Tag: Venezuela

Evidence of Fascism, Socialism, and Communism — Hurting Your Own People

Richard Barnes

I was recently asked about the usual definition of fascism placing it as a right-wing phenomenon, as if Hitler were a conservative or right wing politician or orthodox Christian(!).

Unfortunately, that is the “popular” understanding of the term; so if you are conservative or traditionalist in your beliefs you are liable to be identified as a fascist. 

Perhaps the best source to consult in this matter is the classic by F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. In that great work, he makes the obvious observation that the line between fascism and socialism or communism is practically … nil.

The three systems, and their multifarious variants, are undergirded by one constant: total control. 

All else is dressing. Communism seeks total control by having the state own all property, or “means of production”; fascism seeks total control by having the state direct or force or threaten all property, or “means of production” to act as directed. 

The end result in both cases is the same: totalitarian control of the people and their property. In other words, total control of everything. 

In all such cases, Orwell’s definition applies: a boot grinding on our faces forever.

That is the reality.

To attempt to describe fascism as “conservative” or “right wing” is worse than a distraction. It is false and misleading. 

Another aspect of totalitarianism — regardless of its provenance — is its complete disregard for the people under its governance.

Totalitarianism — whether fascistic or communistic or socialistic — acts and rules to retain power.

The conservative temper is totally of another world. It acts and rules as an exercise of love. It governs with an inchoate understanding that we are responsible not only for those living today, but for those who have gone before us — who have bequeathed us a wonderful heritage — and for those who are yet unborn — who will carry on on our behalf long after we are gone.

Conservative temperament sees our time on this earth as a trust. A responsibility to not only preserve what we have inherited, but to improve upon it and to pass it on to our descendants after us.

It is a disinterested temperament — it cares more for those to come in the future than it does for “me”. 

So when we learn of the former self-described socialist president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, commanding his loyalists to block Bolivia’s major roads, starving out the populace, in order to prevent his arrest on charges of pedophilia, we should not care whether he is a leftwing or a rightwing maniac. 

What we should understand is that he is determined to return to power. 

And when we read that the self-described socialist president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, is providing the vehicles to ensure those road blockages, we should readily understand that Mr. Maduro is also a man consumed with retaining power. Whether he is a “socialist” or a “fascist” is irrelevant.

He and Morales are totalitarians. 

And the totalitarian temper is not limited by forms of governing. It is found in monarchies, dictatorships, democracies, republics, fill-in-the-blank.

In all such cases, the attitude is: the people be damned.

Both Bolivia and Venezuela are suffering greatly. But this does not concern the powerful in those countries.

Their concern is to retain power.

So the blockades have caused over $1.3 Billion in damages to the economy of Bolivia plus untold deaths and wounded by the violence of the Morales thugs. All the while Venezuela’s ruling elite focuses on assisting an ally more than on liberty for her own people. 

So, instead of asking whether a politician or a pundit is right wing or left wing or fascist or socialist or communist, a better question or analysis is: does that person promote or pursue more liberty for the people or does he or she promote more regulations and controls. 

That is the litmus test: liberty or tyranny.

Ah. One more thing: an irreligious people cannot govern itself. Therefore, such a people will confuse “more liberty” with “more libertinage”, which always results in more tyranny.

Pray for the people of Venezuela. And Bolivia.

At a wholesale market in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, farmer Damaris Masias watches through tears as 10 tonnes of tomatoes that she spent over a week trying to get through roadblocks are tossed into a bin (Barron’s)

Men of El Pao

Richard Barnes

David Quintana kindly sent me the below photographs, for which I am most grateful. (If David reads this, I hope he emails me again as I had not checked my emails for months and only saw his emails recently — months after he sent them — and am unable to contact him now although I have tried.)

The gentleman in the center of both photos is the late Herb Ashe, the father of Mike, who has written a number of posts published on this blog, beginning with Mining Camp Memories.

The gentleman on the left in the first photo, is Sam Wright (I’m borrowing from Mike’s memory here as I did not remember him off the bat). The gentleman on the right in the second photo is Mr. Elmo Belfonti. The gentleman on the right in the first photo and the left in the second photo is the late Ted Heron, whom Mike mentions in his posts and who was a close, lifelong friend of Herb Ashe, Mike’s father.

I remember these men and am a better man for having known them. 

How can that be when I certainly did not interact with them other than in social events and interactions? 

Well, as I put it in Part 5 of Mining Camp Memories: 

“I was reminded that no one comes into this world a “blank slate”; we all bring a heritage of the previous generations and much more. Sitting at the club bar as a kid in a time and place where that was not frowned upon, I heard the men there talk about mining accidents and lessons learned before coming to El Pao and how they applied such lessons to their current employment, not to mention their own parents or grandparents, and even politics and religion, at a time and place where such topics could be discussed without ending in blood and warfare.

“Many years later, I realized that, listening to those men, I was developing an inchoate understanding that no one comes into this world with nothing. We are born into homes we did not build, eat food we did not grow, learn languages we did not invent, and much, much more.

“El Pao welcomed men and women and children with manifold exciting backgrounds and experiences. Those of us whose childhood was nurtured there were very fortunate.”

Photos are circa 1960

Echo

Richard Barnes

The terrible events of the recent elections in Venezuela are now not even a dim memory in the mainstream media. The dictatorship as well as the hoity-toity across the Americas and Europe have been patiently waiting for the memories of the flagrant fraud and bloody suppression to be fully extirpated from the public consciousness.

However, there is a group in Venezuela who refuses to remain silent, although this requires them to be more than creative to make their voices heard.

And that brings us to the “Echo” organization where actors and actresses voice the true stories of very real Venezuelans or family members who are either in hiding, imprisoned, and/or tortured and beat. 

The link below should take you to just one exemplar which will also direct you to more, in case you are inclined to hear more or to help in some way.

Pray for the people of Venezuela.

​​Efecto Eco | “they threatened us and I’m incredibly scared” – Actor @thefaria ECHOES the story of a 19 years young man in Venezuela, while being… | Instagram

Venezuela’s President-Elect Seeks Asylum in Spain

Richard Barnes

Among the recent events in Venezuela, we now hear that her president-elect, Edmundo González Urrutía was flown out of the country and is in Spain which has granted him asylum.

As noted in my second to last post, the Venezuelan state has unleashed a brutal wave of repression against all citizens. The OAS characterizes the repression as “state terrorism” and it has included attacks against the president-elect and those who support him, meaning those who voted for him. 

There is no doubt that his life was in danger when one considers the daily rhetoric spewed by the State, basically incitements against him as a terrorist who refused to acknowledge that Maduro won fair and square. 

The opposition concluded that it was necessary to do all that could be done to preserve his life in order to maintain the cause alive. 

My understanding is that the president-elect will be sworn in from Spain as the legitimate president of Venezuela on January 10, 2025. 

I understand that the other threatened politician, María Machado, is still in Venezuela. I believe she is even more feared by the regime than Mr. González. However, there are reports that she is also in Spain. Not sure which reports are correct.

Finally, Mr. González sent this voice mail to the Venezuelan people:

“This morning I arrived in Madrid. My exit from Caracas was surrounded by episodes of pressure, coercion, and threats of not allowing my departure. I trust that we will soon continue the struggle to achieve freedom and restoration of democracy in Venezuela.”

Readers of this blog, know that I am not sanguine about the ability of any politician to “right a ship” in any country. The most he or she can do, perhaps, is to “pause” a downward spiral to give space and time for the people of a land to seek the Almighty’s mercy and forgiveness and help.

My prayer for Machado and González is that they remain safe and are able to assume their leadership roles officially and that our Lord may enable them to work with integrity for the people of Venezuela. 

María Corina Machado and Edmundo González, president-elect of Venezuela

Operation Tun-Tun

Richard Barnes

When beginning this blog in 2019 I explained that its purpose was to enable a better understanding of the land and its people. As such, most of the posts since then do not deal with current events, but rather events of the past — whether historical or anecdotal — which, over time, serve to help us see through the fog of contemporary, tendentious reporting and allow us to focus on Venezuela herself and her people and to get at least an inkling as to why things are the way they are.

Much, if not most, of today’s “reporting” is existentialist — meaning, in this context, that it focuses on the present, usually in crisis form, and sheds little or no understanding of the moment we are living or how we got here, let alone what we are to do about it, if anything. This is ironic because the more honest existentialists from the 20th Century, men like Saint Exupéry, Camus, and others, were indeed men of action who did seize the moment and acted thereon. But they were rare. And their progeny is more disoriented than Sartre, the Grand Master of their sect. 

The lack of reporting on what goes on in Venezuela a mere four weeks after the outrageously fraudulent elections in that stricken land illustrates the above. The immediate crisis has passed and the mainstream media has returned to the “look-a-squirrel!” journalism which focuses on promoting the fashionable narrative of the present day.

Well, the immediate crisis may have passed for the usual suspects (CNN, ABC, NBC, ad nauseam), but it most certainly has remained and deepened for the people of Venezuela and for us as well, whether or not we are capable of seeing it. 

There have been thousands of detainees and disappearances. Arrests are without warrants or formal charges. If one complains of abuse, one exposes oneself to brutal arrests, accused of crimes including terrorism. Many minors have been kidnapped from their homes. 

Having taken a page from the totalitarians whose masks fell off during the recent pandemus, the state has urged people to report “suspicious activities” in what it has called “Operation Tun-Tun”, the sound of the knock on the door when officers arrive. This has promoted an environment of mistrust and fear of sharing or speaking openly among neighbors and even relatives, not to mention church. Precisely what the totalitarian relishes: family is nothing, relatives are nothing, neighbors are nothing, church brethren are nothing … the state is all.

Any reading or viewing of Cold War literature or art will immediately see “neighbor-reporting” and “Tun-Tun” visits for what they are. I need not elaborate.

The human rights NGO, Provea, reports that “Forced disappearances and arbitrary detentions have become the new normal …. They have gone from a period of selective persecution to one of massive persecution.”

For those who disbelieve the “alternative media”, perhaps the Agence France-Presse (AFP) might satisfy: 

“Edward Ocariz was cooking lunch in his home in a Caracas slum when police stormed in. ‘You’re coming with us,’ officers shouted, as angry neighbors screamed, ‘Damn you!'”

“Police — with no arrest warrant — whisked Ocariz away a week after the July 28 election…. Ocariz, 53, had complained previously about government abuses of power…. He was charged with crimes including terrorism and inciting hatred and taken to a maximum security prison….”

Multiply Mr. Ocariz by thousands, including minors and desperate parents; terrified neighbors who after complaining see their own neighbors or family members disappear, and you begin to get the idea of what is happening and why Venezuela has become “so quiet” lately.

And if you think such things can never happen in the United States, well, you’ve not been awake in recent years.

We are living in what for us can only be described as unusually bad times. 

But the Triune God is on His throne and His eyes go to and fro … and not a sparrow falls without Him … and these events, as ALL events, will serve to advance His Kingdom. The counsels of the ungodly will come to confusion.

Meanwhile, at the very least, we must be aware and we must pray and even if all we can actually do is speak or write or vote, we must do at least that.

I’ll close quoting an election worker, source The Caracas Chronicle:

“Nothing prepared us for the fear we have experienced in recent days. What we have felt since July 29 until now is unprecedented. Friends hiding for weeks. Or crossing borders. A few are still holding hope for a transition … but without certainty that it will happen, in the face of violence we’d never seen….. We wonder what to do if our passport is arbitrarily canceled, if leaving the country is an option, of if arriving at the airport means a prison sentence. We deal with paranoia, attentive to any strange sound, rushing to the window to ensure everything is in its place….

“We see teenagers being torn from their parents’ arms in the middle of the night or mothers dragged out of their homes, still in their nightclothes before the terrified eyes of their children…. The checkpoints … are real guillotines where they check your phone without a judicial order, risking your safety. An incorrect message in a WhatsApp group could lead to your disappearance in a jail …. And yet, we try to put on a smile to encourage those outside Venezuela; to show ourselves strong so that our friends and family do not have to worry too much about what we are living through….

“…the heartbreaking testimonies of kids who, because of a WhatsApp message or a TikTok video, fall in the most dangerous prisons, alone, unable to see their relatives and without the right to defense. Kids who live in a country that already deprived them of a sane childhood and now inflicts on them physical torture, rape, psychological terror, for which no school, university, or way of life can prepare them….

“Waking up to calls at 6 in the morning: ‘They took M_____ in the early morning along with 20 kids from the neighborhood, they entered her house and dragged her in her underwear in front of her daughter, regardless of the screams from her family: they beat her, they beat her!’

“We knew repression was a possibility, but one thing is to call it and another to see it….”