Greg Palast says how the media will show demonstrations on TV of a few thousand privileged white people, but when half a million dark skinned people march in support of Maduro it is never shown on TV.
On January 23, right after a phone call from Donald Trump, Juan Guaidó, former speaker of Venezuela’s National Assembly, declared himself president. No voting. When you have official recognition from The Donald, who needs elections?
Say what?
I can explain what’s going on in Venezuela in three photos:
First, we have Juan Guaidó, self-proclaimed (and Trump-proclaimed) president of the nation, with his wife and child, a photo prominently placed in The New York Times.
Next, the class photo of Guaidó’s party members in the National Assembly, white as snow…
…especially when compared to their political opposites in the third photo, the congress members who support the elected President Nicolás Maduro. The Maduro supporters are nearly all of a darker hue.
This is the story of Venezuela in black and white, the story not told in The New York Times nor the rest of our establishment media. This year’s so-called popular uprising is, at its heart, a furious backlash of the whiter (and wealthier) Venezuelans against their replacement by the larger Mestizo (mixed-race) poor.
Four centuries of white supremacy in Venezuela by those who identify their ancestors as European came to an end with the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez who won with the overwhelming support of the Mestizo majority. This turn away from white supremacy continues under Maduro, Chavez’ chosen successor.
In my interviews with Chavez for BBC beginning in 2002, he talked with humor about the fury of a white ruling class finding itself displaced by dark-skinned man who was so visibly “Negro e Indio,” a label he wore loudly and proudly.
Why did the poor love Chavez? (And love is not too strong a word.) As even the US CIA’s surprisingly honest Fact Book states:
“Social investment in Venezuela during the Chavez administration reduced poverty from nearly 50% in 1999 to about 27% in 2011, increased school enrollment, substantially decreased infant and child mortality, and improved access to potable water and sanitation through social investment.”
What should be added is that, even more than the USA, race and poverty are linked.
Greg Palast - In Venezuela, White Supremacy is a Key to Trump’s Coup
How stupid are white nationalists? They worship Trump for attacking immigrants, even as Trump wants to dramatically increase the number of immigrants as a favor to employers and investors. That is, Trump wants to radically increase the number of H1B immigrants.
ReplyDelete(The H-1B visa lets U.S. employers hire foreign workers in order to drive down U.S. wages.)
On 5 Feb 2019 Trump declared during his State of the Union speech that, “I want people to come into our country, in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.”
That is, Trump wants more and more H1B immigrants from India, for example.
For a long while in the UK the Confederation of British Industry, a right-wing think tank closely aligned to the Conservative Party, argued for open borders and mass immigration to bring Labour costs down for British business. And yet the right blames the liberals for mass immigration.
ReplyDeleteWhite is black and black is white, everything is in reverse. The left argue for fair open markets, while conservatives keep fixed and rigged markets in favour of the elite.
Good article! Thanks
ReplyDelete