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As an American I am disturbed by my country's foreign policy as it relates to Latin America, largely over the last half of the 20th century. But propaganda cuts
by jayess 11y ago
As an American I am disturbed by my country's foreign policy as it relates to Latin America, largely over the last half of the 20th century. But propaganda cuts both ways. I have a hard time taking an article like this seriously when it simply hand-waves away the complete meltdown of the Venezuelan economy as a result of "right-wing student protests" and not the complete failed socialism and soft totalitarianism of Chavez.
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"In Venezuela, where a dysfunctional currency control system has generated high inflation, violent right-wing student protests seriously destabilized the country. The odds are extremely high that some of these protestors have received funding and/or training from USAID or NED, which saw its Venezuela budget increase 80 percent from 2012 to 2014."
- onli 11y agoThat is not what that paragraph says though. Right-wing student protests destablized the countries != right-wing student protests lead to the meltdown of the economy. The dysfunctional currency control system mentioned in the first sentence does stand on its own. The protests came later, in the structure of the text and in reality (as far as I know).
- asgard1024 11y ago> But propaganda cuts both ways You are absolutely correct. But wouldn't the U.S. behave badly, people in Venezuela would perhaps have little reason to vote for soft totalitarians like Chavez. (I also think Hitler rose to power partly because he was one of the few politicians who were willing to call BS on the Germany's WW1 debt.) I am not actually sure this will 100% prevents rise of authoritarians (given what is going on in Hungary), however, there is some difference in ideology, and also success, if you compare Marshall doctrine to Washington consensus. Nations get a free pass on behaving badly abroad because of nationalism. Then they get more that they bargained for. Actually, when I think of it, this dynamic is not just between states, it also happens in different social classes as well (for example, policy of being tough on unemployed or drug users, which ultimately makes things worse).
- ttctciyf 11y agoIn 2002 an Irish documentary team, it seems, "accidentally" covered events surrounding the coup and countercoup of that year in Venezuala[1]. It has some unbelievable footage obtained during critical stages of the events. I don't really know the provenance of the film, but if you take it at face value it has some fairly shocking things to say about the way propaganda and political theatre work out in practice, and touches briefly on the US role in that early attempt to unseat Chavez. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhzoIcIgNrk