Venezuela News And ViewsVenezuela News And Views: Chavez and the Holocaust
Venezuela News And Views
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Chavez and the Holocaust
Today in some event shown through Globovision Chavez again called Israel a fascist state and affirmed that there is a Holocaust taking place in Southern Lebanon.
I will pass on discussing what is going on between Israel and its neighbors and focus on the fact that Chavez is consistently using words such as Holocaust, Fascism, Genocide, in conjunction to whatever his enemies do (in the case of Israel, which is not an enemy of Chavez the reason is to hit the main ally of Israel, the US, the perceived real enemy of Chavez).
Since Chavez is an ignorant of the real meaning of historical events one can conceive that the first 2-3 events where he used such words so lightly were a mere moment of irrationality and ignorance due to the length of his fiery speeches. But we cannot afford to entertain this benevolent hypothesis anymore: there is now a pattern. We are not even allowed to hope that his entourage is so scared of Chavez that they have not dared tell him that certain words are not to be played with. The vice president Jose Vicente Rangel knows better and he has had plenty of time to explain the subtleties to his boss. The trivialization of words such as Holocaust is a deliberate ploy. Soon we might even hear “Israel is holocausting Southern Lebanon”, becoming a verb as the ultimate descent into banality.
I have been trying to fool myself for too long but no more: such abusive use of hallowed words is on purpose. A goal is sought. I have come up with an explanation that I do not like at all.
For better or for worse the West has been building its current civilization over the ashes of the Holocaust. Civilizations start with a conjunction of events. The one that preceded us started with the French and Industrial Revolutions. It ended somewhere around WW1 and the Great Depression. Our present civilization is built on the WW2 consequences, namely the Holocaust and Hiroshima. At least the moral and ethical basis of our civilization, from Japan to Venezuela, from Iceland to South Africa, comes from these events. All civil rights movements, all democratic beliefs, all economical ideas from the democratic lefts and rights were founded on the ideal that such as thing as the Holocaust or Hiroshima mass murders should be avoided at all costs. We got the UN. Most abolished death penalty. We got tribunals for crimes against the humanity. We got many more things, more or less successful but we got them.
Aragon reveals very well these 1945 revelations as our civilization litmus test in a poem to Robert Desnos murdered by the Holocaust and not even a Jew:
Là-bas où le destin de notre siècle saigne (Yonder, where the fate of our century bleeds)
But our present civilization like all civilizations is challenged. What we built in the 50ies and triumphed with the fall of the Berlin Wall, perhaps opening unrealistic expectations, is now challenged. The excluded are the challengers. The excluded are those who either do not think they can access to our civilization, or were deliberately set apart, or do not want to join our civilization for their own motivations, thus self excluding themselves. Chavez is in this last crowd, as the autocrats and their followers who today seem to enjoy a strange revival from the Baikal to the Lake of Maracaibo, passing through Pyongyang and Teheran.
What do these challengers want? A world of certainties and not a world of collective resolve married to individual responsibility for our actions. We are in a world where science and rationality allied with empathy are supposed to solve all ills and allow all of us to make the right choices on our own and thus join society and its benefits. We are thus forced to establish a world of diversity where many solutions must coexist. However these challengers aspire to uniformity, at least within their own realms of power and action. They aspire to world of conformism even if their rallying cries are against the conformism of McDonald and Disney. Be they fundamentalists of any stripe or plainly angry folks, they all fall easily prey to a limited elite that promises them a world with certitudes.
And a world of certitudes requires the end of doubt. By force, through repression if necessary. Repression of diversity means exactly that, repression, death and deliberate murder.
That is why the sacred founding words of Holocaust and Hiroshima must be made banal so what was tried in the past can be tried again, without raising annoying outrage. That is why Chavez makes banal the Holocaust. That is why Iran makes banal nuclear energy. They have a plan and we are not a part of it.
posted by Daniel Permalink 8:02 PM
Written from the Venezuelan provinces, this blog started as private letters to my friends overseas, letters narrating the difficult days of the 2002/2003 strike in Venezuela. These letters became this mix of news, comments, pictures of the Venezuelan situation. Unknowingly, I have written the diary of Venezuela slow descent into authoritarianism, the slow erosion of our liberties, the takeover of the country by a military caste, the surrendering of our soul to our inner demons.
Click logo above to go directly to the English language blog. Click here to go to the Spanish language mirror.
Estamos en Venezuela, nunca se sabe. In spite of its Spanish title, an irregular blog about a French student observing Venezuela. Interesting pictures.
General info and discontinued blogs but with good archives
Venezuela Crisis has a visual and textual record "hors pair" of the recent electoral campaign in Venezuela, the first blogger to have covered live a Venezuelan campaign. Seems to be on a resting phase for a few weeks.
Digital papers with Venezuela and LatAm in mind (in Spanish)
There are two major digital papers with forums and all, for a permanent clash between factions. Noticiero Digital is the oldest one and Noticias 24 is giving it a run for tis money.
And a new comer:Venezuela es noticia.
Ciudadania Activa has a large selection of articles on Venezuelan politics and civil rights issues.
Relevant info to expose some of the regime's propaganda and human rights violations
The lies of April
The famous "infamous" video "The revolution will not be televised" has been duly analyzed and shown to be in large measure a crass manipulation. Counter-video in Spanish here, and summary of main points here.
There is a documentary that follows the April 2002 events from the perspective on what Chavez did that April 11, "La Cadena". It is about the forced broadcast made by Chavez to hide the massacre of the pacific march on Miraflores.
The infamous apartheid like system of the Tascon and Maisanta lists
The compilation of various documents from Miguel.
The video "La Lista" and my reviews in English and Spanish by invitation at Hispalibertas.
The El Nacional review of Perez Oramas.
The original video itself can be seen here.
Diverse Human Rights pages
Of course, from Amnesty International to the Human Rights Watch page, without forgetting local organizations such as prestigious COFAVIC, the Venezuelan government comes only too often lacking in its Human Rights record.
OTHER FOLKS WITH VENEZUELA MORE OR LESS IN THEIR MIND (Please send links that should be added here)
And of course to be fair there must be links to pro-Chavez sites. I do pride myself of having been the first opposition blog to have listed pro Chavez links; a situation that has now changed. However extremely rare is the pro Chavez page or blog that links to any of the sites listed above. The readers might draw their own conclusion
Aporrea (Beat up, bruise! as in the imperative mode of the verb; the only interesting one if you can read Spanish. Predicts the future)
And of course the full time propaganda agencies, ALL at tax payer expenses, the National Radio coverage, RNV, and the rather deficient official news agency, ABN (both in Spanish).
Without forgetting the "official" newsletter in English.
Some blogs, more or less sycophantic.
Yosmary, campaigning for Mario Silva, quite something.
Less sycophantic, even critical on occasion Terreno baldio.
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Map of Venezuela to help you locate the different locales mentioned through the blog (click here for a more detailed map)
For the memories. The picture below dates from the epic days of the December 2002/January 2003 "El Paro", when the opposition was strong and decided, and when Chavez was low in polls.
Then came the "misiones" and the worst populist episode of our history. Through pacific protests and strikes we tried to preserve democracy.
History proved us right even if we lost that battle.
Marching toward Hotel Melia, 01/31/03, 5 PM.
Small yellow square under the Pepsi ball is the big stage.
A special thanks to JoAnne Schmitz for the suggestions and help in setting this blog up.
