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<h2 property="dc:title"> Why the Media Are Giving a Free Pass to
Venezuela’s Neo-Fascist Creeps </h2>
<div class="article-teaser">
<p>Roberto Lovato interviews intellectual heavyweight Luis García
Britto about the role of the media in the current conflict in
Venezuela. </p>
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<div class="views-field-value byline"> <a
href="http://www.thenation.com/authors/roberto-lovato"><span
property="dc:creator">Roberto Lovato</span></a> </div>
<div class="article-info-string"> <span class="article-date">April 1,
2014</span><br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.thenation.com/article/179125/why-media-are-giving-free-pass-venezuelas-neo-fascist-creeps#">http://www.thenation.com/article/179125/why-media-are-giving-free-pass-venezuelas-neo-fascist-creeps#</a> </small></small></b>
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<br>
<em>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, </em>Nation<em>
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.</em>
<p><strong><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Roberto Lovato: </span>You’ve
written a lot about the media and politics in Venezuela. How are the
media behaving in the current conflict?</strong></p>
<p><strong><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Luis Britto García:</span></strong>
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 <em>Media Dictatorship </em>[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.</p>
<p><strong>And how are things similar or different today?</strong></p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p><strong>Are you saying images of rock-throwing, tire-burning youth
are inaccurate or fake?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>And what else do you see being edited out of the current
Venezuela story in the media?</strong></p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p><strong>So how did Capriles and López come to prominence?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>What do you mean?</strong></p>
<p>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].</p>
<p><strong>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?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. Out of nowhere, all of the sudden Borges has a show on
television that’s called <em>Justice for All</em>. 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. </p>
<p><strong>Sounds like court shows in the United States.</strong></p>
<p>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 <em>Justice
for All</em>, 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.</p>
<p><strong>Are you saying that the strategy and tactics of the right
have an element of political and media theater?</strong></p>
<p>In a way. Look at the violent actions like grabbing and holding
middle-class people prisoners in neighborhoods with barricades called <em>guarimbas</em>.
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 <em>guarimba </em> 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 <em>guarimberos</em> 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?</p>
<p><strong>What do you think will happen?</strong></p>
<p>We’ve seen a lot of this before. The cameras like the <em>guarimbas</em>,
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.</p>
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