Twenty-four years ago, the U.S. attempted its first coup against the Bolivarian revolutionary government of Hugo Chavez. I was 20 years old at the time. This event is well-chronicled in the 2003 documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which is well worth watching for anyone who doesn’t realize how long U.S. government has been planning regime change in Venezuela.

For background, here is a good article from a socialist website on the neoliberal project in Latin America:

https://socialistworker.org/2018/11/21/how-neoliberalism-vandalized-latin-america

The ravages of neoliberalism are what brought Hugo Chavez to power in the first place. I’m not going to say Bolivarianism is identical to German National Socialism or Italian Fascism, but it has a hell of a lot more in common with both than Reaganism has with either one of them.

The fact is, the population of a country like Venezuela is a New World hodge-podge of Indians, Whites and Blacks (much like USA is rapidly becoming). These countries are partly in the condition they are in, both racially and economically, because they were set up not as nation-states but as colonies for economic exploitation.

Neoliberalism was just a new, worse form of exploitation, because unlike Spanish imperialism (which at least brought some measure of European culture to these lands) this exploitation was purely on behalf of Judeo-American bankers and corporations.

Of course, these countries have plenty of problems. But neoliberalism made all of them worse:

– Privatization: Selling off state-owned enterprises in sectors like energy, health, and education

– Trade Liberalization: Opening economies to international markets and foreign “investment”

– Fiscal Austerity: Cutting public spending, including social programs

– Deregulation: Removing rules on financial markets and labor

The result was, predictably, “significant rise in income inequality, falling wages, job insecurity” and the subversion of democracy by private wealth.

There is nothing National Socialist or Fascist about any of that. Hitler and Mussolini were fighting to free their people from the chains of international bankers, as well as from Bolshevism!

Chavez was not a Bolshevik. He was not an atheist, he identified as a Roman Catholic and as a Christian. While he took inspiration from some Latin American communist leaders such as Fidel Castro, he also identified himself as a Venezuelan nationalist, as well as a socialist.

Venezuela under Chavez had the largest state funding of classical musicians in the hemisphere, and devoted far more resources to developing great classical orchestras and musicians than the United States.

Key Aspects of Classical Music Under Chávez:

Massive Expansion: Chávez’s administration significantly boosted El Sistema, a network of music schools and youth orchestras, aiming to bring classical music education to millions in impoverished areas.

International Acclaim: The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, an El Sistema product, gained global fame, with conductor Gustavo Dudamel becoming a charismatic symbol of its success, performing internationally to sold-out crowds.

Chavez also famously opposed the neocon Iraq War, denounced the 2008-09 Gaza War and hugely strengthened ties with Iran at the same time when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was hosting David Duke for Holocaust revisionist conferences in Iran.

So while it’s not exactly true to say Bolivarianism is the same as National Socialism, it is absolutely true to say the Judeo-capitalist international banker conspiracy based in Wall Street and DC has been trying to destroy Venezuela for decades for much the same reasons they wanted to destroy NS Germany and Fascist Italy.

Bolivarianism was and is a nationalist, socialist response to the attempt to control and exploit Venezuela by international finance and corporations. This is why it’s so incredibly disingenuous for “right-wing influencers” to say this has anything to do with “fighting communism.” You might as well say the Pinkertons who shot down striking steelworkers in Pittsburgh or crushed miners and their families in the coal fields of West Virginia and Kentucky in the early part of the last century were fighting “communism.”

What Trump is trying to impose on Latin America is not some kind of pro-White fascism, but naked dollar imperialism. The biggest economic problems suffered by Venezuela are not the result of any “communist mismanagement” of the country’s resouces, but simply the fact that the U.S. has been waging economic warfare on Venezuela for the past two decades with sanctions and blockades, punishing the country for not opening up their country to international bankers, and for standing up to Israel.

Hitler himself addressed exactly why the U.S. is so hellbent on regime change in Venezuela, and it has nothing to do with Maduro being a dictator:

Yes, Germany was back then a democracy, before us, and we were plundered squeezed and dry. No! What does democracy or authoritarian state mean for those international hyenas? They don’t care at all! They are only interested in one thing. Are you willing to be plundered? Yes or No? Are you stupid enough to keep quiet in the process? Yes or No? And when a democracy Is stupid enough not to stand up, then it is good. But when an authoritarian state declares, ‘you will not plunder our people any longer, neither from the inside or outside!’ Then that is bad.

In reality money rules in these countries. They talk about press freedom, when in fact all these newspapers have one owner, and the owner is in any case the sponsor, this press then shapes public opinion. These political parties don’t have any differences at all, like before with us, you already know the old political parties, they were all the same. Then people must think that especially in these countries of freedom and wealth, there should exist a very comfortable life for its people, but the opposite is the case. In these countries, in the so-called democracies, the people is by no means the main focus of attention. What really matters is the existence of this group of ‘democracy makers,’ that is, the existence of a few hundred of great capitalists, who own all the factories and shares and who ultimately lead the people. They are not interested at all in the great mass of people…. Jews, they are the only ones who can be addressed as international elements, because they conduct their business everywhere. It is a small ruthless international clique, that is turning the people against each other, that does not want them to have peace… They can suppress us! They can kill us, if you like! But we will not capitulate!

If I was a brown Venezuelan, I would fight to the last drop of my blood to keep that exploitative economic model from being imposed on my country again.