>Or perhaps both the majorities of Iranians and Venezuelans, as well as the majorities in the Middle East and Latin America, are conservative, when it comes to gender issues, though populist on economics and anti-imperialist on foreign policy, which both Presidents reflect: e.g., both Iranian and Venezuelan women lack the right to abortion.
I dont regard Ahmadinejad as reactionary only because of his unenlightented gender attitudes, his anti-semitism is pretty off-putting to me as well. I myself havent heard any Jew-bashing or Holocaust-denying from Chavez, as of yet. But he doesnt let Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitism stop him from hugging the Iranian president, in order to hug the populist/anti-imperialist who also inhabits Ahmadinejad's body and is the next best thing to hugging the Iranian govt, whom Chavez *really* wants to hug and make common cause with. This of course is run-of-the-mill, statecraft-as-usual, and neither of these guys, in this instance, are operating any different than any other politician anywhere on the planet.