Posted on 06/03/2007 8:57:04 AM PDT by 68skylark
A number of British personalities, including journalist John Pilger wrote the Guardian to announce their support for Chavez's shutdown of opposition TV stations. "We believe that the decision of the Venezuelan government not to renew the broadcasting licence of RCTV when it expires on May 27 ... is legitimate given that RCTV has used its access to the public airwaves to repeatedly call for the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chávez." It is signed by:
Colin Burgon MP
Dr Julia Buxton
Jon Cruddas MP
Tony Benn
Billy Hayes General secretary, CWU
John Pilger
Professor Jonathan Rosenhead LSE
Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Rod Stoneman Executive producer, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
snip...
My own personal opinion is that anyone would have to be a fool or on the Left not to recognize an incipient tyrant in Hugo Chavez. That does not necessarily mean that his opponents, like the owners of RCTV are honest or upstanding men. They may very well be thugs. That doesn't change the fact that Hugo Chavez is a thug as well. But it seems clear to me that the Left's criteria for judging fascisms is entirely partisan. Although they use such words as "democratically elected" or "legitimate" to justify Chavez, none of these words are really operative, except as protective coloration. What matters is that he is "their guy". He is their thug. Principle, clearly on the Left and possibly among conservatives too, runs a far second to belief.
Even Jimmy Carter may now have come to believe that in Chavez, he may have gotten more than it bargained for. "The Carter Center, which has observed past elections here, said it is concerned that 'non-renewal of broadcast concessions for political reasons will have a chilling effect on free speech.' 'A plurality of opinions should be protected,' it said. 'The right of dissent must be fiercely defended by every democratic government.'" Poor Jimmy. It's always a shock to those who think they are driving events to realize that they are, as they say, the last to know.
All over the world, in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, Africa, Asia and even in Western Europe people are being forced by crisis to choose their sides. The century widely expected to contain no greater peril than the Y2K bug is already forcing people to discover what civilians in Iraq know already: that you can be left hanging in the middle like Jimmy carter. We are left with choices between evils without the leadership to create space for maneuver.
Good post. It is very true that we are increasingly caught between a choice of two evils. Long ago, it was correctly predicted that “the center cannot hold.”
You're thinking of the poem The Second Coming from William Butler Yeats. It's a bleak vision of our future. I'm not that pessimistic, although I agree that we need to stay vigilant about real threats that are out there.
Tyranny doesn't change, and you will always find self described "intellectuals" licking the tyrant's boots.
(If anyone has the actual quote, I'd love to see it.)
Only a stupid or blind person could fail to see that Chavez is a tyrant.
This is from another post about the train bombing in Spain but is one of the best lines about the MSM that I've ever seen.
Changing my tag line.
Yeah, they feel the same about Castro. Heck, they feel pretty much the same about Saddam. They never met a Stalinist dictator they don't admire -- even Uncle Joe Stalin himself.
>>>>Dont forget right wing socialism. NAZI Germany and Perons Argentina.
>>Yeah, you make a good point.
I beg to differ. I invite both of you to read the third quote on my FR profile page, the two paragraph one by Hayek. He was a contemporaneous trained observer.
There’s nothing wrong with using an accurate descriptor. The problem is that the Left has misused the term so much.
There’s nothing “right wing”, in the American political lexicon, about socialism in any form.
These British Lefties sound as bad as the “Duke 88” ... but oh well, the Left never apologizes for its stupid mistakes, they just shows it cares ...
The bleak future seen by Yeats came and went with WWII. We’re looking at the second or third bleak future after that.
Because it's 1/4 of the world's population that are craving to by 'things' from us.
“Twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
In the poem, the twenty centuries have already elapsed,
and from the perspective of 1919, the spectre of looming
cataclysm would have to be an adumbration of WWII,
the way I see it.
As I understood it, Yeats felt that history moved in two thousand year cycles. He dated the start of ancient history to the time when Leda was raped by Zeus, who descended as a bird (a swan). This ultimately led to Helen, and the Trojan war, and a whole religion of the gods.
And he felt our history started when Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit, who descended as a bird (a dove). This lead to Christianity. Now, Yeats was thinking about what cycle of history would be coming next.
I could be wrong, but that's what I learned in my studies of Yeats and it makes sense to me.
But like I say, it's great to hear other views as well, and maybe your views are correct! Since the poem was written in 1921, he'd have to be quite prophetic to foresee the rise of fascism and the storm clouds of WWII. If he had contemporary events in mind, I suspect he was thinking about Ireland and Irish independence, which was a burning hot issue at that time.
If you don’t mind one other comment, reading the poem today one can sense that mysterious, malevolent beast in the poem might represent militant Islam. I doubt Yeats had Islam in mind specifically, but he might have sensed how the aftermath of WWI was giving rise to all kinds of dangerous new ideologies — militant Islam was one of those (the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in the 1920's), and it's been one of the most enduring.
I think you’ve studied Yeats more than I have. I followed an on-line discussion some years ago about Yeats involvement with Fascism, as far as he was involved with it, and this started with the issue of Irish independence. I believe there were “Blue Shirts” and Yeats wrote some stuff valorizing political hooliganism. I did some reading about the ideological and philosophical sympathies in England towards Fascism in that era, and there was a lot of this. In the U.S. we think of this as pro-German tendencies, but there was a deeper philosophical strain to it. So, aside from Yeats’ plan for the poem, it seems to me that the rise of Fascism was part of the ferment that he seems to be expressing.
As for Islam, I think Yeats would have presumed that Europe’s dominance would remain unchallenged, and it was the European scene that counted.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.