Not long after being elected president of Venezuela in 1998, Hugo Chávez was being denounced as a dictator and a threat to “American interests” by US rulers and their faithful mouthpieces in the mainstream media. Chávez had the audacity to initiate major political-economic reforms on behalf of the Venezuelan working populace. Successive earlier administrations, dominated by the super rich, had done nothing about the rampant corruption, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the worsening malnutrition and desperation among the lowest stratum. The neoliberal market “adjustments” of the 1980s and 1990s only made things worse, cutting social spending and eliminating subsidies in consumer goods. In response to those horrendous conditions, here are some of the measures taken by the Chávez government:
Over the years, US agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy and the Agency for International Development channeled millions of dollars to Venezuelan organizations that were highly critical of the Chávez government, including more than $4 million to journalists and corporate media in Venezuela as part of the campaign to promote régime change.50 All this interference comes from an American government that itself does not allow foreign interests to spend one dollar in US elections.
In the US and Venezuelan media, Hugo Chávez was accorded the usual ad hominem treatment. The San Francisco Chronicle quoted a political opponent who called him “a psychopath, a terribly aggressive guy.” The London Financial Times saw him as “increasingly autocratic” and presiding over a “rogue democracy.” In the Nation, Marc Cooper—one of those Cold War liberals who regularly defends the US empire—described Chávez as “a thug” who “flirts with megalomania” and whose behavior “borders on the paranoiac.”51
Other media mouthpieces labeled Chávez “mercurial,” “heavy-handed,” “incompetent,” “dictatorial,” a “barracks populist,” and, above all, a “leftist,” a term that is seldom defined. In contrast, Chávez’s opponents, free market plutocrats and military leaders of the privileged social order, who staged a treasonous coup in April 2002 against Venezuela’s democratically elected government, are depicted in the United States as champions of “pro-democratic” and “pro-West” governance.52 When one of these perpetrators, General Carlos Alfonzo, was hit with charges for the role he played in the undemocratic coup, the New York Times chose to call him a “dissident” whose rights were being suppressed by the Chávez government.53
Venezuela’s wealthy media moguls, all vehemently anti-Chávez, own all the television stations save one and all the major newspapers. No wonder many Venezuelans know relatively little about government reforms. Andre Vltchek met numerous Venezuelan journalists in Caracas and in the provinces “who complained that they were not allowed to write articles and produce news programs that were supportive of their own government. Corporate media bosses threatened to fire those who would sympathize with Chávez.”54
In 2007 Chávez refused to renew the license of Venezuela’s oldest private station, RCTV, because of the active support it had given to the April 2002 coup against him. US opinion makers denounced him as a dictator.
Two letters by American readers commented on US media treatment of the Venezuelan president. In 2002 Donald Scott asked why the San Francisco Chronicle described Chávez in such loaded terms as “a populist strongman with leftist leanings.” To be consistent, Scott argued, President Bush should be described as “an elitist oilman with far-right leanings who became president by political manipulation.” Scott concluded, “I doubt that we will ever see such candor by US newspapers.”55 Another reader, Robert Naiman, questioned the New York Times:
I was puzzled by your article in which Venezuela’s efforts to aid poor people in the Western Hemisphere, including Mexicans needing eye surgery and Americans needing heating oil, were described as “pet projects” of President Hugo Chávez. Don’t all countries seek foreign allies? Why is it particularly nefarious for Venezuela to do so? Similar efforts by the United States government are described in the article as “development programs.” Why are these not also “pet projects”? Why the asymmetry in your reporting?56
Millions of his compatriots correctly perceive Chávez as being the only president who has ever paid attention to the nation’s poorest areas. His government represents an entirely different mode of social organization in which the nations of the world should put people before profits, using the wealth of the nation to serve the working populace instead of the favored few. For this, he and any other leader with such an egalitarian agenda are immediately listed in the “enemy” column by the ever-vigilant empire builders.