Moynihan considers the odd politics of Western progressives who support Venezuela’s “Bolivarian revolution”:
A pro-Chavez academic writing in The Nation argued that the massive street demonstrations across the country “have far more to do with returning economic and political elites to power than with their downfall.” The Guardian headlined a news story: “Venezuela’s hardliner reappears as Nicolas Maduro expels US officials.” That hardliner wasn’t Maduro, whose government is arresting regime opponents and strangling the free press, but Leopoldo Lopez, the opposition leader currently languishing in jail. Flip over to the Guardian’s editorial for the bizarre excoriation of President Obama for his supposed “support for regime change in Venezuela.”
It’s a thought experiment I often present to the Western Chavista, one that usually ends up demonstrating that sympathizers of the regime, both in this country and in Europe, have something of a colonialist attitude towards Venezuela. Because one wonders the reaction of these faux progressives if Prime Minister David Cameron, President Barack Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel–pick your the imperialist lackey!–arrested an opposition leader who had organized peaceful street protests? Or if the CIA shut off the internet in politically restive cities like Berkeley and Brooklyn; blocked Twitter traffic it found politically suspect; and took over PBS, forcing it to broadcast only pro-administration agitprop, never allowing the opposition party to traduce the government across public airwaves?
Update from a reader:
I think you should ask yourself a very basic question: do you really think that every regime that you don’t like is necessarily illegitimate?
Has it crossed your mind that there are countries with populations that support leaders who don’t cater to American interests, or have the same values as your bourgie free-market readership? Do you think it’s a coincidence that you see as inherently undemocratic any country that does not act in a way that you approve of? This is what democracy actually is: people deciding to do things that you don’t like. If your support for elections is only as strong as their capacity to deliver results that you like, then you have no actual commitment to democracy at all.
During the Iranian protests, the Dish was draped with green ribbons for months, and yet there was barely any notice of why the current regime survives: because it is in fact very popular with a significant majority of Iran’s citizens. It’s just not popular with the English-speaking, Westernized Iranians who write blogs and are on Twitter. I don’t like that regime anymore than you do, but I don’t pretend that my disapproval amounts to proof positive that the regime is illegitimate or not supported by a majority of its people.
I think you and the whole crew over there should ask yourself whether the events of the last ten years suggest you should adjust your understanding of how the world works, or what progress means. Because from the Iraqi civil war to the election of Hamas to, yes, the repeated re-election of the Chavez government, what the world has shown is that it will pursue its own interests against the narrow paternalism of Western progressives. You’ve got to decide if you actually support real, messy, ugly democracy, or if you support the rosy lies of the Bush-era embrace of “democracy.”
The Dish 