Two Cheers for Chávez

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 58. Predictably enough, the castrated elephants of the American Right are squeaking with unseemly delight.

While it is far too soon to predict what effect Chávez’s death will have on the future of Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” American opinion seems to be that the death of this man constitutes some kind of victory, particularly for neoconservatives.

Chávez was not a model leader. Venezuela’s crime rate has soared ^[2] under his rule. Street gangs act as a de facto part of the Venezuelan government, corruption is rampant, and unfinished skyscrapers have become nests for squatters ^[3] that look like something out of Dredd ^[4]. While Chávez has been able to reduce poverty in the country, this is a fairly straightforward accomplishment for the fifth ^[5] largest oil producing country in the world at a time of high prices. Chávez also made the claim that he would have voted for Barack Obama, if he could.

Nonetheless, there are reasons to admire Hugo Chávez. Chávez always inspired more hatred and fear from the neoconservative press than even paranoia could justify. This alone serves as a sign of contradiction ^[6] that Chávez should be examined carefully. While it’s at least theoretically possible for a nuclear armed Iran to threaten Israel (or, of secondary importance to our press, America), it’s absurd to think of Venezuela as a military rival. Despite the absurdity, Americans have been treated to lurid articles about Muslim terrorists (!) setting up shop ^[7] in Venezuela, even while Chávez littered his speeches with more references to Christ than Barack Obama ever would.

In truth, Venezuela did serve as a critical component of the emerging “anti-American government” bloc in world affairs. Chávez maintained close ties with Cuba, and more importantly, with Russia and China ^[8]. Venezuela even expressed ^[9] its willingness to host a strategic nuclear base for Russian forces. Chávez forcefully condemned ^[10] the American supported “terrorists” in Syria fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Chávez will be remembered around the world for his forceful condemnation of American foreign policy, particularly the invasion of Iraq, and his quip ^[11] that he could “smell the sulfur” after George W. Bush spoke at the United Nations. American conservatives, some still stubbornly defending the disaster in Mesopotamia, have neither forgiven nor forgotten.

However, what is at the root of the hatred of Chávez is his willingness to maintain Venezuelan independence from international finance. Chávez defended Muammar al-Gaddafi till the bitter end, making the link between the American government’s desire to protect ^[12] its debt driven empire and Washington’s sudden concern with democracy. Just as Gaddafi was brutally tortured ^[13]and killed for daring to revolt against Washington’s global order, much of the hostility against Chávez was driven by his desire to maintain Venezuela’s oil revenue for the Venezuelan state. The American supported “democratization” movement ^[14] against him, just like that directed against Vladimir Putin, has more to do with ensuring the continued hegemony of globalism than with a sudden concern for individual liberty. As in Russia, the international community’s cries for “liberty” really mean a desire to protect the culturally alien oligarchs.

Chávez’s “socialist” revolution always contained powerful nationalist and even traditionalist overtones. “Bolivarianism” emphasized Latin American unity, strength, and above all, sovereignty as an independent economic and political bloc against the new order of globalization. He attempted to mobilize the masses behind a patriotic identity, imbuing them with a sense of mission and national pride that transcended class. While Chávez’s opponents conspired with foreigners to overthrow him, Chávez broke with neoliberal orthodoxy to build a what he called a “Third Way” that would put Venezuela first.

It’s no surprise that the Tribe was famously hostile to Chávez because his “Bolivarian Revolution” was the wrong kind of socialism, the kind they could not control. Chávez was slammed by Jewish organizations for warning that those who “killed Christ” were in charge of the global economy – although he was grossly misquoted ^[15]. For their part, pro-Chávez groups and newspapers have distributed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, called for the “expulsion” of Zionist organizations from the country, and monitored the “subversive activity” of Jewish organizations. The Jewish neoconservative magazine Commentary wailed ^[16] that Chávez’s “redemptive nationalist movement” saw the “Jewish financial mafia” as a threat. Seeing as how financial interests within the country and neoconservatives outside have both called ^[17] for American military intervention, Chávez’s forces may have a point.

Would I want to live in Chávez’s Venezuela? No, of course not. However, I don’t want to live in an alien ruled America either, and yet here we are.

White Nationalists and Hugo Chávez share common interests and a common enemy: global capitalism ^[18]. As long as the world is dominated by neoliberal economics directed by the axis of Washington, New York, and London, any Traditionalist, pro-white, or nationalist program is destined to be strangled in the cradle.

Furthermore, so-called “globalization” is an open door for Jewish financial and cultural domination, and the eventual eradication of any Traditionalist order. For that reason, proponents of Alexander Dugin’s “Fourth Political Theory” see ^[19] Hugo Chávez as a hero, a wrench in the machinery of the financial order that is crushing us.

Finally, it is Wall Street and the capitalist elite – not so called “anti-Americans” like the late Hugo Chávez – that are importing the non-white masses to serve as cheap labor and dispossess Western peoples from their homelands. Americans should sympathize with Third World anti-colonialists like Chávez, since our country too is now merely a colony of global capital. For that reason, Traditionalist geopolitics must take as its primary focus dismantling the neoliberal financial order – not because it is an example of American “imperialism,” but because it is an enemy of the real America.

Hugo Chávez was an ally in that fight. His Bolivarian Revolution is not something we would wish to emulate. But it does deserve our support and respect.

Rest in peace.