Category Archives: South America

Nearly two decades of socialism has left oil-rich Venezuela in an unparalleled crisis.

Recent figures show that a majority of Venezuelans go to bed hungry and 15 percent of people eat garbage to survive. The country desperately lacks basic resources, such as medicine and power.

Mass protests and riots are now breaking out across the country, as dictator Nicolas Maduro attempts to discard the Venezuelan constitution to tighten his grip on power.

However, Venezuela’s problems date back to 1999, with the election of socialist president Hugo Chávez, whose mass redistribution of wealth and financial mismanagement laid the groundwork for the country’s economic collapse.

Like his successor, Chávez was an authoritarian who clamped down on press freedom and regularly locked up his opponents. His government also funded gangs known as colectivos, tasked with intimidating poor communities into supporting him, while distributing pro-government propaganda across the country.

Nevertheless, Chávez’s regime received plaudits from numerous left-wing academics, politicians, and celebrities who have now gone quiet on the matter. Here are ten of the most prominent examples.

Noam Chomsky

The darling of the left, retired MIT professor Noam Chomsky was a supporter of Chávez’s Venezuela and his anti-Americanism, arguing that he brought forward the “historic liberation of Latin America” proving “destructive to the rich oligarchy.”

Chomsky also described claims that Chávez had suppressed press freedom as a “bit of a joke,” arguing that there was “much more of an opposition press than there is in most of Latin America.”

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When Horowitz asks one woman what she thinks of Americans wanting to bring democratic socialism to America, she says bluntly, “They would have to live what we are living so they can see for themselves that nothing is good, so they see this is only a nightmare for us, a terror.”

In a powerful and disturbing new video called Democrats Love Socialism, filmmaker Ami Horowitz posits that Democrats have moved hard to the left, proves it by showing American Democrats approving of socialism, then blows that sanguine perspective to smithereens by showing footage he gathered in the disaster that is socialist Venezuela.

?The Venezuelan footage begins with Horowitz walking down a dangerous street accompanied by a native. When Horowitz asks why they are there, the native answers that he is hungry, and looking for anything he can eat, whether it is a dog, cat or pigeon.

Images follow of riots, fires out of control, and starving natives fighting each other for food. Horowitz visits a barrio, and speaking with the starving natives there, notes that people will stand in line for days just to get a can of milk so they don’t starve. Horowitz points out that the natives are at risk of standing in lines for hours or days without getting food, as the lines are controlled by the government-approved mafia, called “The Collective.” They bus in their people before the stores open and grab all the food before the starving natives can get any.

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