Nazional-communism in Venezuela

I feel an unwished for satisfaction today.

Readers of this blog might have noticed on occasion that I equate freely Communism and Nazism in that they are totalitarian systems that equally trample Human Rights and commit all sorts of abuses which cannot really be differentiated or justified no matter what ideology is used to lighten the facts.

Readers might also remember that if I do not consider Venezuela a totalitarian state, not even a real authoritarian state, yet, I am quite clear that we are on the way to authoritarianism. And that I think that the logic of the system can only lead us in the future to some form of totalitarian state if its leaders can get away with it. Even some of my colleagues in the opposition do not share this view, at least not the "until totalitarian do us join". I will agree that to set a totalitarian state you need efficiency which is so far the anti-hallmark of the regime. Thus there is still some hope that we might not go past a muddling into some form of authoritarianism, helped along by the opposition own incompetence.

But today, even if semi jokingly, Simon Boccanegra of Tal Cual is starting to report on such a drift. I will remind the skeptic reader that the Cuban "revolution" looked quite romantic in 1959, quite a show with generous long haired beat generation types. We all know how this ended...

At any rate, I decided to go ahead and translate this item, as a fair warning, just in case. And with the apropriate notes as needed.

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SIMON BOCCANEGRA
Socialism for the XXI Century?

The school for International Studies of the Central University of Venezuela can start closing its doors. Until recently most of its graduates ended up, logically, at the foreign ministry. It has been quite a few years already that entry to the diplomatic corps was obtained through credential contests whose "competitors" were graduates of said school. This is all over. The Yellow House (1) has just announced that the contest will survive but "only for those who are engaged in the revolution". In other words, you do not enter the foreign office to serve the country but to serve a precise political process - this unpalatable hodgepodge that its sabre yeilding defensors call revolution. Fermin Toro, for example, present ambassador to the UN, nobody has ever questioned his fossilized communist thinking at the foreign office, where he seems to have resided from almost the times of his illustrious namesake (2).

Today, he and others like him, in the application of the totalitarian model of tropical totalitarianism, where clear Nazi-Communist undertow cannot be hidden, work to make the Foreign Ministry one and the same thing of Party and State. This was asked from the public servants of Hitler Germany and in the Soviet Union: fidelity to the party (and of course its chief) and not to the country. Is this the way of "XXI century socialism"?

Notes

1) Casa Amarilla (Yellow House) is an historical house on Caracas Bolivar Square who even served as a jail until it became the official seat of the Foreign Office and thus one of the most known addresses in Caracas.

2) Fermin Toro: Famous and illustrious politican and writer of XIX century Venezuelan. Many high schools named after him.