[News] Why the Media Are Giving a Free Pass to Venezuela’s Neo-Fascist Creeps

[Anti-Imperialist News]

    Why the Media Are Giving a Free Pass to Venezuela’s Neo-Fascist Creeps

Roberto Lovato interviews intellectual heavyweight Luis García Britto 
about the role of the media in the current conflict in Venezuela.

Roberto Lovato <http://www.thenation.com/authors/roberto-lovato>
April 1, 2014
*http://www.thenation.com/article/179125/why-media-are-giving-free-pass-venezuelas-neo-fascist-creeps# 
*

/The novelist, essayist, historian and playwright Luis Britto García is 
a titan of Latin American literature and thought, though he’s not nearly 
as well known on this side of the cultural border between “America” the 
country and América the continent. Many consider this prize-winning 
author the most important writer and intellectual in Venezuela. In 
addition to his novels and many other books on language, culture and 
politics, Britto García has written extensively on the role of the media 
in Venezuelan politics. Last month, /Nation/ contributor Roberto Lovato 
met with Britto García, 73, in his home in Caracas to talk about the 
role of the media in the current conflict./

*Roberto Lovato: You’ve written a lot about the media and politics in 
Venezuela. How are the media behaving in the current conflict?*

*Luis Britto García:* The current situation in Venezuela has a 
historical context that must be understood. During the previous coup 
attempt, in 2002, the television networks in particular played a 
determining role in what amounted to a media coup. The media themselves 
became political actors, something I’ve documented in my book /Media 
Dictatorship /[2012]. Just consider, for example, how the Carmona 
decree—in which the coup leaders essentially gutted the Constitution—was 
signed by representatives of the major media. This same media also 
edited out images, stories and facts that didn’t fit their narrative.  
During the coup, the television crews even showed up before the 
repressive acts were performed by the coup leaders.

*And how are things similar or different today?*

In this current coup attempt, the television networks have adopted a 
different tone, but the radio and social media and international press 
are playing a leading role, using images of repression in Egypt, Syria, 
the United States and other countries to depict supposed repression in 
Venezuela. Look, for example, how a few hundred violent students come to 
symbolize “students,” “youth” and “the country.”

*Are you saying images of rock-throwing, tire-burning youth are 
inaccurate or fake?*

No. I’m saying we’re a country of 29 million inhabitants. I’m saying 
that in Venezuela, nine and a half million Venezuelans are studying. Of 
these, more than 2.5 million are in higher education. What does that 
mean? That almost one in ten Venezuelans are in higher education. The 
overwhelming majority of them are in perpetually free institutions. This 
whole image that the media try to convey of a “student rebellion,” which 
[jailed opposition leader] Leopoldo López tries to project—the image 
that all youth are against the government, against [President Nicolás] 
Maduro, against Bolivarianism—is absolutely false. Yes, clearly there 
are young people who are against the government, for various reasons. 
We’re a free country, and people can think however they like. But it’s 
just a fraction, a small minority of the entire student 
population—something the international media aren’t reporting.

*And what else do you see being edited out of the current Venezuela 
story in the media?*

There’s an important split in the right that is also not being reported. 
To begin with, they’ve lost eighteen of the last nineteen major 
elections—and they’ve protested all of them, except the single 
referendum that they won. It’s also important to point out that López is 
being projected as the latest in a long line of messiahs of the right, 
even though he doesn’t even pull together the vast majority of the 
[voters] of the right. The right supported [former presidential 
candidate Henrique] Capriles Radonski in three elections, and he lost 
all of them. In the internal elections of the right, López ended up in 
third place; I think he got something like 2 percent of eligible voters. 
So, like I told you, the right wing in Venezuela is very divided. It 
plays with a messiah who’s going to hand them an instant paradise, and 
if he doesn’t do it, they become disillusioned, disenchanted with him, 
which is precisely what will happen with López, who has a strong rift 
with Capriles. López and his ally, María Corina Machado, another extreme 
right-winger, have chosen the option of desperate street violence. 
Capriles, meanwhile, has cautioned against “generating false 
expectations of change through street actions.”

*So how did Capriles and López come to prominence?*

There was a collapse of the traditional parties. From this void emerged 
the idea of founding another right-wing party. Study the rise of 
Capriles, López and their right-wing parties, and you see how weird 
politics in Venezuela are.

*What do you mean?*

Before becoming leaders of the right, López and Capriles spent part of 
their youth in an almost comical group called “Tradition, Family and 
Property.” It was a fanatical fascist group, somewhere between a 
religious and a political organization. They used to stand out on street 
corners of urban neighborhoods with large Superman-style red capes, 
berets, things like that. It was this ultra-super-reactionary, 
right-wing group. Yes, red-caped, like Superman! From there, they became 
the right-wing Primero Justicia [Justice First] party, which arose out 
of a television show begun by a lawyer named Julio Borges [now leader of 
Primero Justicia].

*A television show? You mean that Primero Justicia, one of the most 
important parties of the right and a party that WikiLeaks cables tell us 
was partly funded for more than a decade by the United States through 
the National Endowment for Democracy, actually started thanks to a TV show?*

Yes. Out of nowhere, all of the sudden Borges has a show on television 
that’s called /Justice for All/. It was a show where he played the role 
of a justice of the peace, and plaintiffs were brought before him. These 
are often neighbors suing each other, and he tries to offer a sort of 
charismatic mediation of disputes. [In the show they] had the litigants 
pass through a narrow hallway so that they would run into each other, 
getting into fights and hitting each other.

*Sounds like court shows in the United States.*

Yes, it’s copied from reality shows in the United States. The curious 
thing, however, is that this program was converted into a political 
party under the leadership of Julio Borges. From /Justice for All/, 
Borges and his allies created Primero Justicia. The right needed 
something like a political right wing, because the social democratic and 
the social Christian parties that have traditionally dominated 
Venezuelan politics were so discredited that they didn’t constitute a 
force any longer. This new party was developed on one side by Capriles, 
and on the other side by López. So, the media also had a role in helping 
to create the current leaders and splits in the right.

*Are you saying that the strategy and tactics of the right have an 
element of political and media theater?*

In a way. Look at the violent actions like grabbing and holding 
middle-class people prisoners in neighborhoods with barricades called 
/guarimbas/. I’ve never understood it. This “strategy” was “invented” by 
a Cuban-Venezuelan named Robert Alonso, brother of a Hollywood actress, 
Maria Conchita Alonso, who did a movie with Schwarzenegger. Mr. Alonso 
invented the /guarimba / as a way for a fractious minority to gain media 
attention by shutting off the street. They chuck trash or debris or 
waste so that their neighbors can’t get in our out. It gets media 
attention, but also immobilizes the right, a real political marvel. The 
/guarimberos/ are cutting themselves off from the very people who could 
support the right. You hear the complaints, but not in the news reports. 
So what are you thinking, shutting down, burning down your own 
neighborhoods?

*What do you think will happen?*

We’ve seen a lot of this before. The cameras like the /guarimbas/, but, 
looked at from within the country, it’s a ludicrous political action. 
Insane. They tried this out before, in 2004, and it failed. They’ve had 
political messiahs like Leopoldo López, most of whom have been 
forgotten. You saw the future in the recent Carnaval celebrations. The 
right called for a boycott of Carnaval. The poor rejected their call and 
filled the beaches and the streets with their celebrations. Yet again, 
the international media didn’t take notice. The Colombian novelist 
William Ospina says that in the entire world, the rich celebrate and the 
poor protest. Only in Venezuela do the poor celebrate and the rich protest.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20140402/1ee72759/attachment.htm>