Look again at the coup in Venezuela in April against President Hugo Chavez (1). He was quickly restored to office, but the lessons of this textbook attempt at overthrow seem not to have been grasped. Understanding them is vital if we want to avoid the fresh military confrontation now looming in Caracas. The first astonishment is the near absence of international concern about this crime against a government that has been conducting, with great respect for civil liberties, a moderate programme of social transformation - it represents the only experience of democratic socialism in Latin America.
This makes it all the worse that Europe's social democratic parties, including the French Socialist party, were silent during the brief crushing of civil liberties in Venezuela. And also that some of their longstanding leaders, like Felipe Gonzalez, have even justified the putsch (2) and had no qualms about joining in the euphoria shared by the International Monetary Fund, the president of the United States and José Maria Aznar, the prime minister of Spain, who is currently holder of the presidency of the European Union....
...This is likely to be the scenario for overthrowing Chavez: there will be a coalition of the well-to-do, bringing together the Catholic Church (represented mainly by Opus Dei), the financial oligarchy, the employers' organisations, the bourgeoisie and corrupt trade union leaderships - all repackaged as "civil society". The owners of major media will collude in a mafia pact to support the campaigns that they will each launch against the president, in the name of defending that "civil society". The media will function as a factory of lies and will fire public opinion with facile slogans: "Chavez is a dictator" - even though the country has not one single political prisoner. "Chavez equals Hitler" (5). The media will yell the message that "Chavez must go".
As media owners conspire at the overthrow of a democratic president, the press and TV will brandish terms - "the people, democracy, liberty" etc. They will mobilise street demonstrations and any attempt by the government to criticise them will be immediately described as "a serious assault on freedom of expression", to be reported to relevant international organisations (6). At the same time they will revive the insurrectional strike and encourage ideas of a coup and an assault on the presidential palace.
Carried away by a natural preference for propaganda, the media cannot distinguish the imaginary people in whose name the 11 April coup was committed from the real people who, less than 48 hours later, reinstated Chavez in office. The media's repentance was shortlived. With renewed ferocity and remarkable impunity the Venezuelan media currently uses lies and disinformation in the biggest ever destabilisation campaign against a democratically elected government. Since the world hardly seems to care, the media hopes that this time it will succeed in committing the perfect crime.
(1) See Maurice Lemoine, "Venezuela: a coup countered", Le Monde diplomatique English edition, May 2002. (2) El Pais, Madrid, 12 April 2002. (3) See Pierre Abramavici, "Latin America: the 30 years' dirty war", Le Monde diplomatique English edition, August 2001. (4) See Guerres du XXIe siècle, Galilée, Paris, 2002. (5) See the editorial in the monthly Exceso, Caracas, April 2002. (6) Closing its eyes to the one of the most odious media campaigns ever launched against a democratic government, the organisation Reporters sans Frontières has allowed itself to be manipulated and has published several reports against the Chavez government, which has never limited freedom of expression, banned media, or arrested a journalist.
Translated by Ed Emery
<http://mondediplo.com/2002/06/01edito> -- Yoshie
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