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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Whitewashing Imperialism: the Western ‘Left’ and Venezuela <br></h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">03/10/2024
By Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz</div>
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<p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>Writing for <em>New Left Review </em>and <em>The Nation</em>, respectively, <a href="https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/fraud-foretold"><span>Gabriel Hetland</span></a> and <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/venezuela-maduro-left/"><span>Alejandro Velasco</span></a>
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. </p><p>Both academics are no strangers to this opportunistic exercise in methodological nationalism. Back in <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/18/why-venezuela-spiraling-out-control"><span>2017</span></a> and <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/05/venezuela-and-left"><span>2019</span></a>,
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 ‘<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13241/"><span>plague on both your houses</span></a>’ approach. </p><p>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 <a href="https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/24342"><span>Libya</span></a>, <a href="https://mronline.org/2016/12/13/allday131216-html/"><span>Syria</span></a>, <a href="https://jacobin.com/2023/10/hezbollah-israel-palestine-lebanon-iran-history"><span>Lebanon</span></a>, <a href="https://roarmag.org/2019/11/25/leftists-worldwide-stand-by-the-protesters-in-iran/"><span>Iran</span></a>, <a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/03/yemen-us-air-strikes-houthis"><span>Yemen</span></a>, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233648421_The_Zimbabwe_Question_and_the_Two_Lefts"><span>Zimbabwe</span></a>, <a href="https://www.qiaocollective.com/articles/what-does-critique-do"><span>China</span></a>, <a href="https://nacla.org/cuban-protest-how-will-left-respond"><span>Cuba</span></a>, <a href="https://fair.org/home/how-the-global-norths-left-media-helped-pave-the-way-for-bolivias-right-wing-coup/"><span>Bolivia</span></a>, <a href="https://www.brasilwire.com/how-the-us-left-failed-brasil/"><span>Brazil</span></a>, <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2021/11/08/nicaragua-election-ortega"><span>Nicaragua</span></a>, among others. </p><h3>Imperialism as afterthought</h3><p>Velasco is quite transparent in downplaying the political and economic impact of <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/opinion/a-war-without-bombs/"><span>US sanctions</span></a>: </p><p>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.</p><p>Such
minimisation is abjectly dishonest, as even stridently anti-Chavista
economist Francisco Rodríguez – hardly a man of the left – <a href="https://franciscorodriguez.net/2023/10/14/quantifying-venezuelas-destructive-conflict"><span>estimates</span></a> that </p><p>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. </p><p>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 <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/12732/"><span>de facto financial embargo</span></a>
on the country. Hetland likewise fails to interrogate the politically
overdetermining character of US economic warfare, only to later <a href="https://x.com/gabrielhetland/status/1827053885116105127?s=46&t=cdDl5d7Ag9RcFdww1SrPcw"><span>admit</span></a> on social media that he ‘forgot’ to mention that ‘sanctions are an egregious violation of an election being “free and fair.”’</p><p>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. </p><p>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 <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuela-govt-looks-to-preserve-low-inflation-as-forex-gap-increases/?swcfpc=1"><span>inflation</span></a>
to decade-lows, they have also deepened social inequalities, and
alongside high-profile corruption scandals, brewed popular resentment
over old and newly amassed fortunes.</p><p>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 (<em>guarimbas</em>) 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.</p><p>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. </p><h3>Fascism and the Chavista grassroots </h3><p>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<a href="https://nacla.org/venezuela-election-maria-corina-machado-mainstream-media"><span> Maria Corina Machado</span></a>, who has been quite open about her agenda of exterminating Chavismo. </p><p>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 – <a href="https://primicia.com.ve/sucesos/buscan-a-homicidas-de-dirigente-del-psuv-en-el-callao/"><span>Isabel Gil</span></a>, 74, and <a href="https://minmujer.gob.ve/riden-homenaje-a-mujeres-victimas-de-la-violencia-politica/"><span>Mayauris Silva</span></a>, 49, ominously recalling the 2014 and 2017 <em>guarimbas</em>. </p><p>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. </p><p>Elections are, in the words of El Panal 2021 Commune spokesperson <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/on-elections-and-collective-emancipation-a-conversation-with-robert-longa/"><span>Robert Longa</span></a>,
‘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. </p><p>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 ‘<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/14142/"><span>Admirable March</span></a>’
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 <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15366/"><span>fuel</span></a> supplies and setting fair <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15654/"><span>crop prices</span></a> for small-scale producers.</p><p>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 <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/el-maizal/"><span>El Maizal Commune</span></a> and of the <a href="https://youtu.be/89Y0XYwWriM"><span>Communard Union</span></a>.
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.</p><h3>Internationalist responsibility </h3><p>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.</p><p>But they predictably place no demands on the US Empire, ‘<a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2003/4/4/the_united_states_is_the_greatest"><span>the greatest purveyor of violence</span></a>’
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. </p><p>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. </p><p>The choice for the international left is clear.</p>
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