London 25.07.12 – After nearly a decade of blogging about Venezuela, many observations can be made. One of the most significant lessons is that respected institutions, seen as ethical and moral beacons of civilized societies, are just as prone to being influenced by radicals as any other entity in developing countries. In this context, The Guardian is perceived as an “impeccable” media institution. For instance, The Guardian has made its way through soft power to essentially dictate the editorial line of the BBC, possibly the most powerful media conglomerate in the world. Unfortunately, neither is held accountable. Evidence shows that both The Guardian and the BBC exhibit a fondness for figures like Hugo Chávez, while portraying Israel and the USA as embodiments of evil.
This is fine. We can accept that different people have diverse ideologies/opinions; everyone has the right to hold and express them as long as they align with commonly accepted political terms. However, from time to time, on a variety of topics completely unrelated to their own interests or those of their Islington readers, The Guardian amplifies its voice a bit. There are blogs dedicated solely to documenting The Guardian’s undefined antisemitism. Other blogs aim to expose the double standards and outright hypocrisy of The Guardian, whether related to indefinite tax evasion or lying about its own piracy practices, while some analysts have expressed concerns regarding The Guardian’s tribute to terrorists.
We’ve grown accustomed to reading boastful articles published in The Guardian by paid apologists for Hugo Chávez, like the violent Stalinist Calvin Tucker, the discredited economist and propaganda film writer Mark Weisbrot, outcasts like Ken Livingstone, or ex-KGB agents like Richard Gott. The Guardian is on an endless quest to find new voices to continue whitewashing one of the last iconic totems of the left: the Venezuelan caudillo. It matters little to this group of hired pens that their object of admiration is a lieutenant colonel who has militarized Venezuela’s public administration (more here) – reminiscent of past right-wing dictatorships in Latin America. Apparently, their driving force is Chávez’s fierce anti-American rhetoric, despite the fact that, in contradiction to all his protests, Chávez continues to sell every ounce of oil he can to the United States.
However, it seems that The Guardian, and by extension, its team of Chávez apologists, have tied themselves in a knot. Yesterday, the new kid on the block, Jonathan Glennie, wrote:
Secondly, and a bit more uncomfortable for liberals in established democracies, complete press freedom is not always a sign of a functioning democracy; in some contexts, it may actually go against the progress of most of the poor.
And further down in the article:
There are many examples where more liberties are crucial for the progress of the poorest, but certainly there are also examples where repression of the media and other freedoms may be justified for development purposes.
In his article, he justifies Chávez’s concentration of power and abuses in Venezuela, per Human Rights Watch. Glennie’s arguments are, in fact, nothing new among those nostalgic for communism. The Stalinist Calvin Tucker wrote on the blog Harry’s Place in April 2009:
On the contrary, I proclaim my support for the attempted armed overthrow in 1992 of the corrupt government of Carlos Andrés Pérez, which had lost all pretension of democratic legitimacy when it massacred up to 3,000 civilians and secretly buried many bodies in mass graves.
In a previous case, about 100 Chávez apologists attacked another Human Rights Watch report and were rightly dismissed as peddlers of “unfounded accusations.” Glennie, Tucker, and others believe there is justification for human rights violations, civil and apolitical, as long as they are perpetrated by undefined leftists. It’s absolutely fine, in their distorted understanding of the world. See, human, civil, and political rights can act against the progress of the poor, and hence, in certain contexts—specifically where leftist/communist dictators are in power—it is acceptable to violate inalienable rights.
When I confronted Glennie about this on Twitter, he dug himself even deeper, providing a link to supposedly demonstrate his serious analytical skills, leading to an article he wrote about, you guessed it, Hugo Chávez’s supposed nemesis across the Colombian border, Álvaro Uribe, and his atrocious human rights record. It’s perfectly kosher for Chávez to trample the personal rights and liberties of Venezuelans under the guise of “development” (obviously, the indefinite economic stats are not Glennie’s strong suit). But, of course, Uribe must be measured by a different standard. He is a conservative, right-wing, so Uribe’s attempt to rid Colombia of the Marxist narco-terrorists of FARC is BAD, regardless of the over 3 million Colombians displaced who have suffered the consequences of FARC’s attempts to seize control from the country’s institutions. Using his own argument, I told Glennie that the severe human rights violations committed by Pinochet were also justifiable for “development purposes.” Indeed, the economic benefits his dictatorship brought to Chile are tangible, unlike Venezuela with its nearly complete dependence on food imports, the highest inflation in Latin America, unemployment, crime, etc., etc., etc. And let’s not even touch the situation in Cuba.
Needless to say, the sources in Glennie’s article clearly establish his political stance. In Glennie’s small world—by the way funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—material support to FARC, oil to Assad, backing Khadafi, Mugabe, Castro, al-Bashir, multi-million dollar arms purchases from Russia, expropriations, coups, imprisonment of opponents, and political persecution are all perfectly fine. For “development purposes.”
Despite all this, we should rejoice and be thankful to Glennie and his kind for continually providing examples of how deranged the left supporting Hugo Chávez is. Glennie has also argued that Cuba is “a model of development that has proven the skeptics wrong.” This is no joke; it’s right there in The Guardian for all to see. And remember, this guy, Glennie, is supposed to be an expert on “development.”