When I was a child, I found the obituaries page of one of the big American dailies — I can no longer remember which one it was, nor the person whose life was commemorated in words so striking and vivid, they remained with me ever since. I was, grotesque as that may seem, enthralled by the obituary. I was amazed by the fact that another man, one like whom I would aspire to become, has in his short time on earth – barely longer than six decades – accomplished so much. The obituary was for a physician, a father of three, grandfather of one, a husband, brother, uncle and godfather. Yet the words flow with the grace and dignity that can only be inspired by true love. He is grieved for, but more than anything, the authors of his obituary express how blessed they are to have known him. Sometimes, when I feel I’m getting cynical and despair about the state of the world, I recall this obituary, the kind and appreciative words, and that amidst all the human corruption and failings, it is possible to live a good life: loved by a few, admired by many, grateful for by all.

Whom we eulogise (and how we do it) tells the story of who we are. It tells the story of whom we remember, and what we feel worthy of remembering: courage, kindness, intellect, and above all, humanity. What, then, are we when our society eulogises those who perverted those values — who punished the courageous, murdered people for their kindness, waged war on his countrymen that exceeded him far in intelligence and made a mockery of humanity? What are we when we eulogise Hugo Chavez?

What are we, when people like Derrick O’Keefe, who grew up in the privilege of a world where no-one fears the secret police knocking down their doors, a world without labour camps and forced praise police, eulogise Chavez as an undefeated hero for depriving millions of ordinary Venezuelans of that self-same privilege. According to O’Keefe’s childish diatribe, there is a conspiracy of the corporate media to paint him as an enemy of freedom. According to people like O’Keefe, Chavez’s sin was not maintaining a regime of repression, but simply going against the ideas of Big Capital. According to people like O’Keefe, the pathetic eulogies of left-wing commentators making all kinds of excuses for the closest our generation has seen to evil incarnate possess the truth that the corporate media is hiding from us.

There is indeed plenty the ‘corporate media’, or rather the corporate-enabled left is hiding from us.

It has hidden from us the support Chavez gave to the homicidal regime of Frères Castro – a regime that repressed political dissent, incarcerated people with HIV and jailed and tortured dissenting political activists. It did so not by some magic iron curtain through which no information can pass, but by the the plenitude of equivocation that surrounds the assessment of Castro, and Chavez’s complicity.

It has hidden from us the real face of Bolivarian socialism, a failure – albeit an aspirational one. It has hidden from us the power cuts that are now becoming an every-day reality in Venezuela, and which newspapers are no longer allowed to report on. It has hidden from us what lies amidst all the lauded statistics, applauding the reduction of the inequality gap but never paying notice to the immense rural poverty. It is comfortable to condemn a third of Venezuela’s population to a life under the poverty line, as long as that poverty is dressed up in a sufficiently anti-capitalist rhetoric.

It has hidden from us the fact that beyond Castro, Chavez had sympathy for every and all mass-murdering fanatic, from Robert Mugabe (whom he called a freedom fighter) through Aleksandr Lukashenko (who presided over what Chavez called a model of a social state) to narco-terrorist lunatics FARC, whom he had all praise for.

It has hidden from us the fact that Venezuela’s security forces, the shock troops lining the railings when Dear Leader speaks, regularly torture anti-government dissidents. It has hidden from us the fact that the best Chavez could come up by way of international verification of the 2012 elections was Jimmy Carter, a failure of a President desperately hunting for the tiniest scrap of political relevance like a heroin addict hunting for the next shot.

The Chavez fans are right. The corporate media has indeed misled us. In its mad scramble to save ground lost to political blogs that cater for the hard left, it has painted Chavez as a jovial South American archetype, a ‘friend of the people’ and a social reformer (and never mind the torture and police brutality). There is, indeed, a ‘conspiracy’ — one to paint our generation’s most noxious fascist dictator as a populist hero, and in a sickening act of political necrophilia, use the fact that he just died to white-wash his blood-stained legacy.

If there is one thing to eulogise about Hugo Chavez, it is his keen awareness of the Western establishment of ‘useful idiots’. Chavez knows that there is nothing he cannot get away with if he dons certain fashionable ideas. No police brutality will not find its fierce defenders amidst ‘human rights advocates’ in the West, as long as whoever committed it was sufficiently anti-imperialistic. No theft of a nation’s oil reserves and squandering it on useless social programmes with no impact won’t go uncriticised, as long as Chavez ‘sticks it to the Man’. No complicity in, and support for, global terror is unforgivable if the motives were sufficiently anti-American.

The likes of Noam Chomsky, Derrick O’Keefe and Michael Moore — not to name some of the worst offenders! — have created a world in which mass murderers can be eulogised in words we reserve for cherished family men, a world in which youthful rebellion is hijacked to support the worst of repressive regimes and in which it is hip to wear a t-shirt emblazoned with the face of someone who herded homosexuals into prison camps, oversaw executions and personally carried out extrajudicial killings. We are desensitised against evil, because we have been told it’s ok if it’s the ‘little man sticking it to repressive America’.

Two nations will mourn for Chavez tonight. South of the Equator, people will be lining the street, in anguish not so much about their dear leader’s death, but whether they will — like North Koreans — face jail unless they express their grief in the most heart-rending of wails. North of the Equator, however, another nation will grieve: this one, fretting with the deeply ingrained terror of white guilt and fearing for their ‘cred’, the set that fills the columns of the Nation, Mother Jones and left-wing zines will engage in the strangest of mental calisthenics, trying to explain away the blatant human rights violations Chavez has committed on the ‘counter-revolutionary cadres’.

Right after a flaming diatribe condemning Republicans for their support of torture for the millionth time.

Hong Kil Tong
March 9, 2013 at 02:18

Radio Erevan reports ‘ under capitalism (wo)man exploits(wo) man , under
socialism, it’s exactly the opposite. Can’t we talk of non authoritarian
bottom-up forms of organization?

Ted Treen March 9, 2013 at 00:19

Tyrants of the left are ALWAYS beatified post-mortem by the Islington set
& their cronies:- look at the recent eulogies for Eric Hobsbawm, who was a
deeply unpleasant man, versed only in his version of history (often at odds
with the facts), and one who thought the loss of a million or more souls was
acceptable if it led to a socialist utopia (in being questioned about Stalin’s
purges).

I can’t decide which was more despicable – this hideous warped little
charlatan or the empty-headed vapid acolytes of the left.

I love the BBC
March 8, 2013 at 17:47

”The benefits of international trade are overwhelmingly with the poor
countries”. Well you are welcome to pen an essay on that Chris but you might
have some explaining to do about why the outcomes are not always what your
theory says they should be. You might start with looking at whether the ‘free
trade’ we have these days is actually free. I don’t think it is, as it
‘appens.

Elena ‘andcart
March 8, 2013 at 02:07

Who?

DtP March 8, 2013 at 10:03

That’s China I think.

I love the BBC
March 8, 2013 at 00:03

Chris – It’s all very well for YOU to say that neo-Bolivarian rhetoric is
‘hopelessly out of date’, but if you live in that part of the world, with
their social, economic and political realities, I can assure you that it
doesn’t feel like that.
Of course Chavez was a kook – he believed the Moon
landings were faked – but he also believed that the vast oil wealth of
Venezuela should benefit its poorest people. And it did, whichever way you cut
it, he spent millions on schemes designed to assist them. That he had as
friends some of the strangest and least admirable leaders around the globe is
more a result of him being progressively isolated for being…..well,
progressive. It’s easy to forget that the USA first courted him, and he was
happy to visit and make PR opportunities with the then President. But once he
made it clear he was serious about redistributing wealth they dropped him like
a brick and eventually drove him into the arms of those with whom he often had
bugger all in common except their thwarted desire to ‘do different’ (as we say
in Norfolk).

Chris March 8,
2013 at 02:47

The neo-Bolivarian rhetoric is perfectly out of date whatever living
conditions you have to put up with. In other words, the war is over and free
trade has won, end of story. Countries are free to reject free trade and
globalisation, but the reality is that they either play along with it or
risk irrelevance. Venezuela, for instance, has failed to do so, and the
result is being one step above an international pariah, and Chavez’s
isolation was his own doing. Venezuela had it all to be a winner of
globalisation. That inequality has dropped is a meagre concession to the
fact that he squandered a nation’s big chance. Perhaps it should be put on a
big banner at the next annual meeting of left-wing dictators of third world
countries that they need – and are benefited by – free trade MORE than
people in rich countries. The benefits of international trade are
overwhelmingly with the poor countries, which is why it’s tormenting to see
so many of them turn towards isolation instead.

Moor Larkin
March 8, 2013 at 10:04

@ Of course Chavez was a kook – he believed the Moon landings were faked
– but he also believed that the vast oil wealth of Venezuela should benefit
its poorest people. @

I suppose we had a Prime Minister who believes that Saddam had rockets
capable of destroying London, but also believed that the most important
thing for Britain was Education Education Education….. so we shouldn’t get
too supercilious……… ;-D

Cascadian March 8, 2013 at 18:26

“he also believed that the vast oil wealth of Venezuela should benefit
its poorest people. “…………if that were true he would have sold it on the
world market at current prices and re-invested the wealth in the nation.
This is a national resource, not a Chavez resource. Instead he played silly
socialist games, “selling” huge volumes of gasoline at ridiculously
discounted prices to Cuba, just to support a failing ideology that keeps
people in poverty, there is no benefit to Venezualan peasants in doing
so.

The man was a repressive dictator, who cared only for his place in
socialist history. He has earned that place alongside all the other recent
nutters-Mugabe, Gaddafi, Brown, Obama, Castro. Their legacy is secure, their
populace suffers.

Wendi March 7, 2013 at 22:23

Not quite clear where the reality-based ‘over here’ is Chris?

Chris March 8,
2013 at 02:43

Lord knows but it sure ain’t where you are, ma’am. If Naomi Klein is your
standard for great journalism, then I’m afraid it’s far from your corner of
the world and transportation is patchy.

Jabba the Cat March 8, 2013 at 08:44

Iirc correctly, the lady lives in the US, in Texas, yet does not
understand why you might need a gun in a armed society to protect
yourself. Her philosophy suggests the gun free zone approach to the
matter…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF0YnLNRfU0

Cascadian
March 8, 2013 at 18:03

Actually she is a member of Canadian socialist “royalty”. The
detested Lewis family whose multi-generational spawn infest socialist
politics, the United Nations, state-owned CBC media, Al-Jazzera and any
other organ that can preach nonsense to university neophytes. Very much
akin to the Kinnocks.
They are parasites on any international or
state-funded instition and have become very rich, they would very much
admire Chavez stealing from his poverty-stricken masses.

Jabba the Cat March 8, 2013 at 19:07

Lol…

Ian R Thorpe March
7, 2013 at 21:12

Having in the last couple of days posted an expose of the working
conditions imposed on humandroids by Amazon, I get the impression that no
matter who our leaders are we are heading towards a Brave New World. Chavez
Bezos, Soros Barosso? Does it matter what the senior Controller’s name is.

Jabba the Cat March 7, 2013 at 23:45

You should head over to Alex Jones place at http://www.infowars.com/,
you’ll feel quite at home…

Chris March 8,
2013 at 02:39

How inhumane! You get fired if you take off a day for blisters? My soul
weeps.
/sarcasm

John Galt
March 7, 2013 at 12:02

In honour of the passing of Hugo Chavez, I have had his initials inscribed
onto my bathroom taps.

Jabba the Cat March 7, 2013 at 18:35

Lol…

Wendi March 7, 2013 at 11:13

El Comandante was indeed a bombastic, larger-than-life populist figure but
that was why he was much loved by the Venezuelan people, the majority of the
population being made up of indios and mestizos. He said what he thought, even
though he made a few faux pas and even that made him more human! Definitely a
leader much disliked and harangued by the West and especially the US. Most
people seem to forget that different parts of the globe have different
cultures and tend to judge by their own culture. A mistake the US has made
throughout its modern war-faring history, their big corporations having always
benefited to the tune of trillions of dollars needless to say.

However, Chavez and his prior ties with Lula have shown other South
American countries that they can stand up against imperialist capitalism
successfully and that will be his legend.

As for wrongful imprisonment and torture – please don’t go there unless
you’re prepared to discuss those practices on a wider global scale and that
which doubtless continues all over the world at US bases by the CIA and was
especially so in the Bush years with its “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
And I won’t even go into the highly documented Kissinger and CIA’s activities
in S America way back when – it’s akin to MI5’s director baldly saying that
they have never “disappeared” anyone! Give me a break…

As for the electricity problems in Venezuela, according to Pablo Pinto,
Director and analyst of the Electrical Engineering School at Venezuela’s
Universidad Central, should the Venezuelan government be able to miraculously
produce 5,000Mw out of a hat, they wouldn’t know what to do with it or how to
distribute it throughout the nation.

For Corpoelec, the Venezuelan electrical Corporation made up of 14
affiliates and a Board of Directors, such a decision could result in a “Night
of the Long Knives” due to bad management and lack of training throughout the
company’s ranks where those below the tip of the pyramid are kept out of the
loop and information is kept from the public as is the policy of capitalist
corporations: intellectual property and the chain of distribution being the
two things such companies always guard closely. Keeping such vital information
under wraps makes competition very difficult!

Pinto states the structure of the Corporation is far from socialist. It is
flat, pyramidal and hierarchical. Decisions are made at the top, or even
worse, from outside and when they are passed down, they are passed down with
no explanation to the lower echelons. Moreover, promotions within the
corporation’s seniority are by merit of political or family ties within the
Corpoelec itself.
http://josealler.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/cortes-de-luz-afectan-mas-al-gobierno.html

The best article on Chavez and Chavesism is Naomi Klein’s, whose opinions
and reporting I’ve always held in high esteem:
http://www.thenation.com/article/173212/legacy-hugo-chavez#

It will be interesting to see how the post Hugo Chavez Venezuela will pan
out and I can only hope El Comandante’s Socialist utopia will pan out to the
peoples’ benefit and those of other South American countries that have
followed his lead. Like him or hate him, he did the necessary groundwork.

Chris March 7,
2013 at 18:05

Um… yeeeah… Naomi Klein. If you hold her in high esteem, I can see where
you disagree. Over here, in the reality-based universe, Chavez ‘stood up’ to
imperialist capitalism by mismanaging Venezuela’s state finances so badly,
it now has a 22% inflation rate. What he did the necessary groundwork for is
a neo-Bolivarian nonsense that is completely out of date. He laid the
groundwork of depriving his own people of the benefits of free trade, and
telling other nations to do so. With its oil wealth, Venezuela could be a
prosperous and stable democracy – with more inequality but higher standards
of living all around. That, ma’am, is fairness – not equality in misery.

As for wrongful imprisonment and torture, it’s wrong whoever does it, and
I do not ‘need’ to go anywhere or entertain your little tu quoque argument
in order to assert that Chavez has run an inhumane reign of terror.

Jabba the Cat March 7, 2013 at 18:31

Caracas Chronicles recommended for an excellent series of snapshots on
the absurdity of the Chavez Bolivar socialist parallel universe. It does
eerily remind of Chile under the lunatic Allende, but unfortunately for
Venezuela there is no Pinochet figure to come to the rescue…
http://caracaschronicles.com/

Wendi March 7, 2013 at 22:22

Not quite clear where the reality-based ‘over here’ is?

Moor
Larkin March 7, 2013 at 09:18

In the BBC Breakfast burble yesterday there was mention of a eulogy from
Fidel Castro. That made me laugh. One earnest talking head was pontificating
about how Chavez had energised the poor people to vote for him, and if there
was any criticism to be made of Chav, it was only that Chav had perhaps not
been as effective at actually making any difference to the “poor people” and
indeed, the “poor people” still lived in some of the most violent slums in
South America. That made me snort in derision. Meanwhile Nicky Campbell
continued to burble is vague support. A quarter of a century to make no
significant improvement for the voters who voted for you? It reminded me of
New Labour, although fortunately they only managed 10 glorious years.

Moor
Larkin March 7, 2013 at 14:35

Just realised my adding was faulty. Chavez arrived at much the same time
as Neu Labour did, 1998/99; my mistake.

JuliaM March 7,
2013 at 05:40

“What, then, are we when our society eulogises those who perverted those
values…”

I’ll take ‘Spoilt children, clamouring for a parent’s attention by acting
out’ for ten.