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Media Ignores Socialism as Reason for Venezuelan Crisis, Part 2

The economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela caused by the governments’ socialist policies are too vast for the media to ignore.  But reports on the subject fail to identify those socialist policies as the reason the nation’s distress. Worse, many U.S. politicians advocate bringing those same policies to America. 

Paul Gregory, writing for the Hoover Institution, notes: “… the “socialist” states of North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela are in economic ruin.  Few now advocate “back to the USSR.” At the same time, many people still consider socialism an appealing economic system…”

Bradford Richardson, in a Washington Times article, explains: “You would think any political theory that resulted in the deaths of 100 million people would have been discredited by now, but socialism is back in style. The bicentennial of Karl Marx’s birth has coincided with a groundswell of support for the communist theorist’s ideas. Dozens of Democrats running for local office have embraced the socialist label, and national party leaders are advocating bigger government as they jockey for position on the left wing of the party. Marion Smith, executive director of the nonpartisan Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said both parties should be able to get behind opposition to Marxism. ‘It’s important that neither of America’s two major parties embrace the failed ideology of communism,’ Mr. Smith said. ‘We have 100 years of proof — Marxism doesn’t work.’ Millennials who prefer socialism to capitalism are helping shift the Democratic Party to the left on the economy.”

ABC accurately noted that due to its extreme condition and the ideological leanings of its government, the country has allowed itself to become a base for Russian nuclear bombers aimed at the United States. It failed, however, to go deeper. In an el-Nacional newspaper article first reported by Fox News, Vladimir Medrano Regifo, former director general of the Office of Identification, Migration and Immigration of Venezuela, revealed that the Venezuelan government may have distributed about 10,000 passports to Syrians, Iranians, and nationals of other Middle Eastern nations. “Nowadays, they do not know where these people are or what they are doing. They can be anywhere in the world, traveling with Venezuelan documentation… Around 173 individuals from the Middle East have been detected with Venezuelan passports. Likewise, the majority of Iraqis who tried to enter Canada first arrived in Caracas, detailed a study by the Center for a Free and Secure Society (SFS) of 2014.”

Antonio Mora, writing for The Hill  reports that Russia has an “insidious, increasing influence in Venezuela… Chavez turned to Russia for investment in the country’s energy and mining sectors and as a supplier of weaponry, with Venezuela becoming a major purchaser of Russian military hardware, including fighter jets.
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The U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission reports that Venezuela maintains strong ties to the Chinese military “through a high number of official visits, military officer exchanges, port calls, and limited arms sales.”  Venezuela has purchased Chinese arms and military equipment, including radar and aircraft.

Despite the disaster wrought upon the people of Venezuela, and the resulting danger to the entire Western Hemisphere, neither ABC nor most other major media outlets have identified Socialism, the same economic concept espoused by Bernie Sanders and far too many others, as the root cause.

Some blame America’s progressive-controlled educational establishment. An Investors Business Daily study notes: “Americans’ heavy flirtation with socialism continues, and nowhere is that more evident than in America’s youth. For many millennials, socialism appears to be both a viable and desirable replacement for capitalism. It isn’t, on any level. America’s older generations have no one to blame but themselves. They delivered their children and grandchildren into the hands of unionized public schools run by leftist administrators, with their dumbed-down, biased curricula. They sat them in front of TVs and computer screens, without paying attention to the nonstop message of civilizational self-loathing they imibed from the mainstream media. Is it any surprise that the millennial generation sees socialism as an answer to all of the world’s shortcomings? After all, its utopian ideals of total equality and an end to human want are appealing to young people.”

Photo: Nicolas Maduro, President of Venezuela (official Government photo)

Categories
Quick Analysis

Media Ignores Socialism as Reason for Venezuelan Crisis

On December 28, ABC ‘s evening world news ran a lengthy (by network news standards) description of the horrendous conditions in Venezuela that are causing near-starvation and extraordinary levels of poverty.  The story included heart-wrenching scenes of children dying from lack of nutrition, once-proud and accomplished adults fleeing their homeland to find the basic necessities of life, and harsh attacks on the population by government forces.

There was one essential, underlying issue the report, like many other similar media examinations, failed to include: why Venezuela, a nation of good, intelligent, and hard-working people, a land blessed with vast natural wealth including a veritable ocean of oil, has been reduced to this condition.  In 2017, Michael Shifter reported that “Just a decade ago, Venezuela was perhaps the most influential Latin American country in the Organization of American States (OAS), the world’s oldest regional cooperation group…On April 26, after a majority of OAS states called a special meeting to discuss Venezuela’s crisis, Caracas declared that it would leave the organization.”

Despite the extreme depths the Caracas government has already fallen to under socialist rule, the crisis continues to deepen. Nathaniel Parish Flannery, writing in Forbes reported earlier this year: “In 2018 Venezuela is struggling though the hemisphere’s worst economic problems. Inflation is rapidly spiraling towards crisis levels and everyday economic activity continues to be severely encumbered by a nonsensical system of currency controls. In 2018 Venezuela’s GDP is expected to contract by double digits for the third straight consecutive year. Economic output in Venezuela fell by 16% in 2016, 14% in 2017, and is expected to drop by 15% this year. Meanwhile, after jumping from 112% in 2015 to 2,400% last year, inflation in Venezuela is expected to hit five-digit levels in 2018. Venezuela’s slow-burning economic collapse is quickly becoming a regional humanitarian crisis as Venezuelans flee in ever larger numbers, looking for refuge in neighboring and nearby countries. More than 600,000 Venezuelans have already fled their country and sought asylum in Colombia.”

Patrick Gillespie, writing for Money last January, reported: “Venezuela has lost half of its economy since 2013… It’s getting worse. Unemployment will reach 30% and prices on all types of goods in the country will rise 13,000% this year, according to new figures published Thursday by the International Monetary Fund. This year will mark the third consecutive year of double-digit contractions in Venezuela’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity. The nation’s GDP declined 16% in 2016, 14% last year and it’s projected to fall 15% this year, according to the IMF. Venezuela is deep into an economic, political and humanitarian crisis, largely inflicted by the government’s own policies, economists say. Food and medical shortages are widespread. People are scavenging for food in dumpsters. Citizens are fleeing by the thousands.”

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Two Venezuelans, Rafael Acevedo and Luis Cirocco, in an article for the Mises Institute  explained: “…ultimately, the lesson we learned is that socialism never, ever works… It was very common during the years we suffered under Hugo Chávez to hear these pundits and economists on TV saying that this time, socialism is being done right. This time, the Venezuelans figured it out. They were, and are wrong.”

Despite the utter catastrophe wrought by socialism in nations as diverse as the old Soviet Union and today’s North Korea, despite over a century of complete failure in every type of country, devotees of this failed philosophy continue their devotion to it. Even the largest Communist nation of all, China, has adopted a capitalist-type system, meshing it within a totalitarian government.

The Report Concludes Tomorrow

Illustration:  Karl Marx (Pixabay)