[News] Whitewashing Imperialism: the Western ‘Left’ and Venezuela

[Anti-Imperialist News]

ebb-magazine.com
<https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/whitewashing-imperialism>
Whitewashing Imperialism: the Western ‘Left’ and Venezuela
03/10/2024 By Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz
------------------------------

Every time Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution is faced with renewed threats
to its survival, a stratum of US-based intellectuals is always ready with
‘left’ critiques that deliberately obscure the permanent imperialist siege
against the country.

In the six weeks since the disputed July 28 elections, Venezuela has once
again seen deadly violence, ramped-up US-led intervention including further
sanctions, as well as defensive maneuvers from the Maduro government and
allied popular movements.

Writing for *New Left Review *and *The Nation*, respectively, Gabriel
Hetland <https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/fraud-foretold> and Alejandro
Velasco <https://www.thenation.com/article/world/venezuela-maduro-left/>
present the contentious post-electoral panorama as the result of
essentially endogenous factors – namely, Maduro’s ‘increasingly neoliberal,
and even rightwing, policies,’ including ‘austerity, corruption,
repression, and dollarization’ – in which US hybrid warfare is at best
epiphenomenal. They urge the international left to ‘resis[t] apologism for
Maduro’ and accept the victory of a fascist-led opposition movement.

Both academics are no strangers to this opportunistic exercise in
methodological nationalism. Back in 2017
<https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/18/why-venezuela-spiraling-out-control> and
2019 <https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/05/venezuela-and-left>, as the Trump
administration and its local neocolonial allies dramatically escalated the
regime-change offensive to ‘maximum pressure,’ Velasco as NACLA (North
American Congress on Latin America) executive editor published Hetland’s
articles bashing the Maduro government’s ‘authoritarianism’ and assigning
it equal, if not principal, blame for the crisis. Steve Ellner has
characterised this position as the ‘plague on both your houses
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13241/>’ approach.

Hetland’s and Velasco’s articles belong to a broader genre of deeply
disingenuous ‘left’ critique emanating from the global North, which has
periodically attacked Southern governments and anti-systemic movements
targeted by Washington, including Libya
<https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/24342>, Syria
<https://mronline.org/2016/12/13/allday131216-html/>, Lebanon
<https://jacobin.com/2023/10/hezbollah-israel-palestine-lebanon-iran-history>,
Iran
<https://roarmag.org/2019/11/25/leftists-worldwide-stand-by-the-protesters-in-iran/>,
Yemen <https://jacobin.com/2024/03/yemen-us-air-strikes-houthis>, Zimbabwe
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233648421_The_Zimbabwe_Question_and_the_Two_Lefts>,
China <https://www.qiaocollective.com/articles/what-does-critique-do>, Cuba
<https://nacla.org/cuban-protest-how-will-left-respond>, Bolivia
<https://fair.org/home/how-the-global-norths-left-media-helped-pave-the-way-for-bolivias-right-wing-coup/>,
Brazil <https://www.brasilwire.com/how-the-us-left-failed-brasil/>,
Nicaragua <https://nacla.org/news/2021/11/08/nicaragua-election-ortega>,
among others.
Imperialism as afterthought

Velasco is quite transparent in downplaying the political and economic
impact of US sanctions
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/opinion/a-war-without-bombs/>:

To be sure, US sanctions have exacerbated Venezuela’s crisis. But they are
not its cause nor do they explain why sectors loyal to the government for
25 years turned away from it at the polls. Instead it is the combination of
austerity, corruption, repression, and dollarization under Maduro, all of
it hitting Chavismo’s historic bases of support, that for the first time
swung the presidency to the opposition.

Such minimisation is abjectly dishonest, as even stridently anti-Chavista
economist Francisco Rodríguez – hardly a man of the left – estimates
<https://franciscorodriguez.net/2023/10/14/quantifying-venezuelas-destructive-conflict>
that

approximately half of the decline in GDP observed in Venezuela between 2012
and 2020 can be attributed to politically-induced causes, including
economic sanctions, the loss of access to external funding sources, and the
politically induced toxification of relations with the Venezuelan economy.

This admittedly conservative estimate does not, moreover, consider the
impact of post-2014 Obama sanctions, including the designation of Venezuela
as an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’ which at the time Rodríguez
equated with a de facto financial embargo
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/12732/> on the country. Hetland
likewise fails to interrogate the politically overdetermining character of
US economic warfare, only to later admit
<https://x.com/gabrielhetland/status/1827053885116105127?s=46&t=cdDl5d7Ag9RcFdww1SrPcw>
on social media that he ‘forgot’ to mention that ‘sanctions are an
egregious violation of an election being “free and fair.”’

This apparent afterthought is precisely the crux of the issue: Venezuelans
went to the polls on July 28 with an imperialist pistol pressed firmly
against their skulls. Any analysis of the latest election, let alone the
history of post-Chávez period, that fails to properly account for how US
imperialism has conditioned and sharpened every aspect of the Bolivarian
Revolution’s internal contradictions is fundamentally misleading. Still,
for Velasco and Hetland, such context is essentially parenthetical, with
little bearing on the election itself.

It is true that the Maduro government has since 2018 implemented an
orthodox economic liberalisation package premised on benefits for private
capital alongside freezing wages, credit and public spending in order to
curb inflation and attract investment. Though these policies have delivered
sustained, if modest, economic recovery and lowered inflation
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuela-govt-looks-to-preserve-low-inflation-as-forex-gap-increases/?swcfpc=1>
to decade-lows, they have also deepened social inequalities, and alongside
high-profile corruption scandals, brewed popular resentment over old and
newly amassed fortunes.

The Maduro government’s embrace of economic liberalisation indeed
represents an ideological retreat. But it only came about after years of
incessant US-led hybrid warfare – ranging from media disinformation and
financing of NGOs to insurrectionary street violence (*guarimbas*) and
murderous sanctions – aimed at blocking pathways for revolutionary advance
and chipping away at Venezuelan expanded state organs, especially the
social missions and communal councils, that helped anchor the government
and ruling party among the racialised working masses.

Put bluntly, the Maduro administration is running a war economy, devoid of
instruments for sustained planning and repeatedly forced to pick from a
menu of ‘bad’ options effectively circumscribed by sanctions designed to
inflict collective punishment and undermine national sovereignty. The
country’s energy sector offers clear examples, such as US transnational
Chevron taking over operations and sales in joint ventures despite being a
minority partner. Recent natural gas deals likewise evidence Caracas’ weak
bargaining position, with state oil company PDVSA denied stakes and reduced
to merely collecting taxes and royalties in deals with foreign partners. To
present the government’s economic policies in a vacuum, or otherwise
downplay the world-systemic context that overdetermines them, is beyond
deceptive.
Fascism and the Chavista grassroots

It is the height of political duplicity to pretend that the consummation of
the imperialist regime change campaign would be at all conducive to the
revitalisation of Chavismo, or the Venezuelan left more generally. Rather,
this position belies the whitewashing of the fascist menace represented by
Maria Corina Machado
<https://nacla.org/venezuela-election-maria-corina-machado-mainstream-media>,
who has been quite open about her agenda of exterminating Chavismo.

Hetland and Velasco stress the largely ‘spontaneous’ character of the
post-electoral protests that broke out in many popular areas, but they are
silent regarding the renewed political violence targeting Chavista
activists, including the assassination of two local leaders – Isabel Gil
<https://primicia.com.ve/sucesos/buscan-a-homicidas-de-dirigente-del-psuv-en-el-callao/>,
74, and Mayauris Silva
<https://minmujer.gob.ve/riden-homenaje-a-mujeres-victimas-de-la-violencia-politica/>,
49, ominously recalling the 2014 and 2017 *guarimbas*.

Venezuelan social movements rightly regard this threat as existential and
continue to firmly stand with the Maduro government, notwithstanding their
internal critiques of its contradictions and missteps, as well as
ever-present tensions with state institutions.

Elections are, in the words of El Panal 2021 Commune spokesperson Robert
Longa
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/on-elections-and-collective-emancipation-a-conversation-with-robert-longa/>,
‘just one tactical moment in our broader struggle’ to forge new
territorialised relations of production and popular self-governance as the
foundation for socialist transition. In the face of a white supremacist
empire that increasingly resolves its crises through genocidal war, ‘Maduro
is safeguarding peace, which is crucial for the communes to accumulate
force and advance toward emancipation.’ For the organised bases of
Chavismo, the only path forward at present is to continue building up their
capacities with the aim of shifting the overall direction of the revolution
in a more radical direction. The Venezuelan state thus remains a contested
field where bottom-up movements wield a level of influence that they would
never have under a right-wing government.

Over the past six years, Venezuelan rural movements, with a long history of
struggles for land, have achieved significant gains in the Venezuelan
countryside. The 2018 ‘Admirable March
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/14142/>’ saw hundreds of
campesinos and revolutionary allies march for more than 400 kilometres to
demand answers from the Venezuelan state in a mobilisation that sparked
enthusiasm and solidarity across Chavismo. As a result, the National Land
Institute has addressed more than 90 percent of the land disputes raised by
the organisers in favor of small peasant collectives. Though the campesino
movement protests that certain state policies including privatised access
to inputs and machinery benefits agribusinesses, regular demonstrations
have secured favorable government responses in terms of securing fuel
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15366/> supplies and setting fair crop
prices <https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15654/> for small-scale producers.

Popular power organisations have also made strides amid highly adverse
conditions to open up greater political space, as more recently evidenced
by the appointment of Ángel Prado as Communes Minister. Prado is the first
ever communard minister, bringing with him a wealth of organising
experience as a key leader of the flagship El Maizal Commune
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/el-maizal/> and of the Communard Union
<https://youtu.be/89Y0XYwWriM>. He has openly talked about grassroots
movements playing a bigger role in shaping economic policy and promoted the
state funding of democratically-chosen local projects. Though the space
occupied by popular power remains undoubtedly limited, their militancy and
clarity regarding the present challenges show that Chávez’s socialist
horizon has hardly vanished.
Internationalist responsibility

Yet rather than support these really-existing grassroots revolutionary
forces against US imperialism, US-based academics like Hetland and Velasco
make abstract calls for ‘resisting apologism for Maduro’ and ‘defending the
people who were once Chavismo’s core.’ They demand the Maduro government
cede power to a fascist-led opposition hellbent on Chavismo’s annihilation,
potentially endangering the lives of thousands of Chavista organisers like
Gil and Silva.

But they predictably place no demands on the US Empire, ‘the greatest
purveyor of violence
<https://www.democracynow.org/2003/4/4/the_united_states_is_the_greatest>’
against the Venezuelan people and the peoples of the global South as a
whole. Their animus is instead reserved for a besieged leader of a state
strategically aligned with anti-systemic international actors from Cuba and
Zimbabwe to Palestine and Iran. Regardless of its retreats and concessions,
and the necessary debate surrounding how far they should go, the Maduro
administration is nonetheless immeasurably more democratic than the fascist
regime in Washington currently engaged in a colonial holocaust in Gaza on
top of countless other crimes against working people across the globe.

Just as in Libya, Syria, and today in Palestine and Lebanon, there is no
middle ground between US imperialism and the counter-systemic states and
movements that are targeted for destruction.

The choice for the international left is clear.
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