Posted by: McQ on Thursday, July 26, 2007 Stancel Spencer has come up with new ways to excuse Hugo Chavez's crack down on free speech. It's always instructive to look at both the excuses and the rhetoric used by those who feel that the "correct" ideology excuses any excesses to include totalitarian oppression. The latest has to do with Chavez's ban on criticism by foreigners: This is not without reason. Venezuela is an oil-rich nation, a poor nation which elected Chávez three times with three clear electoral landslides. It is a nation, whose President, has been unsuccessfully threatened with coup d’états and with certainty a President that various right-wing politicians or commentators, like U.S. President Bush or Christian fundamentalist Pat Robertson, would rather be forcefully removed from office, or at worst, dead.Clearly Mr. Spencer has not bothered to acquaint himself with the details of Chavez's rise and consolidation of power (or if he has he doesn't care) nor with the concept of the right of free speech. Yes there are limits. Incitement to violence isn't acceptable. But that's not where Chavez has drawn the line. In fact he's drawn no line whatsoever deciding any criticism of the regime, not matter how mild or trivial, is grounds for removal. And of course that's not found in Venezuela's Constitution, nor is it something the legislature passed into law or the courts have upheld. It is a unilateral declaration by Chavez. It is rule by decree. That is what dictators do. Spencer spends the bulk of his post spinning away the points of a piece by Jan Gould and his claim that shutting down RCTV followed by his latest ban on criticism by foreigners in Venezuela will lead to the suppression of internal dissension next: Gould’s nonsensical little essay ends with speculation, saying that this means that domestic opponents will soon be targeted. Gould, your lot has been saying that trash for years, and it hasn’t come to pass.Of course that's not true as the shutting down of RCTV demonstrated (not to mention the overt intimidation of remaining media outlets). It is already underway and Spencer refuses to acknowledge it. When dictators move, they do so in steps. Close down the press, silence the foreign voices of dissent, then look internally. Who is then left to sound the alarm? No one. That's the way dictators like it. Oh, and speaking of our new title, Mr. Spencer notes that when we took him to task the last time he excused Mr. Chavez's totalitarianism: It didn’t bother me much. I just yawned and went about my day.Heh ... well yeah, except this is the second time he's felt it necessary to mention it. |
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