for the Yankees (it is much more complex than that and the opposition is ideologically diverse).

After the lead sentence repeating that Maduro MIGHT be stealing the election, we immediately get 6 graphs about awful US sanction policy. Maduro disappears after the fifth word. We read nothing about Venezuela by the author of this C Minus article until mid way through after we have been presented the full indictment of the U.S. Then, the same writer (James North, I never heard of) does get around to the election itself and as much as he wants to tiptoe around the ugliness, he cannot fully. Making you wonder why the conditional headline? North writes:

Meanwhile, there is clear evidence that Maduro is not playing fair. From the start, the regime tried to stymie the opposition—by disqualifying its original candidate and arresting and harassing campaign workers. Maduro had already sharply restricted the number of outside election monitors, and on the election’s eve the government blocked a planeload of former Latin American leaders from landing to observe the vote. Some leftist presidents in the region have already issued warnings, including Lula da Silva of Brazil and Gustavo Petro from neighboring Colombia.

In the hours just after the government-controlled election authority released questionable results showing that Maduro won, 51 percent to 44 percent, Chile’s leftist leader, Gabriel Boric, tweeted: “The Maduro regime must understand that the results it published are hard to believe. The international community and the Venezuelan people—including millions in exile—demand full transparency.”

Don’t you love the wording? The dictator who has been in power for almost a dozen years isn’t “playing fair.” Maybe we should give him a time out? What you see above is all that was written about Maduro and his regime itself. The article continues with more extended denunciations of US sanctions as that —undeniably— is the real point of the story. That Maduro has sent police to. arrest hundreds for the simple act of voting and that opposition leaders are in hiding is missing from the piece. Also omitted is this key data point: Maduro claims he won 51% but the government has released no actual voting data. (Maybe because Maduro MIGHT be stealing the vote lol). Oh, yeah, and there’s also the fact that Maduro has deployed the army in the streets and the potential for massive bloodshed is building.

The MSM which North denounces regularly on his twitter feed has in many ways done a much better job reporting this story, especially if you actually want to know anything about Venezuela itself. The story now is if the dictator can continue to hold power as the masses have taken to the streets to oust him and as his own former supporters joined the opposition (and probably canceled their Nation subs :) . I suggest this piece in The Guardian that is on the cutting edge of actual real life developments and not just an ideological abstract. Notice the difference between the way the British left publication handles this story and the half-assed way The Nation did.

From the far superior reporting in The Guardian comes word that should alarm progressives, liberals, radicals and people of democratic creed everywhere:

Venezuela’s embattled president – who has presided over a catastrophic economic collapse since inheriting Chávez’s socialist-inspired “revolution” in 2013 – says more than 1,200 people have been seized as part of a crackdown on the alleged “traitors” and terrorists who took to the streets to demonstrate against what they call a stolen election. “And we’re going to capture 1,000 more,” Maduro declared, vowing to imprison those detained in maximum security jails.

Nation writer North’s final recommendation for US policy is literally: do nothing. Right. We fight for democracy only here. Never encourage it, even properly, if the regime denounces America. That’s good enough. If we encourage democracy anywhere abroad it must ipso facto be an imperialist ploy and should be avoided like the plague.

Much of the global left has moved on and has recognized the supreme values of democracy. No longer in any advanced democracy are there any significant amount of leftists around who advocate “armed struggle” as was quite popular in in the 60’s through the 80’s. In the U.S., the problem is the left is so weak, it has so little impact, it hardly matters what “positions” it takes. It is just too distant from power. So it can take any half-cocked stance it wants as it so weak a voice — and it too often discredits itself (you know, like the dumb shit college students who put out a leaflet on the morrow of October 7, with graphics celebrating the Hamas hang gliders. Keep staying marginal and you will be forever on those comfortable margins where you are free from any serious or strategic thinking or any real responsibility for positive social change.

And why do I bother then to even write about this? In the end, what Maduro does and does not do will have no impact on us. Well, I write about it because after dedicating five decades of my adult life to issues of social justice, I am —shall we say— concerned that social democratic and democratic socialist currents in American politics are so weak. And one of those reasons is the refusal of too many of the few leftists we have to jettison their fantasies of 1937 and 1968 and understand, once and for all, that there is no socialism without democracy. And there certainly is a shortage of democracy if it does not lean socialist. Democratic socialist. Anything else is a cheap imitation. The “socialist” revolutions that have taken place in the Third World have little if anything to do with socialism — which for its democratic development requires a fully developed capitalist economy to precede it. Hell, China is using “socialism” as a means of both capitalist accumulation and imperial foreign policy.

If you are a leftist activist and you break out of your bubble to talk to others who you want to politically move, I suggest you drop any double standard you still might have about democracy and civil liberties. They are universal values applicable everywhere, even in time of conflict and war. Start to equivocate and you properly lose all your credibility. We on the left are very quick to criticize out domestic opponents of whataboutism when they engage it. But much of the left are masters of the same game. Ask about democracy in Cuba and their answer is it is better than Haiti — even though Cubans wake up in Havana and not Port au Prince. Ask about Maduro and democracy and we get an answer about US sanctions. Doesn’t work, my friends.

If you disagree with what you read here, no problem. Join us tomorrow night Monday 5 pm. for our two way Campaign 2024 Zoom open to ALL subscribers — free and paid. And sound off. There will be no arrests for lack of loyalty to your host. And I will not be turning in the names of any dissidents. Maybe.

MONDAY AUGUST 5 PM PDT
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