Who is this man and what is he known for? What did he do and what happened to him?
Category Archives: Chile
Alt Left: One of My Heroes
Filed under Chile, Economics, Latin America, Left, Regional, Socialism, South America
Jesus Was a Socialist
Modern Protestant Prosperity Doctrine is such a perversion of the spirit of Christianity that it can only be seen as a heresy.
Jesus famously said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into Heaven.” This comment is very poorly understood – most seem to think he is talking about a camel actually walking through the eye of a sewing needle, which is of course not possible. However, at the time, “The Eye of the Needle” was a pass high in the mountains of Palestine. It was indeed passable, but it was such an ardous climb over such rugged mountains that many camels simply could not hack the trek and were not able to accomplish the journey. Hence, it was possible for a camel to go through the Eye of the Needle, but it was not an easy task at all, and many simply could not cut it. And so it was with the rich and their chances of heavenly grace and redemption according to Jesus.
Liberation Theology, the Catholic doctrine of the Social Gospel updated and radicalized in Latin America to “Jesus with a machine gun” was utilized by many armed guerrilla groups as a religion of revolution, even armed revolution.
The philosophy of this doctrine was to preach for “the preferential option of the poor,” and this is right in accord with Catholic Social Gospel if not a supercharged form of it. It is seen in Latin America as a nearly subversive and even insurrectionist doctrine, and in a sense it is, although most LT preachers and lay people are not armed.
In fact, Venezuelan Bolivarianism or Chavismo was profoundly influenced by Liberation Theology and there is evidence that many of the other New Left regimes in Latin America were also. LT was a huge influence on the Sandinistas, the FMLN guerrillas and now politicians in El Salvador, the ELN in Colombia (founded by an actual priest with a machine gun, Camilo Torres), the PT of Lula and Dilma Youssef in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, possibly Correa in Ecuador and certainly Paraguay under Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, a former priest and guerrilla who ruled that land until a US sponsored coup removed him.
The Lavalas Movement in Haiti of Jon Bertrand Aristide, also removed in a US-sponsored coup, was profoundly influenced by LT; in fact, Aristide himself was a preacher of Liberation Theology.
In recent decades, there has been a lot of discussion in Cuba about a “Catholic Communism” and now that believers may join the party, this movement seems to be on an upswing. The novel doctrine was that Catholicism and Marxism were indeed compatible with each other instead of being oxymoronic. Castro himself stated that he was a “social Catholic” a few years before he died.
The extent to which LT has influenced the regimes of Batchelet in Chile or Fernandez in Argentina, the former guerrillas in power in Uruguay under Jose Mujica, or Ollanta Humala in Peru is not known, although there were many LT preachers in Peru a few decades ago, and incredibly enough, many priests actually supported the Shining Path.
But the Social Gospel, Liberation Theology, and the “Catholic Communism” that developed in some European lands in the 20th Century have much more in common with a pure interpretation of Jesus’ teaching than the individualist and materialist Protestantism that developed in the US. “Jesus was a socialist” always makes more sense than “Jesus was a capitalist,” although most Evangelicals are loath to admit this. Nevertheless, they squirm and act uncomfortable when you bring it up, so it shows that on some level they at least worry it is true.
Filed under Argentina, Bolivarianism, Brazil, Caribbean, Catholicism, Central America, Chile, Christianity, Colombia, Cuba, Economics, Ecuador, El Salvador, Latin America, Left, Marxism, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Regional, Religion, Revolution, Socialism, South America, Uruguay, Venezuela
73% of Venezuelans Continue to Support Chavismo
Tulio: Robert, I have two friends from Venezuela, a married couple, the female is white, the male is dark brown. I assure you they are not racist, they have never called me “mono” and they have been completely and 100% kind to me as long as I’ve known them. I have even visited them and stayed in their home, and they have visited me and stayed in mine. Never seen their bank account but I’m pretty sure they are not rich.
They are probably middle class by Venezuelan definition. They are 100% opposed to Chavismo. I don’t even know where they fall on the left-right continuum per se. They really don’t even talk much politics with me outside of opposing the condition their country is in. They are now living in Santiago, Chile where they worked and resided since the rise of Chavez, but frequently go to Venezuela to see family. I’m not an expert of Venezuelan internal affairs by any means. I’ve gotten a lot of my info directly from them.
Neither of them seem “right wing” to me in any sense that I understand the term. They seem to want nothing more than a stable, functional and non-authoritarian government. I also see massive marches in Caracas. I can’t believe all those tens of thousands of people are rich, right wingers. When I see close up photos of the crowd, they look like just ordinary Venezuelans to me. You seem to be painting a broad brush here and assuming anyone against Chavismo is a hard right-winger
Any Venezuelan who has the money to travel out of the country to the US or back and forth to Chile all the time, all by plane, is by definition not middle class. I would call those people upper middle class.
There will never be a government like they want in there as long as Chavismo is in because the Opposition will always be rioting in the streets and tearing stuff up like they have been doing ever since he got in. These people say they want a non-authoritarian government, but they supported the coup against Chavez. The first things the putschists did was to dissolve Congress, the National Assembly and Courts and put in martial law. They put a dictatorship in as soon as the coup took power.
The poster’s friends say they want a non-authoritarian state, but they support the extreme dictatorship that took power in the coup. The Opposition riots in the streets and calls for a coup every time they lose an election. This is because every time they lose an election, they insist against all evidence that it was stolen from them. Their calculus is that the only legitimate elections are the ones that they win. If the other side wins, it’s automatically stolen due to fraud, and we need to have a military coup to put “democracy” back in power. That ideology does not sound very democratic to me. To the Opposition, the definition of democracy is “when we win.” The definition of dictatorship is “when the other side wins.” Sound like a democratic project?
A decptively large Opposition crowd in Venezuela. You will not find one working class, low income or poor person in that crowd. Everyone is middle class to rich. And no matter how big that crowd is, the Chavista march will always be a lot bigger. That crowd represents 27% of the population. That’s called a minority movement.
They lack majority support. That crowd is the upper class, the upper middle class and unfortunately a lot of the middle class. There are a lot of middle class people in those crowds.
This is where the poster is getting his ideology from. Them and their lies. The Venezuelan Opposition is out of their minds. They are not rational and they are not honest. They lie constantly. They are as bad as Trump and the Trumpster Republicans, and in fact, both movements are very similar.
The project of the Opposition is extreme rightwing. I told you that they regularly call Chavez mono and that they removed Bolivar’s portrait because he was a bit too swarthy and not White enough and replaced it with a more proper Nordic one. The poster’s friends may not be racist reactionaries, but a lot of the people in the Opposition are very racist, and the poster’s friends are not denouncing that. I guess they are OK with it.
The project of the Opposition is to dismantle all of Chavismo and to go back to the way it was.
They are going to take it all down – the free health care, the free education, the neighborhood councils and circles, the public housing, the redistribution of oil income to the people, the cheap government-subsidized food and household goods to the people, the free houses given to the people, the public spending on infrastructure, the whole nine yards. Before Chavez came in, you never went to the doctor, the dentist or the eye doctor because you could not afford it. You either got over the medical issue or you died. Raw sewage ran down the streets of the shantytowns on the hills. In 1989, 91% of the people could afford only one meal a day and that was the same percentage of people in poverty. Venezuela had always been like this since Independence. The oligarchy had always been in charge and had never lifted one damn finger for the people.
All of the opposition politicians want to go back to that. All of them. The poster’s friends may not realize this, or perhaps they do not care. The Latin American middle class has always lined up with the Extreme Right project of the rich and the oligarchs, much to their detriment. This is because they consider the opposition to that project to be Communists, and they think that is worse.
In Latin America, it’s Commies or Fascists. That’s your choice. Pick your poison. That’s because moderation or a Centrist project never works down there. The problems are too severe, and Centrist projects never touch the power of the oligarchs, so nothing ever changes.
Venezuela has never been more democratic than under Chavez. Venezuela has the freest press in Latin America. The authoritarian dictatorship crap is another big fat lie the Opposition made up.
73% of the Venezuelan people continue to support the Chavista Project because it’s the only one that’s for the people. The Opposition has no numbers. Those people you see marching above are part of the 27% opposition, and that is why they never win. I would also point out that pro-government marches happen at the same time as those Opposition marches, and they are almost always much bigger. You just never read about them in the Western media.
Those 73% are not stupid. They remember life back when the oligarchy ruled. They know that the Opposition wants to go directly back to that and not change one thing. This has been their project from Day One. Yes, it is a very far right, reactionary project. Compared to what the Opposition wants, most of the people want to stay with Chavismo.
Venezuela: The Lies Never Stop
Tulio: Left wing economics aren’t working out in Latin America either. Let’s face it, Latin America is dysfunctional whether it’s run by the left or right. I know Robert is a Chavista and all but the results speak for itself. They are probably a few clicks away from outright civil war.
The poster’s problem is that he gets all his Venezuela news from the Western media. You will not read one true thing about that country in the Western media. It is an all out propaganda war from Day One. If you want to read the truth about Venezuela, go to Venezuelanalysis. It’s all straight up 100% facts there, no spin. And many articles are quite critical of the government.
Yes, it is a civil war because the Right is running through the streets rioting, killing people, burning down buildings, buses and police cars. Let me ask you something. Suppose when Obama was in, Republicans went on a rampage all over the US, rioting, burning stuff down, killing people, firing guns, setting up snipers, setting off bombs, throwing grenades, killing lots of cops. Would you blame Obama for that? Because that is exactly what the commenter is doing.
This is part of the Right’s project down there. They lost the election, so they are trying to overthrow the government by force. What exactly is the state supposedly do about what is in effect a rightwing insurgency?
What they are trying to do is to create so much chaos that the military steps in and does a rightwing coup. Barring that, they are creating so much chaos and disorder that the US steps in with the military, invades and overthrows the Chavistas in the name of humanitarian intervention. It’s the exact same scheme we pulled in Syria when we turned ISIS and Al Qaeda loose on secular regime.
The US government’s official policy in Venezuela now is regime change. Mattis himself said so. The riots, destruction, arson, murders and political assassinations are all being coordinated with the US. We are the cause of all that violence down there.
There are no poor results of Chavismo. Things were booming along for many years. The rightwing has been sabotaging and boycotting the economy since Day One.
Norway is far more socialist than Venezuela. China is orders of magnitude more socialist than Venezuela. There’s nothing socialist at all about Venezuela. The economy is 100% capitalist controlled.
All Chavismo did was take a lot of that oil revenue and spend it on the people. If you think that’s a failed model, I do not know what to say to you.
After the oil price crashed, the government could no longer cover up for the business sector’s sabotage of the economy.
There are shortages? How can there be shortages in a 100% capitalist controlled economy? Answer me that. There cannot be. If there are shortages, why don’t they import some food? Why don’t they make some stuff that is in shortage?
The business sector is refusing to import products, and they are refusing to make products in short supply.
You need to go study how Kissinger and Nixon blew up the Chilean economy. They did the exact same thing, down to the letter. This is the Chilean Model down to the letter.
“We will make the Chilean economy scream.
– Henry Kissinger.
Every week they seize huge warehouses full of products that are being hoarded by the capitalists in order to create artificial shortages. You heard of a shortage of syringes? A warehouse full of 21 million syringes was recently seized. If you read the Venezuelan papers, these seizures happen all the time, maybe every other day.
Why is there inflation? The capitalists have caused artificial shortages by hoarding stuff, refusing to produce stuff and refusing to import stuff. These artificial shortages of course caused inflation.
This economic sabotage has been going on from Day One, but when the oil prices were high, the government could cover up for the Economic War by importing their own products and selling them to people for cheap. Hence the state covered up all the artificial shortages caused by the refusal to import and manufacture products. When the oil price crashed, the state no longer had the money to import goods to cover up for the shortages, and furthermore, the Economic War went into high gear.
Furthermore, since Maduro has come in, he has made a hard turn to the Right from Chavez. His administration of full of rightwingers and representatives of the business sector. He caves to opposition demands over and over. They are always demanding hikes in the controlled prices, and he keeps raising them. No matter how much they raise the prices, the capitalists do not produce one more item. It’s all a scam.
Keep in mind that the economic crash has occurred against the background of a hard right turn in the government under a government that is now about 50% rightwingers and people from the business community. They can’t get a handle on things either. Did you hear what I said?
The economy crashed as the government turned Right and filled the executive with people from the business sector. According to the poster’s logic, rightwing economics is responsible for the crash.
That’s not really true either. Neither Right nor Left economics is responsible for the crash. The ministers from the business community can’t control the problems either. No one can.
There is a problem with currency, but that was created by the capitalists too. Currency controls were put in because the capitalists were taking all their money out of the country. No country can put up with that for long. So currency controls were put in, but that causes a black market in currency.
Price controls were put in because the capitalists staged a lockout strike that caused horrible shortages and sent prices skyrocketing.
Incidentally, despite currency controls, the business community still takes $50 billion out of the country every year. Do you know how much more they would take out if the currency controls were taken off? The system would probably collapse.
The fake excuse all along was that price controls make it so the producing the price controlled products is not worthwhile. This is their fake excuse for the shortages. Now the price controls have been almost completely lifted, and they are still refusing to make stuff or import stuff. What’s their fake excuse now?
I agree that the standard Communist model caused a lot of economic problems, but the lie is that Venezuela is a Communist country like Cuba or the USSR, and this is the cause of all the problems. It’s caused by “socialist failure.” Why isn’t socialism failing in Europe? Why isn’t it failing in China? Why isn’t it failing in most of the world that runs social democratic systems?
The Chavistas were simply trying to produce a European style social democracy in Venezuela. Even that’s too much for the Venezuelan elite.
I will have you know that the rightwing Venezuelans the poster cheers for are some of the racist people on Earth. The commenter is Black. I assure you that the people he cheers for hate him because he is Black. Their word for Chavez was Mono. That means monkey. They call him monkey because his White blood is mixed with Indian and Black.
When they came into power, the first thing they did was take down the portrait of Bolivar because they said he looked too dark. They put up a new portrait that showed him as White as a Swede. These are the racists that this Black commenter is supporting.
The government is screwing up badly by not floating the currency, but that’s not a Right versus Left thing so it’s not a fault of Left economics. It would be a very unpopular decision, and Maduro is a weak and not very good leader and he does not have the balls to put in.
Hence I agree that the problems in part are caused by failures of the regime, but those failures having nothing to do with Right or Left economics. They’re not dealing with the currency problems, and that’s a failure on their part, but it has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism or any of that.
The price controls were put in to fight inflation. The Right screams about inflation and about price controls. They took all the price controls off, and the prices went way up. Now they are screaming because the prices went up. They criticize the problem, and they attack the solution to the problem.
You can’t win with these people.
I agree that the Communist model leaves a lot to be desired, and the lie is that the problems of Cuba and the USSR are being replicated in Venezuela. It’s a lie because Venezuela never even made it to social democracy. Venezuela is a capitalist country through and through.
I will ban any posters who attack Venezuela as a failure of Left economics because it’s nothing of the sort. Now if you want to talk about problems with the Cuban model, go for it.
Filed under Asia, Capitalism, Capitalists, Chile, China, Conservatism, Cuba, Economics, Europe, Fascism, Geopolitics, Government, Journalism, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Marxism, Norway, Political Science, Politics, Racism, Regional, Republicans, Scum, Socialism, South America, US Politics, USA, Venezuela, White Racism
Anatomy of a Lie: All Latin American Revolutions Came from Cuba and the USSR
Jason: Also, the left not only believes the other side will torture them like on Hostel, but they believe the US is aiding the right. I suppose at one time, the right thought the USSR was aiding the left, but I think the real facts were exaggerated.
They have good reasons to think that. Do you realize that hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have in fact been tortured like in Hostel? All with the approval, coaching, cheerleading and assistance of the US?
The USSR was aiding the Left only in a sense. In only a very few countries had an armed revolutions had sprung up and Cuba was aiding them. Russia gave the Cubans lots of arms and the Cubans smuggled them to Nicaragua and then to the rebels in El Salvador. That was it as far as I can tell.
The revolutionaries in the following countries never got one bullet or one nickel from Cuba or the USSR:
Guatemala: URNG and others 1954-1994
Colombia: ELN, FARC 1964-present
Peru: focos in the 1960’s, Sendero Luminoso 1980-present, MRTA 1984-1996
Ecuador: Sendero Luminoso 1990
Venezuela: small focos in the 1960’s and 1970’s
Brazil: urban guerrillas in the 1960’s
Uruguay: Tupamaros 1970-1983
Bolivia: Sendero Luminoso 1990, MIR 1960’s
Paraguay: recent guerrillas supported by the FARC 2012-present
Argentina: Tupamaros 1970-1983
Nicaragua: Sandinistas 1964-1979
Honduras: small guerrilla bands in the 1980’s
Chile: Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front 1970-1989, Lautaro Front 1990’s
As you can see, armed revolutions started up in all of those countries at one time or another usually for very good reasons. The Right tried to blame all this revolutionary activity on the USSR bogeyman. But the USSR never gave any of those groups one bullet or one dime. The Right also claimed and still does that everything was peachy clean and hunky dory in all of those countries except for the evil Soviets coming in and stirring things up by giving those university students all those funny ideas. This is complete nonsense. The truth is that if you have a decent country, you never get Left guerrillas, rural, urban or otherwise.
You only get an armed Left when your country is a complete Hellhole. The way to defeat an armed Left is to create at least a semblance of a decent society. If you do that, the Left will lay down its arms and even join the government.
The US always wants to say that rebels have no agency.
Filed under Americas, Argentina, Brazil, Caribbean, Central America, Chile, Colombia, Conservatism, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Latin America, Left, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Political Science, Regional, Revolution, South America, USA, USSR, Venezuela
Latin American Politics Finally Comes To America
I guess Chile has their version of the mighty keyboard warrior like the US. No shortage of white shit for brains running around say they’re going get rid of all the Jews and blacks.. then you have a fair number of blacks running around saying they’re going to get rid of their white oppressors.. etc. Totally delusional twats. Maybe rightists are a serious problem in Chile but I don’t consider YouTube comments a proper gauge of sentiment and support.
I have been engaged off and on in deep study of this region since 1989. 28 years.
You don’t understand Chile. You don’t understand Latin America.
Really the entire rightwing down there is exactly like this. The rich, elite Whites’ basic attitude in almost every country down there is “All Communists must be killed.” And Communist means anyone even slightly left of center. A huge % of the population in Chile is still pro-Pinochet, and this is precisely how they think.
The Left stages marches and protests all the time, often is support of Allende. Rightists, of whom there are many supporters still meet them and there is wild street fighting. Rightists then stage marches often in support of Pinochet. The Left shows up and there is wild street fighting.
Did some searches.. looks like the bigger demonstrations were over education and state (or lack of it) support. Seem to follow the US model – most of the protests are peaceful but then you have “the hooded ones” raising a ruckus. I couldn’t find anything that indicated there were large counter protests by rightists – not saying that didn’t happen but I just couldn’t find them If you have a link or links I’ll take a look.
Ok, well I think I may have read this some time ago. I do remember reading it, but it could have been a while back. It could well have been years ago, or a decade or more ago. But at one time in recent history, this is how it was.
Perhaps the Left vs. Right riots have quieted down in recent years, but that’s the way it was not long ago.
Protests in Chile have historically been far more riotous and violent than demos in the US. There’s not really any comparison. Anyway, violent riots on the US Left are a relatively new phenomenon. Trump is a corrupt, vicious, evil ultraright dictator ruling in a typical Latin American model. All of the Latin American Right is exactly like Donald Trump. That’s why the Left is so violent down there. Trump has succeeded in finally bringing Latin American ultraright fascism to America. So it follows that we are following the Latin American model in that the Left has grown militant, and Left demos now often turn riotous and violent just as they do in Latin America.
This sort of thing is so predictable that you can write near mathematical laws of political science predicting it. A nation can only go so far to the extreme right and it can only become unequal to a certain level. Once it passes that level, it has crossed some sort of Rubicon and now in most any nation you automatically get a militant, riotous and violent Left. It’s as close to a law as the sort you can get in mathematics and physics.
In Chile, the Indians are treated horribly and engage in continuous demonstrations which usually turn into riots.
I was following Latin American politics a lot on the Net a few years back, and most demos in Chile seemed to turn into the typical Latin American demonstration -> riot progression. Most demos in Latin America turn riotous from my observation, at least in Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, and even Mexico. The conditions are so insanely unequal down there that any working class demo quickly turns into a riot.
Violence, riots, coups, extremes of Left and Right politics, lack of democracy and extreme instability are typical of the entire region and now we are importing precisely this model to the US.
I am leaving out Argentina, but the Argentine Right was recently calling for a military coup against Kirchner.
In Paraguay, a legislative coup threw out the leftwinger.
A legislative coup just threw out Rouseff, the left president of Brazil.
There have been many coup and quasi-coup attempts in Venezuela. You could well say there has been a continuous coup since 2002.
In Colombia, yes, left demos usually turn violent or riotous. On the other hand, if you are on the Left down there, you can be murdered by the government at any time.
There was a military coup in Honduras, and now anyone on the Left can be killed at any time. Death squads have killed over 1,000 people.
A US coup removed Aristide in Haiti. The new US installed government quickly murdered 3,000 people.
Why the commenter is trying to polish this Latin American turd is beyond me.
Filed under Americas, Amerindians, Argentina, Brazil, Caribbean, Central America, Chile, Colombia, Conservatism, Fascism, Haiti, Hispanic Racism, Honduras, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Marxism, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Political Science, Politics, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Republicans, South America, US Politics, Venezuela
A Typical Republican
Here.
Boy, the Republicans sure are friends of the working class, aren’t they? Not to mention the middle classes. Honestly, the rich all across time and space have always governed in the interests of the rich and the upper middle class (top 20% income earners), and they almost always screw the middle class, the working class, the low income people, the poor, the old, the disabled and the kids in the worst possible way.
The old, the disabled and the kids are often screwed hardest of all because they can’t fight back and are largely helpless. I remember under Republican governments here in California, year after year, one thing they always cut was state aid to the blind. It was like a ritual, every year: cut aid to the blind people. This is typical Republicanism. They always attacked those blind people because they are the weakest of all, they have no voice or power and they can’t fight back. Screw the weak, the helpless and the powerless. The more weak, helpless and powerless they are, the harder you screw them over.
My heart always sank every time I read that. “There they go again, cutting aid to the blind,” I would think. And after reading that, my faith in the decency of humanity would usually plunge lower than whale shit, and that’s at the bottom of the ocean. Screw the blind. How evil can you get?
If you make less than $75,000/yr and you vote Republican, you need to have your head examined. That’s the top 20% of income earners in the US. Repeated studies have shown the Republican policies only benefit the top 20% of income earners.
Republican policies are always class war policies. They always involve mass transfer of wealth from the bottom 80% to the top 20%. As a matter of fact, this seems to be true of neoliberalism as a whole. During the “lost decades” of Latin American neoliberalism, repeated studies showed that Latin American neoliberalism was only benefiting the top 20% of the population. The entire 80% of the population was getting reamed hard. The project was simply a mass wealth transfer project from the bottom 80% to the top 20%.
Why do you think Latin America went Left in the past 15 years? Because the policies of the Right had been ruining the people for 20 years. The Right failed them, so they put in the Left. How is that hard to understand?
And studies of neoliberalism globewide showed that it always resulted in dramatic loss of health care and education for the population. It was calculated a while back that neoliberalism had already killed millions of people, mostly by depriving them of health care.
It was fairly similar in Chile, the neoliberal poster child that the rightwingers like to wave around.
Chile is one of the most unequal countries on Earth. The rich and the poor don’t just hate each other, they literally want to murder each other. This is what always happens, without fail, as income inequality rises to high levels. It’s so reliable a finding that we could nearly call is a scientific law. You can see why Marxism claimed to be a science with actual scientific laws.
This glorious Chilean Miracle under Pinochet and successors resulted in mass transfer of wealth from the bottom 67% to the top 33%. The Chilean working class was ruined. I have been told that their wonderful social security privatization is not working out very well at all.
Medical care is to this day largely unavailable. I had thought they had some sort of socialized medicine, but a Chilean counseling client of mine, a regular working class guy, told me that Chilean medical care was largely fee for service, and you had to pay in cash at the time of your appointment. He said it was largely unaffordable, at least for him. I asked him what he did about this, and he told you try not to get sick, and even when you are sick, you don’t go to the doctor. He said he almost never went to the doctor. As you can see, Chilean health care is working out just fine.
This man had a very cynical and defeatist attitude towards the government. He said no matter who’s in power in the country, they only help the rich and they screw everyone else. His faith in the state was about zero.
GDP is largely a junk figure if all the money is going to the rich and the upper middle class. If the money never trickles down, what good is economic growth? It’s worthless.
I could go on and on about this stupid country. Chile’s no poster child or success story for much of anything if you ask me. To me, it’s a story of failure, not success, and it’s a nightmare state, not a showcase country.
Filed under California, Chile, Conservatism, Economics, Fascism, Government, Health, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Neoliberalism, Political Science, Politics, Regional, Republicans, South America, US Politics, USA, West
Alt Left: Civil War? Bring It On!
Well, low level civil war in the present form of pre-civil war or civil strife anyway is just fine. It’s not ok to promote anything beyond that right now though.
A new article in Salon says that Trump has set off a civil war in America. As a supporter of the very similar Revolutionary movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s, which also erupted into a near civil war, the Alt Left supports this low- level civil war (civil strife) completely. Right now what is going on is like a pre-civil war or what is often referred to as civil strife. The civil war will pretty much only start if and when people start killing each other, and that’s not happening…yet. Hopefully it will not come to that because not only will the enemy start dying but we will too. That means you, me, our friends and loved ones. It’s generally better if civil strife does not move to a shooting civil war level barring extreme circumstances.
The only thing that is happening now is street fights between the Left and Right, similar to the Left vs. Right street thugs fighting in the streets in Germany in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It also similar to civil strife that goes on in Latin America. Particularly in Chile, left vs. right street fighting is very common. The Right is fascist and supports Pinochet. The Left is almost Communist or socialist and supports Salvador Allende and his followers. A woman from Allende’s own party is now governing the country. The Left regularly stages what can only be called pro-Allende demos, which are regularly raided by fascists who support Pinochet. Similarly, fascists regularly stage what are more or less pro-Pinochet demos which are regularly invaded by leftists. Street fighting between the two is very common.
People do not realize it but rioting is very common in Latin America. Venezuela had regular riots, often led by university students, even before Chavez came to office. After Chavez came in, the Opposition staged regular riots and demos in their neighborhoods. After a while, the Chavista police just sat back and let the Opposition trash their neighborhoods. The Chavista police must have had one of the most hands-off approaches to rioters in the world.
In Chile once again, high school students are now staging regular demos which typically turn into riots. This is because in this wealthy country, the schools are literally falling apart. These riots have been happening about once every three weeks now. The Chilean Indians are a much discriminated against population and popular racism against Indians is at a very high level.
I had a friend in Chile whose father worked for Allende and considered himself a progressive guy. He was majoring in sociology and he planned to go to the Indian regions to do fieldwork. However, this anti-Indian racism was off the charts from an American point of view. He also had wildly classist views which would be shocking in the US. Obviously any country afflicted with crazy high levels of classism and racism along with some of the worst wealth inequality on Earth is a pretty shitty place. In a shitty country, you might as well demonstrate and riot all the time because that is exactly what shitty countries deserve. If they ever clean up their act and turn into decent countries, I think the rioters in general should knock it off.
Rioting should only be for protesting truly noxious systems, not, for instance, against Swedish social democracy. It’s a very civilized and decent system and there’s nothing to riot about. But rightwing shitholes can have all the riots in the world for all I care. They asked for it by being rightwing shitholes. If they don’t want riots all the time, all they have to do is create a decent country.
Needless to say, the Chilean Indians riot on a very frequent basis. And Indian riot is almost banal down there. That’s how common it is.
I was very close to the politics of Peru for a while there and I got regular updates of the situation on the ground. Even leaving aside the fact that there was an armed and very deadly insurgency going on, besides that, on the Left in general (which did not necessarily support the insurgency at all) there were regular strikes and demonstrations.
A lot of the strikes were by people like teachers and physicians. Teachers’ unions are very militant in Latin America, they go on strike all the time, have regular demonstrations and they even riot quite a bit. Schoolteachers rioting seems odd in a US context but down there, it’s just normal. There are also almost constant demonstrations against mining and really for all manner of leftwing causes. It’s quite common for these to turn into riots. Even setting aside the insurgency, Peru struck me as a place where leftwing riots were quite common.
I don’t know much about civil strife in the rest of the continent. I saw a recent video of young people mostly in their late teens to mid twenties who appeared to be actually demonstrating in favor of the FARC guerrillas and against death squad activity directed at civilian supporters of the guerrilla. I was surprised that the FARC had that much support. The demonstration was quite violent to say the least.
I believe demonstrations are very common in Brazil and if I am not mistaken, they regularly become riots also.
This low level civil war or civil strife is a good thing in the US right now. Bottom line is we deserve it. We are turning into a true rightwing shithole along Latin American lines, and shitty countries deserve all the riots that rioters can unleash against them. Don’t like the rioting? Fine, put in a halfway decent government. Unless and until that happens, I say let the riots go on.
All of the following are important:
- Calling or writing to your Congresspeople.
- Attending town hall meetings of Congresspeople.
- New laws at the state level
- Anti-Trump lawsuits by states
- Anti=Trump lawsuits by individuals and aggrived parties, often being taken by the ACLU right now.
- Appearances by Congresspeople at areas of controversy, such as Congresspeople who tried to get travelers released from airports
- Journalists writing highly critical and rabble rousing articles
- Openly defiant and angry press organs, even such staid venues as the New York Times. There’s nothing with the NYT calling Trump a liar on the front page.
- Letters to the editor
- Signing petitions
- Refusing service to Trump supporters in the workplace
- Ending as many friendships with Trump supporters as you can handle
- Various organizations leading peaceful demonstrations of all sorts such as the women’s march. Those demos can get pretty loud and rowdy, but without overt violence, they are still peaceful
- Blocking highways
- Walkout strikes
- Wildcat strikes
- Boycotts
- Shopping strikes
And also nonpeaceful protest would seem to be in order. If we are truly turning into a nightmarish Latin American style rightwing shithole, then this country deserves as many riots as rioters can stage. Shitholes deserve nothing less until they clean up their act and turn into decent countries.
Among forms of nonviolent protest:
- Looting of noxious corporate venues, especially window smashing.
- Bonfires
- Fireworks
- Smoke bombs
- Rocks, bricks and police barricades at windows of some venues, the purpose being merely to break windows at the venue.
- Vandalism, especially of corporate property. Window smashing is just fine.
- Arson, particularly of corporate property but especially of the property of our class enemies, such as the limousine burnt on January 20.
Violence against people.
- Generally not recommended at this point.
This is a very tricky area and I am wrestling a lot with this one. In wars, the civilian supporters of the insurgency or state are supposed to be left alone. They seldom are in wars anymore, but they are supposed to be. This is why the fire bombings in Germany and Japan were so wrong. Even if Germans were supporting Nazis, it was not ok to set their cities aflame with the sole purpose of incinerating as many civilians as possible. Something very similar but much worse happened in Japan.
Of course the purpose of the atom bombs was to slaughter as many civilians as possible in order to end a war. The argument is typically raised that it was worth it to murder 300,000 Japanese civilians in a couple of days to end the war and that alternatives would have been more costly. Even with a goal of ending a war and supposedly saving lives by ending a war prematurely, it’s awful hard to justify mass slaughter of civilians, even if they are supporting a noxious regime. Killing thousands of civilians even for this purpose seems wrong, not to mention 10,000’s. Killing 100,000’s of civilians even for some supposedly noble goal gets very hard to justify under virtually any circumstances.
So if civilian supporters even of armed insurgencies and noxious regimes are not to be killed or even harmed for that matter, how is it ok to beat up Trump supporters. Now granted, things are much worse in hot wars. If all Assad’s army and supporters were doing was punching out rebel supporters, I doubt if anyone would care. I doubt if many would be bothered by German patriots clocking Nazi supporters during the war, assuming they could even get away with it. Likewise in Japan. The main argument in all of these cases is that state are actually mass murdering civilian supporters of insurgencies and civilian supporters of enemy states during state to state war. The argument never gets down to the level of if it’s ok to punch out guerrilla supporters or people backing a state in wartime in a state to state war.
Nevertheless, attacks on Trump supporters leave me a bit queasy. It may come down to that at some point, but for now, political violence against Opposition civilians doesn’t rub me the right way. Of course the antifa will do it anyway, we don’t have to stamp our approval on it. And it’s a thin line that separates a right hook from a group beating stomping someone to death. Single punches can turn into fatal beat downs faster than you can think.
For right now, nonpeaceful tactics should be limited to property damage, particularly of noxious corporations. Destroying the property of class enemies such as limousines is certainly acceptable. Even arson is ok against their property and that of noxious corporations, especially if you clear out the civilians just stick to burning stuff, not other people. A lot of limousines deserve to be torched and a lot of banks are asking for it too.
But I am going to butt out of attacks on people of the opposition. And surely, attacks with guns, bombs and whatnot are completely out of line at least at this stage. Now it may come down to a 1970’s revolutionary scenario where as late as 1972, 1,900 bombs went off in the US. That’s six bombs a day. Very few of them killed or even hurt other people as they were often set off late at night or preceded with warnings. Nevertheless, once you step it up to setting off bombs, it’s a whole new ballgame. We aren’t there yet, so such activities are not acceptable at the least.
Filed under Amerindians, Brazil, Chile, Conservatism, Economics, Education, Ethics, Fascism, Government, History, Journalism, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Peru, Philosophy, Political Science, Politics, Race Relations, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Republicans, Revolution, Social Problems, Socialism, Sociology, South America, US Politics, USA, Venezuela, War, World War 2
Are Brownshirt Gangs a Necessary Component of Fascism?
In many respects, Trump and Trumpism looks like the Latin American Oligarchic Right. He also looks a lot like the rightwing, basically fascist Right in Latin America. Every time I look at his regime, I think of the Venezuelan Opposition Right. In fact, the Republican Party increasingly looks like the Latin American Oligarchic Right, and it has been slowly resembling them for some time now.
The rightwing fascists in Latin America do not all have Brownshirt street gangs, do they? Where are the Brownshirts of the Latin American rightwings? They have death squads, yes, in a number of countries, and they have street rioters, but Brownshirts who actually go around attacking the Opposition? Not really.
But there is something like this in the Chilean Right, which regularly engages in all-out street riot-wars with the street fighters of the Left. In this sense, Chile represents Germany in the interwar period.
Something similar goes on in Venezuela, where the Right engages in relatively continuous rioting, and sometimes there is fighting with leftwing mobs. Most of the fighting is with the police though.
The death squads of El Salvador were often made up of the fanatical anti-Communist street thugs of the lower middle class neighborhoods. Have you ever seen an ARENA rally in El Salvador? That looked something like a Brownshirt mob, but they did not take to the streets.
Yes there is a thuggish rightwing in Brazil, but is it really of the Brownshirt variety? The recent coup was a legislative one.
There are something like Brownshirt mobs in the east of Bolivia (who also fashion themselves as White supremacists), but they have not been very active lately, and they are countered by leftwing Indian mobs in the capital and east of the country.
There were rightwing Peronist mobs a while back, but that seems to be through. The only mobs in Argentina anymore are with the Left. The Right only has the support of the out of touch Rich.
The only rioting mobs in Peru are on the Left, and riot they do, on a near-constant basis. There is no rightwing presence on the streets in Peru, as once again, the Right here is simply an out of touch White wealthy elite.
There are death squads in Ecuador, but they are not active anymore. The Right only has a presence in the security forces. The huge street mobs are in the capital and are of the Left.
The mobs in Nicaragua are mostly pro-Sandinista, as the Right down there has no street presence, since nobody much likes them.
The street is owned by the Left in Honduras too. The Right only has presence in a small number of rich and the security forces.
There are no street mobs of any kind in Guatemala. The murderous Right is present in the security forces.
In Colombia, the Right does have support, but there are no rightwing street mobs. The violent Right down there are the death squads run by the security forces who work in concert with civilian paramilitaries. There are not even many leftwing protests since a few weeks after huge leftwing protests, 10-15 of the protesters will end up murdered. So the Left in Colombia is armed to the teeth yet underground by necessity.
I do not think you need Brownshirt mobs to have a deadly fascist state as many examples in Latin America show us. When the rightwing government is running around murdering the Left, I am not sure if it matters whether that government is classically fascist or not. They are murderous rightwing thugs whether they earn the official fascist moniker or not. Officially fascist or not, they are still coming out to kill you, so at the end of the day, what difference does it make?
Alpha Unit
Robert A. Lindsay
There is absolutely nothing even 1% left or even centrist about Trump. He’s basically the most rightwing man on Earth, and the Republican Party is one of the most rightwing ruling parties on Earth.
There are some contenders now in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Honduras and Haiti, but they have vast opposition among the people. I doubt if they have majority support in any of those countries.
Two of them came to power in legislative coups – in Paraguay and Brazil.
Honduras is a military dictatorship, as is Haiti. Both governments are hated by the majority of the population.
Yes, far right parties were elected in Argentina, Chile and Colombia.
But in Argentina the far right was replacing the Hard Left with Kirchner and the government has huge opposition.
There is a lot of support for the Right in Chile, but I doubt if it’s the majority. Chile has been governed by members of the Socialist Party for most of the last 20 years. Furthermore, the Left is radicalized, activated huge and often violent in opposition.
Colombia has long been probably the most rightwing country on Earth. Probably the majority of the population supports the Hard Fascist Right. Why this is, is not known, but it is a long tradition down there. Nevertheless, the Left is huge, extremely radicalized and activated, and in fact, they have taken up arms. Actually, they have been armed to the teeth for the last 52 years. The armed Left is powerful and deadly, and they have killed 10,000’s of soldiers and police. They are so powerful that a while back, they fired mortars at the Capital building at the very moment that the new President was being sworn in. Some of the mortars actually struck the building.