[News] How the Global North’s Left Media Helped Pave the Way for Bolivia’s Right-Wing Coup
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Dec 11 12:36:48 EST 2019
https://fair.org/home/how-the-global-norths-left-media-helped-pave-the-way-for-bolivias-right-wing-coup/
How the Global North’s Left Media Helped Pave the Way for Bolivia’s
Right-Wing Coup
*by Lucas Koerner - December 10, 2019
*
In our brave new age of hybrid warfare
<https://globalsecurityreview.com/hybrid-and-non-linear-warfare-systematically-erases-the-divide-between-war-peace/>,
corporate media play the role of ideological heavy artillery within the
arsenal of Western imperialist powers. Day in and day out, “reputable”
establishment outlets bombard progressive and/or anti-imperialist
governments in the Global South with endless salvos of smears and
libelous misrepresentations (e.g., *FAIR.org*, 5/23/18
<https://fair.org/home/media-delegitimize-venezuelan-elections-amid-complete-unanimity-of-outlook/>,
8/23/18
<https://fair.org/home/distorting-past-and-present-reuters-on-nicaraguas-armed-uprising/>,
4/11/19
<https://fair.org/home/dictator-media-code-for-government-we-dont-like/>,
7/25/19
<https://fair.org/home/vox-cia-iran-saudi-arabia-middle-east-cold-war/>).
The cumulative effect is to delegitimize any government that does not
abide by Western dictates, justifying coups, murderous economic
sanctions, proxy wars and even full-scale invasions. The recent
US-sponsored coup d’etat in Bolivia is an instructive case study. In the
leadup to Evo Morales’ military ouster, Western media routinely impugned
the indigenous president’s democratic credentials, despite his having
won re-election by a sizeable margin (*FAIR.org*,11/5/19
<https://fair.org/home/media-conceal-chiles-state-criminality-delegitimize-bolivian-democracy/>).
But corporate outlets have not been alone in attacking Morales.
Progressive and alternative media in the Global North have long
portrayed Bolivia’s deposed Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) government
as repressive, pro-capitalist and anti-environment—all in the name of
“left” critique. Regardless of the stated intention, the net result was
to weaken already anemic opposition within Western imperial states to
the destruction they inflict abroad.
*Equivocating around the coup*
In the wake of the November 10 coup, corporate journalists predictably
played their part in gaslighting the public, presenting the fascist
putsch as a “democratic transition” (*FAIR.org*, 11/11/19
<https://fair.org/home/the-bolivian-coup-is-not-a-coup-because-us-wanted-it-to-happen/>,
11/15/19
<https://fair.org/home/western-media-whitewash-bolivias-far-right-coup/>).
Truly astonishing, however, was the response of Western progressive
media, whom one might have expected to unequivocally denounce the coup
and demand the immediate reinstatement of Evo Morales.
A dismaying number did not.
In the immediate aftermath of Morales’s ouster, *Towards Freedom
*(11/11/19 <https://towardfreedom.org/story/kristallnacht-in-bolivia/>,
11/15/19
<https://towardfreedom.org/blog-blog/silvia-rivera-cusicanqui-bolivias-lesson-in-triumphalism/>,
11/16/19
<https://towardfreedom.org/story/bolivia-evos-fall-the-fascist-right-and-the-power-of-memory/>)
published the perspectives of several Bolivian and Latin American
intellectuals playing down the reality of a coup d’etat and drawing
false equivalences between the Morales government and the fascist right.
Other articles posted in days prior accused the government of fraud,
justifying the coup to come (*Towards Freedom*, 11/8/19
<https://towardfreedom.org/story/upheaval-in-bolivia-lurches-towards-disaster/>,
11/10/19
<https://towardfreedom.org/story/bolivia-new-elections-are-not-enough/>).
The Vermont-based outlet, with historic ties
<https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/special-reports-archives/waging-peace-in-the-cold-war-toward-freedom-and-the-non-aligned-movement/>
to the Non-Aligned Movement, declined to publish any alternative
Bolivian points of view unambiguously opposing the coup.
Other progressive outlets correctly identified Morales’ overthrow as a
coup, but felt compelled to question the indigenous leader’s democratic
legitimacy for the sake of “nuance.”
While condemning the coup and rightly dismissing the baseless electoral
fraud allegations, the editorial board of *NACLA Report on the Americas*
(11/13/19
<https://nacla.org/news/2019/11/13/nacla-statement-coup-bolivia-solidarity-bolivians-resisting-military-intervention>)
nevertheless refrained from voicing solidarity with Morales and the MAS
party. Instead, the publication took MAS to task for the “slow erosion
of progressive aspirations” and its failure to transform the
“patriarchal and prebendal political system.” Even *NACLA*’s
denunciation of the coup was at best lukewarm, citing “MAS’s own role
and a history of political miscalculations,” before noting that “the
unfolding pattern of rightist revanchism, the role of oligarchic forces
and external actors, and the final arbitrating role played by the
military, suggests that we are witnessing a coup.”
A subsequent article published by *NACLA* (10/15/19
<https://nacla.org/news/2019/11/15/Bolivia-Morales-Camacho>) preferred
to debate whether Morales’ military ouster constituted a coup, failing
to note the baseless character of the OAS’s fraud allegations and
attributing the fascist right’s “racialized violence” to “polarization.”
The authors, Linda Farthing and Olivia Arigho-Stiles, actually made the
outlandish claim that assessing if Morales’ ouster was bad for democracy
was “complicated.”
Meanwhile, a *Verso Blog *interview (11/15/19
<https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4493-the-eighteenth-brumaire-of-macho-camacho-jeffery-r-webber-with-forrest-hylton-on-the-coup-in-bolivia>)
with Forrest Hylton and Jeffrey Webber made no call for Morales’
democratic mandate to be respected, instead urging international
leftists to “insist on the right of Bolivians to self-determination”
without “refrain[ing] from criticism of Morales.”
Far from outliers, these editorial positions are very much par for the
course in progressive media coverage of Bolivia over the past months and
years.
*The making of an ecocidal murderer *
In the leadup to the October 20 election, many outlets drew or otherwise
insinuated false equivalences between Morales and Brazilian ultra-right
President Jair Bolsonaro in response to the tropical forest fires in
both nations.
Despite rejecting such an equivalence, *NACLA* (8/30/19
<https://nacla.org/news/2019/08/30/understanding-fires-south-america-amazon>)
nonetheless blamed the policies of both “extractivist governments” for
“stoking destruction in the Amazon and beyond,” while casting Global
North countries as having a responsibility to exert effective “pressure”
in lieu of paying their historically accrued climate debt.
Others were less subtle. Writing for UK-based *Novara Media *(8/26/19
<https://novaramedia.com/2019/08/26/its-not-just-brazils-forests-that-are-burning-bolivia-is-on-fire-too/>),
Claire Wordley explicitly compared the Morales government to Bolsonaro
in Brazil, calling MAS policies “every bit as extractivist and damaging
as those of the capitalists Morales claims to hate.” More damning, she
cites Jhanisse Vaca-Daza, a Western-backed regime change operative
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/29/western-regime-change-operatives-launch-campaign-to-blame-bolivias-evo-morales-for-the-amazon-fires/>,
to disparage the Morales government’s handling of the fires.
/Manuela Picq (*Truthout*, 9/26/19
<https://truthout.org/articles/bolivian-president-evo-morales-ecocide-is-a-genocide/>)
charges Evo Morales with “genocide.”/
A piece in*Truthout *(9/26/19
<https://truthout.org/articles/bolivian-president-evo-morales-ecocide-is-a-genocide/>)
took hyperbolic slander to new heights, likening Morales to Bolsonaro
and accusing the Bolivian leader of “genocide.” “Evo Morales played
green for a long-time, but his government is deeply colonial…like
Bolsonaro in Brazil,” Manuela Picq wrote, going on to cite unnamed
“Bolivians” who brand the indigenous president a “murderer of nature.”
Picq offered no analysis concerning how Western leftists’ failure to
shift imperialist political-economic relations has contributed to Global
South countries’ ongoing dependence on extractive industries.
The “extractivist” critiques of Morales are hardly new, going back to
his government’s controversial 2011 plan to build a highway through the
Isiboro Secure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS). As
Federico Fuentes pointed out in *Green Left Weekly *(republished in
*NACLA*, 5/21/14
<https://nacla.org/news/2014/5/21/south-america-how-%E2%80%98anti-extractivism%E2%80%99-misses-forest-trees>),
the dominant extractivism/anti-extractivism frame of the conflict served
to obscure the political and economic dimensions of imperialism.
While the highway did indeed engender important endogenous
opposition—which was largely centered on the route, rather than the
project per se—the main organization behind the protests, the
Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia, was being financed by
Washington and backed by the right-wing Santa Cruz oligarchy
<http://isj.org.uk/the-morales-government-neoliberalism-in-disguise/>.
Although the USAID’s funding of the Confederación is publicly notorious,
many progressive outlets prefer to omit it from their reporting
(*NACLA*, 8/1/13
<https://nacla.org/article/contested-development-geopolitics-bolivia%E2%80%99s-tipnis-conflict>,
8/21/17
<https://nacla.org/blog/2017/08/22/why-evo-morales-reviving-bolivia%E2%80%99s-controversial-tipnis-road>,
11/20/19 <https://nacla.org/news/2019/11/19/bolivia-morales-coup>;
*ROAR*, 11/3/14
<https://roarmag.org/essays/bolivia-authoritarianism-mas-elections/>,
3/11/14
<https://roarmag.org/essays/bolivia-morales-cocaleros-repression/>; *In
These Times*, 11/16/12
<http://inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/14202/indigenous_movements_clash_with_latin_americas_left_turn/>;
*Viewpoint Magazine*, 11/18/19
<https://www.viewpointmag.com/2019/11/18/origins-of-the-crisis-on-the-coup-in-bolivia/>).
When foreign interference is mentioned, it is generally presented as an
unsubstantiated allegation from the Morales government.
In a particularly revealing case, *ROAR* (11/3/14
<https://roarmag.org/essays/bolivia-authoritarianism-mas-elections/>)
detailed, among its laundry list of “authoritarian” MAS abuses,
“obstructing the free functioning of…several NGOs that have sided with
the TIPNIS protests,” but avoided any mention of foreign and local
right-wing ties to those same NGOs.
This whitewashing of imperialist structure and agency ultimately allows
Morales to be vulgarly caricatured as a two-faced “strongman” who “gives
to the poor but takes from the environment” (*In These Times*, 8/27/15
<http://inthesetimes.com/article/17850/bolivias-president-the-two-faces-of-evo>).
*Passive solidarity?*
The “extractivist” critique circulated by many progressive outlets
foregrounds a more generalized reproach of the MAS for failing to live
up to its socialist discourse.
/*Jacobin* (10/29/15
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/10/morales-bolivia-chavez-castro-mas/>)
saw in Morales’ administration “disquieting new forms of class rule and
domination.”/
Writing in *Jacobin *(1/12/14
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/managing-bolivian-capitalism/>; also
see 10/29/15
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/10/morales-bolivia-chavez-castro-mas/>),
Jeffrey Webber accused the MAS of running a “compensatory state,” whose
legitimacy “conferred by relatively petty handouts runs on the blood of
extraction.” Under this top-down “passive revolution,” the “repressive”
state “co-opts and coerces…opposition…and builds an accompanying
ideological apparatus to defend multinationals.”
Webber’s long-running argument that the legacy of Bolivia’s MAS
government is “reconstituted neoliberalism
<https://isreview.org/issue/73/rebellion-reform>” has been challenged by
critics, who point
<https://isreview.org/issue/76/government-social-movements-and-revolution-bolivia-today>
to the shifting terrain of class forces under Morales.
Bracketing the empirical veracity of Webber’s claims, it is striking
that he dedicates virtually no space to exploring the role Western
imperial states play in reproducing Bolivia’s extractive model and
constraining possibilities for its transcendence.
Rather, the focus is always on MAS’s allegedly insidious agency “on
behalf of capital,” and scarcely ever on Western leftists’ own
anti-imperialist impotence, which never appears as an independent
variable in explaining the Global South’s revolutionary failings.
The political effect of such one-sided analysis is to effectively equate
the “neoliberal” MAS with its right-wing opponents, given that, as
Webber put it, “Morales has been a better night watchman over private
property and financial affairs than the right could have hoped for.”
Such lines might come as a surprise to current readers of *Jacobin*,
which has fiercely opposed the coup (e.g., 11/14/19
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/bolivia-coup-evo-morales-jeanine-anes-indigenous-violence>,
11/18/19
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/coup-bolivia-history-evo-morales-jeanine-anez>,
12/3/19
<https://jacobinmag.com/2019/12/bolivia-coup-evo-morales-jeanine-anez>),
whose fascist brutality has thrown to the wind any notion of left/right
equivalence. But by now, the damage is already done.
*Anti-imperialist reckoning *
For all the current talk of a leftist resurgence
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/seattle-world-trade-organization-protests-socialism>
in the Global North, it is a paradox that anti-imperialist movements are
weaker now than they were at the height of the Iraq War 15 years ago.
It is undeniable that the absence of popular opposition to Western
imperial interventions, from Libya and Syria to Haiti and Honduras, has
paved the way for the coup in Bolivia and the ongoing onslaught against
Venezuela.
It is likewise indisputable that Western progressive media coverage of
the Morales government and its left-leaning counterparts in the region
has not helped to repair this void of solidarity. This editorial stance
is particularly troubling, given Morales’ outspoken international
advocacy against climate change
<https://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/21/evo_morales_opens_climate_change_conference>
and forPalestinian liberation
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israel-is-a-terrorist-state-seven-times-bolivia-and-morales-took-a-stance-for-palestine/>.
None of this is to proscribe criticism of Morales and the MAS. Indeed,
in the context of places like Bolivia and Venezuela, the task of
left-wing media is to produce critical, grassroots analysis of states
and popular movements that is anti-imperialist in both content and form.
That is, the contradictions endemic to the political process (e.g., the
TIPNIS dispute) must be contextualized within the imperial parameters of
the capitalist world-system. Moreover, Northern progressive outlets—no
matter the intensity of their critiques of the state and political
process—must stake a clear editorial position defending Global South
governments against Western intervention.
The firm positions taken by Jeremy Corbyn
<https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1193657983219257344> and Bernie
Sanders
<https://www.truthdig.com/articles/bernie-sanders-stance-on-bolivia-matters/>
against the coup in Bolivia are a hopeful sign on the political front.
The job of progressive media is to produce truly alternative journalism
dedicated to effectively resisting empire.
--
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