Venezuela is Operating as a Kleptocracy, Why Is It Constantly Brought up by Right Wingers when Democrats are Mentioned?

[Old 'N Chill]

I want to get some opinions here from folks who are more knowledgeable than I am on this. I constantly hear right wingers, just heard the talking heads on Fox News saying it today, bringing up Venezuela as a fear tactic when referring to a Democrat winning our Presidential election. It's especially mentioned when they refer to people like Bernie Sanders. I thought that 'socialism' was what they have in Europe, and Venezuela is a Kleptocracy, completely different animal. What are your thoughts?

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English news from the Voice of America. VOA news provides coverage from around the world and learning English lessons from VOA Special English.

www.voanews.com

In Venezuela, an ongoing struggle for power amid a growing humanitarian disaster

Next week in Venezuela a new parliament is set to be sworn in, after members of the opposition boycotted elections earlier this month. It leaves opposition leader Juan Guaido in an even more precarious position, and the country with an uncertain future. Special correspondent Marcia Biggs reports.

www.pbs.org

 

[Xgkjgx]

Right-wingers have lots of stereotypes about left-wingers, and vice versa, because the media is becoming too profit-driven, click-driven, and sensationalist. That is why both sides believe things about each other that are obviously untrue.

I doubt I'm more knowledgeable about this than you are; this is just my two-cents.

 

[Antiwar]

Anything can be corrupted. Sorry, that's all I got.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

I want to get some opinions here from folks who are more knowledgeable than I am on this. I constantly hear right wingers, just heard the talking heads on Fox News saying it today, bringing up Venezuela as a fear tactic when referring to a Democrat winning our Presidential election. It's especially mentioned when they refer to people like Bernie Sanders. I thought that 'socialism' was what they have in Europe, and Venezuela is a Kleptocracy, completely different animal. What are your thoughts?

Page doesn't exist

English news from the Voice of America. VOA news provides coverage from around the world and learning English lessons from VOA Special English.

www.voanews.com

In Venezuela, an ongoing struggle for power amid a growing humanitarian disaster

Next week in Venezuela a new parliament is set to be sworn in, after members of the opposition boycotted elections earlier this month. It leaves opposition leader Juan Guaido in an even more precarious position, and the country with an uncertain future. Special correspondent Marcia Biggs reports.

www.pbs.org

According to the hardcore Right wing: Anything not the right of John Birch Society is communist, ergo Democrats are communists.
It's just classic RED BAITING and if Venezuela didn't exist, they'd invent one.

 

[Antiwar]

Check out The Intercept on Venezuela.

 

[Felis Leo]

I want to get some opinions here from folks who are more knowledgeable than I am on this. I constantly hear right wingers, just heard the talking heads on Fox News saying it today, bringing up Venezuela as a fear tactic when referring to a Democrat winning our Presidential election. It's especially mentioned when they refer to people like Bernie Sanders. I thought that 'socialism' was what they have in Europe, and Venezuela is a Kleptocracy, completely different animal. What are your thoughts?

Page doesn't exist

English news from the Voice of America. VOA news provides coverage from around the world and learning English lessons from VOA Special English.

www.voanews.com

In Venezuela, an ongoing struggle for power amid a growing humanitarian disaster

Next week in Venezuela a new parliament is set to be sworn in, after members of the opposition boycotted elections earlier this month. It leaves opposition leader Juan Guaido in an even more precarious position, and the country with an uncertain future. Special correspondent Marcia Biggs reports.

www.pbs.org

It is a favorite talking point of ours because it illustrates the failure of populist democratic socialism, and the destruction of one of the wealthiest nations in South America. It is brought up vis-a-vis Bernie Sanders because he longed to pursue policies of nationalizing major sectors of our economy in a method similar to what Chavez did. That is why.

All societies have some level of corruption. Hugo Chavez’s party PSUV destroyed the very foundations of wealth creation within Venezuelan society throuh constant property seizures and price controls and, yes, self-dealing. But that is democratic socialism. Wealth destruction and societal collapse that is voted into power.

Finally, a country can have a socialist economic structure AND be a kleptocracy, in which the goverment fully controls the production of goods and services and the leadership also engages in flagrant self-dealing. The Soviet Union was a great example of this, in which most of the country lived in squalor while Soviet leaders lived in palatial estates or getting to take the best-produced goods from factories to sell them on the black market in order to amass fortunes unobtainable in a nation with ensured income equality.

 

[Felis Leo]

According to the hardcore Right wing: Anything not the right of John Birch Society is communist, ergo Democrats are communists.
It's just classic RED BAITING and if Venezuela didn't exist, they'd invent one.

Nah. You are mistaken, Checkerboard Strangler. Venezuela is actually one of the few examples of a democratic socialist country (not a social democracy), in which a party was legally voted into power on a platform of nationalizing large sectors of the economy in the pursuit of economic and social justice and followed through on its promises. The political left in our country or elsewhere cannot use the tried and true hand waving explanations for the failures that we saw in tyrannical single-party socialist states ruled over by brutal revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Communist parties as in the USSR, China or Cuba.

It is a country that voluntarily chose socialism by plebiscite. And it went from what was otherwise one of the most wealthy countries in the Western Hemisphere (and certainly the wealthiest in South America) to the poorest under populist democratic socialist leadership. This is the fruit of socialism, full stop. And it is a tree that the government is actually starting to quietly pour defolient on, surprisingly.

Analysis: Venezuela is quietly quitting socialism

President Nicolas Maduro told CNN earlier this month that he thought the "values" of socialism might be fading, referring to new displays of wealth in the upmarket streets of Caracas. "At times we moved forwards, other times we pulled back. Perhaps today we retreated for what concerns our...

edition.cnn.com

 

[Ringo Stalin]

Venezuelans elected a Parliament in which many supporters of Maduro and a little of Guaido.
What should the West do in this situation? It's simple - consider the old parliament of Venezuela, which was before the elections.
Now the West appoints other countries not only presidents, but also entire parliaments.