By Pablo Sepúlveda Allende on February 17, 2019
Aren’t they exactly the same factual powers that destabilized and provoked the coup d’etat against Allende, those who have been permanently destabilizing and besieging Bolivarian Venezuela?
That is why the lack of ethics and the double standards of high profile political figures who still dare to call themselves representatives of the ideals of the left are insulting. Just to name a few; Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez, Chilean Senator Isabel Allende, the former Chilean presidential candidate Beatriz Sánchez, who reproduce exactly the same discourse of the world right to criminalize the Bolivarian revolution, but who cannot vehemently point out – as they usually do against Venezuela – the United States government as the author of the worst crimes against humanity in the last 70 years. So far in the 21st century the U.S. has had military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria leaving millions dead, millions of refugees, countries devastated and plunged into chaos.
Is it political illiteracy? Ideological confusion? Political cowardice? Double standards? Or is it opportunism that does not allow them to raise their voices to denounce and reject the announced military intervention in Venezuela by the United States?
There is a very clear pre-war scenario in Venezuela and the only thing that occurs to them is to declare in the media and social networks that Maduro is a dictator, that he violates human rights, that there is political persecution of those who think differently, and so on. All of them, gigantic fallacies of the same size as the media corporations that manufacture them. Little or nothing is said about the sociopath Trump and the war criminal clique that surrounds him.
With the greatest cynicism, they come out to say that Venezuela or Nicaragua harms the left. What brazenness! With what authority, at this point, do they proclaim themselves on the left? With their attitude, they damage the noble struggle and the genuine ideal of the left with their lack of definition, their lack of ideology, distancing themselves as anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal, by saying that imperialism is an outdated concept, which with all its economic and military power continues to try to remove and put governments in line with its interests, at the point of blood and fire, without dissimulation or any modesty.
They harm the left if they no longer fight and if they do not dare to raise their voices against the terrible injustices that are the product of that system of permanent dispossession.
If they no longer truly believe in the socialist alternative to transcend this criminal and immoral system, it is better that they do not call themselves leftists.
With all the errors and problems that may exist, they do not have the moral authority to point to Venezuela, Nicaragua or Cuba as dictatorships that violate human rights as a policy. Be consistent and loyal to the desire for justice of the majority. It is a great damage to politics and the left to irresponsibly criticize the political processes that decides to be sovereign and that it is up to them, nothing more and nothing less, than to confront the factual powers of the world plutocracy.
Today, a coup d’état is underway in Venezuela that seeks to open the doors to military intervention. On this occasion, the U.S. government is not behind the coup – just as that fateful September 11, 1973, when they were behind it – today it is ahead of the coup, announcing it, violating every rule of international law and the Charter of the United Nations.
Let’s remember that the excuse used by the Chilean right to justify the coup d’état is the deep crisis that the country was going through (words of the tyrant himself). We know that this crisis was, to a great extent, provoked by the economic suffocation decreed by Nixon. Today, in Venezuela, the economic crisis is also, to a large extent, caused by national and transnational economic powers. That crisis, which they conveniently want to call a humanitarian crisis, is the excuse for justifying the unjustifiable: military intervention.
Perhaps it is too much to ask these people to openly support the Bolivarian revolution, but if they claim to be democrats, humanists and leftists, I do dare them to demand that, in this historic moment, they not hesitate to take a position on the right side of history, on the side of respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of the Venezuelan people and all the peoples of the world, on the side of respect for international law, on the side of peace. We must have the audacity and courage to fight decisively against the interfering and coup attempts, without ambiguities or half-measures. It is our duty. The historic moment demands it, they can still rectify their stance. History will judge them.
Pablo Sepúlveda Allende is the grandson of Salvador Allende and co ordinator of the Venezuelan chapter of the Network in Defense of Humanity.
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/02/17/opinion/020a1mun
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau