"Am I therefore become your enemy,because I TELL YOU THE TRUTH...?"
(Galatians 4:16)

DICTATORSHIP WATCH:Chavez’s 21st Century National Socialism

Hugo Chavez has long vowed to turn Venezuela into a laboratory for “21st century socialism.” But if the latest bully-boy tactics of the Chavez government are any guide, the better name for his platform might be 21st century National Socialism.Most telling in this regard are the ruling regime’s rapidly deteriorating relations with Venezuela’s Jewish community. As reported recently in the Jewish Forward, it was only last month that a goon squad of government police swarmed down on the Hebraica Jewish community center in the capital of Caracas. Officially, the police had been searching for signs of “subversive activity,” the term’s definition having been expanded under Chavez’s ten-year reign to include any and all dissent from the government’s growingly authoritarian line. In the event, they found none, leading Venezuelan Jewish leaders to protest, compellingly, that the raid was little more than an act of state-backed intimidation and harassment aimed at the Jewish community. Lending heft to the charge is a disquieting recent history. Hardly a unique event, last month’s raid darkly echoes the November 2004 storming of the same Hebraica community center by armed police thugs. Then as now, the pretext for the operation-a search for evidence supposedly related to the murder of a local prosecutor-was tenuous. Then as now, the police presence seemed calculated to put the fear of “Chavismo” into the country’s vulnerable Jewish community.Back in 2004, apologists for Chavez insisted that the police had acted independent of the government. Chavez, it was claimed, could bear no personal responsibility for their actions. Never convincing, the defense is even more strained in the context of the most recent raid. Particularly notable is that the police force that conducted the raid was under the control of the Interior Ministry; the ministry, in turn, is under the direct command of Chavez himself. The idea that he was unaware of its conduct is too preposterous to credit. (In this connection, it is unlikely to be a coincidence that the deputy head of the ministry is one Tarek al-Assaimi, an erstwhile leftist student leader whose father had the dubious honor of serving as the Venezuelan representative of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party.)To dismiss the targeted crackdowns on the Jewish community as isolated incidents is to ignore just how poisoned Venezuelan politics has become against the country’s Jewish residents. On Chavez’s indulgent watch, the state-sponsored press churns out a steady stream of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel invective and conspiracy theories. One television program in particular, called the “The Razor,” has alleged repeatedly that Mossad agents in Venezuela are working in the shadows to undermine Chavez’s government-a sinister charge that would not have embarrassed the editors of Nazi gazette Der Sturmer. Denunciations of supposedly subversive “Zionist” influences within Venezuela have become routine.Lest one discount these attacks as the work of marginal extremists and nativists, it bears noting that many originate with Chavez himself. Having ascended to power on the strength of his racially charged populism, with its caustic attacks Venezuela’s largely white economic elite, Chavez has proven all too willing to discriminate against disfavored groups. Thus, in the course of a Christmas speech in 2006, Chavez took a special opportunity to vilify “the descendants of those who crucified Christ,” a “minority” that has “taken ownership of the riches of the world.” Friendly journalists on the Left rushed to contend that Chavez wasn’t necessarily talking about Jews, but the Venezuelan media, seething with contempt for “Zionists… the destructive sect of radical Jews,” weren’t fooled. They knew precisely which despised “minority” the president had in mind...
By Jacob Laksin
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