I mean, I get it. Leftists are famous for making this point. Famous leftists of the past that turned out to be monsters responsible for millions of deaths ... d

I mean, I get it. Leftists are famous for making this point. Famous leftists of the past that turned out to be monsters responsible for millions of deaths ... deny that they were leftists. Stalin ? Not a leftist. Lenin ? Not a leftist ! Mao ? Not a leftist. Pol Pot ? Not a leftist !! Soviets ? Never any real socialist policies ! Now you are trying to make the point that Hugo Chavez ... wasn't left or right. Seriously. Does that justify a response any more than the "theory" that the Soviets weren't socialist ? I can certainly understand why western leftists wouldn't want to be associated with Hugo Chavez these days. Amazingly, they don't seem to feel the same about Che "kill all doctors when we arrive, so the population depends on us for survival" Guevara. Leftists have a long and sordid history of supporting monsters, even back when left actually meant left (ie. the time of the French revolution), and then abandoning them and claiming they're not really leftist when the result of -always the same now declared "not actually socialist"- policies becomes clear. I mean you wouldn't recognize the names these days, but the leftists of the French revolution ... I may recognize (some of) their accomplishments ... BUT they were loathsome monstrous mass-murderers who massacred their way through Paris, killing in estimation >20% of the whole population. But the fact that they're unwilling to distance themselves TODAY from someone like Che Guevara, just because he's popular in a certain crowd, really tells you enough about leftists, doesn't it ?