“Venezuela’s PSUV is a Fascist Political Party and Nicolas Maduro is a Hitler Want-to-be.” – Chris Hedges *

Several years ago Occupy Wall Street and Russia Today darling Chris Hedges – who is now an author at TruthDig – wrote the book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. After seeing a quote of his in my feed from one of the sock-puppet operated groups I follow, I decided to give it a look into.

I found a free copy available online, downloaded it, read it and uuuf!

I admit to not being versed with his work as a whole, but after having read this I have a better understanding of why a lot of mainstream outlets no longer publish him, thus leaving him to taken up helping WSWS engage in fundraising fraud.

What I did find interesting was the opening of the book – an extended quote from Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt by Umberto Eco.

Based on Chris Hedges’ co-sign of what defines fascism, it’s appearent that Chris Hedges think Nicolas Maduro and the PSUV are a fascist political organization that ought to be stopped, by violence if necessary. What follows below is a graphic organizer which demonstrates how Nicolas Maduro and the PSUV fit the definition of a fascist organization, and then commentary.

Nicolas Maduro is a Fascist

Feature of Fascism	Example from PSUV
The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

The Fascism of Nicolas Maduro and Orwellian Irony

The fact that Nicolas Maduro leads a fascist political party that assassinates, assaults, jails, harasses and in many other ways marginalizes his political opponents while at the same time mobilizing antifascist rhetoric and supporting antifascist organizations is yet another example of Orwellian Irony.

While I’m not now sure of  the connections between of the Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation in Portland, whose members recently displayed Antifa flags at a soccer game, to the numerous new Antifa-themed soccer clubs in Latin America – but it does seem to indicate some sort of working relationship between the groups.

Given the hundreds of millions of dollars that the government of Hugo Chavez Frias provided to anyone and everyone outside of his country that he thought he could influence and the large number of Venezuelans that have migrated out of the country – it’s no logical leap to suspect a connection given the timing.

On this point it’s also worth noting that some of the main defenders of Antifa activity in the United States are the Socialist and Communist parties whose members frequently visit and defend Cuba, Venezuela and the FARC in their press organs.

Nicholas Maduro: The Would-Be Hitler of Latin America?

While the above graphic organizer makes abundantly evident that the PSUV is a fascist organization – according to the categories created by Umberto Eco and then repeated by Chris Hedges – these are not the only examples of it.

There’s also his project of colonization, which is couched in an appeal to create a “greater Latin America” via a constitutent political body, which of course, would be lead by Cuba and Venezuela and achieved via force, corruption and blackmail.

Any serious comparison between Nicolas Maduro and Adolph Hitler is, of course, absurd. But given the PSUV’s control over the population via CLAP, the extent of pro-government corruption and the millions of people that have emigrated out of the country since the rise of the PSUV – we could say that they have engaged in a sort of politically-based genocide (genocide being understood as forced migration, UNHRC), or political cleansing. This interpretation is furthered when one considers the massive government-sponsored influx of the Cubans to work in the military and in health centers.

To understand where Maduro’s fascism comes from, one need only look to his biography…

Nicolas Maduro, Graduate of Fidel Castro’s School of Political Education

It’s well documented that Nicolas Maduro “graduated” from Fidel Castro’s School of Political Education. I read in one online  forum that he was also a counselor-in-training at an Sleepaway Indoctrination Camp a few miles outside of Cienfuegos, but I believe that was just a joke.

What’s not a joke is the clear committment that Nicolas Maduro has to sell out Venezuela’s potential to be a prosperous, democratic country in order to fulfil the future-dreams of a now-dead dictator.

While marketing himself as a humble unionist and bus-driver to his people in Venezuela, by looking at a wider, comparative picture it’s clear that he’s just an autocrat that aspires to be a world-historical figure.

 

Keywords: Fascism, Bolivarian Propaganda, PSUV, Comparative Politics

* : Chris Hedges has never actually said what is in the title of this post, I merely use the conceptual framework he provides in his books American Fascist to show that he should.