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corporate media is in, as to demonizing leftist (marjorityist) leaders. Be gentle with them, Judi. They know not where their "memes" are coming from. It takes quite a lot of experience and insight--including (for most people) unplugging from corporate monopoly TV and radio "news" for a while--as well as psychological courage (willingness to face the real world), and critical reading abilities (seeing through journalistic tricks and dishonesty)--to understand how inside out, upside down and backwards corporate "news" has become, and how propagandistic and fascist it has become. It's nothing more than the "Big Lie" of Orwell's "1984."* Whatever it asserts that serves the interests of corporate rule (and its related wars), you can be fairly certain that the exact opposite is the truth. And some of us have traced some of these self-serving corporate "memes" (lies that are given currency by monopolistic media) to their source.
The Lopez Obrador as a "dictator" meme came directly from a professor at William and Mary College, who wrote a book called, "Mexican Messiah." He is the original AMLO "swift-boater." He likely wrote it at the behest of (and funded by) some rightwing think tank. However it got written and published, it has proven useful to the corporate rulers--and they have picked up on it and replicated it in opinion columns, editorials, and even in news articles and the framing of news stories. It's not yet quite so pervasive as the one on Chavez (below), but it's getting there. The man of the people, the spokesman for the huge population of the poor and the brown (by far the majority) in Mexico, the politician who lives in a small apartment and believes that, with so much poverty in Mexico, well-paid government officials should cut their salaries, the man who pledges to bring more fairness and justice to the economy, is now a "dictator"--a self-important "messiah," and also a leftwing bogeyman, a Castro, a Che, a Mao Zedong, an armed revolutionary, a jungle guerrilla fighter anxious to blow the heads off all the rich and super-rich.
It's just laughable. AMLO, the dictator. All he wants--and has ever spoken of--is FAIR taxation and an equitable economy. The super-rich experience this mild policy as beheading. Those 5 multi-billionaire CEOs who control all news here (and most Mexican corporate news as well) want to hang onto every peso of unseemly profit. Take one peso away from them, and they die a small death. They project AMLO--who only wants fairness--as their executioner. They find some whore academic to write it up--AMLO wants to be Mexico's "Savior." And it goes from there--from Jesus to Stalin--in one big fit of corporate paranoia.
The other aspect to this demonization of any strong leftist (majorityist) leader is that it focuses on him, as a personality, and ignores all his supporters and his policy team. Would THEY follow a dictator? It's ridiculous. And it's a huge insult to THEM--to the citizens, voters, organizers and professionals who support AMLO's candidacy and believe that the election was stolen. Are THEY "dictators"? All of them, collectively--at least half of Mexico? All they are asking for is, a) that all the votes be counted, and b) fair economic policy. And if they resist a stolen election, and resist egregious unfairness--peacefully, as they have been--is that dictatorial? It sounds like democracy to ME! Democracy at its best. But THEIR wishes are rarely or never considered or given voice in the corporate monopoly media. It's easier to focus on and demonize one person. And with that person demonized, it is then easy to twist everything around, and blame HIM for the violence that the Fox/Calderon fascists may be planning, or for divisiveness in the country. The divisiveness is the result of extremely unfair economic policy. Lopez Obrador did not do that. THEY did. Neither he nor his supporters are causing division. They are expressing their OBJECTION to that division--the rich elite vs. the vast population of the impoverished. And THAT is democracy! For if they were to put up with it, and remain silent sufferers, they would be acquiescing to their own oppression and to fascist policy--just as surely as blacks in the American south acquiesced to segregation, until, one day, they decided not to. And they, too, were called disruptive, troublemakers, and divisive, and their leader, Martin Luther King, was demonized. He was considered the Devil himself by some. J. Edgar Hoover hounded him to this death.
The war profiteering corporate news monopolies have done a similar trick on Hugo Chavez--a man who has been elected and re-elected by Venezuelans in the most heavily monitored elections in history. There is absolutely NO evidence that Chavez is "authoritarian." None! Nor that his supporters and his cabinet and his majority in congress would abide "authoritarian" government. Yet you find this "meme" about Chavez--that "his critics" claim that he is "increasingly authoritarian"-- throughout the corporate news monopoly press, in AP articles, in the NYT, the WaPo, the WSJ, and elsewhere. Always without quotation marks. "His critics claim." The ONLY quoted source I have ever found for this opinion of Chavez is Cardinal Carillo Lara, an extremely rightwing Catholic cardinal who spent his career in the Vatican running the Pope's finances, and was forced out of that office during the fascist banking scandals of the 1980s. He's now very old, and regularly spouts anti-Chavez opinions--to the embarrassment of the more moderate and liberal elements of the Catholic Church in Venezuela. So, is THIS who AP, the NYT, WaPo and the WSJ is "consulting" about Hugo Chavez? Probably him and Condoleeza Rice. There IS a tiny rich oil elite in Venezuela that loathes Chavez--and 24/7 corporate monopoly news vituperation of Chavez in the Venezuela media. Both this tiny rich oil elite and the corporate news monopolies openly supported the violent military coup against him, and he has taken NO revenge upon any of them--other than the actual main coup actors in the military, who were convicted and jailed (and were recently sprung from jail, possibly by the CIA). But I've never come across another quoted person, saying that Chavez is "authoritarian."
If you believe that Hugo Chavez is "authoritarian," then you have suffered over-exposure to corporate news monopoly propaganda, and should take a break from it and go on a Buddhist retreat or something. (Watch your mind watching your mind. Know what I mean?)
The same with Lopez Obrador.
Anyone can become full of himself, and authoritarian, and a dictator, of course. Look at Bush! HE's slaughtered a hundred thousand innocent people. He's had thousands of people tortured. He has torn up the U.S. Constitution and is daily inventing laws to suit himself and his junta. Do we ever see HIM described in these terms--authoritarian, dictatorial? They also always put "leftwing" in front of Lopez Obrador and Chavez, as if it were their first name or part of their official title. "The leftwing mayor of Mexico City." Do they ever put "rightwing" in front of Bush's name or title? "The rightwing President of the U.S."? (Think about it.) But there is NO EVIDENCE that this syndrome has hit either Lopez Obrado or Chavez. They like the spotlight. What politician doesn't? They are showmen. What good politician isn't? And they are both STRONG-MINDED individuals and leaders. How can you lead a movement for change without being strong-minded? They both at the same time seem to be good listeners--they are very responsive to the people they meet, and to the people in general. And they are also thoroughgoing populists. This is their only crime, really. To fascists, someone who tries to represent the interests of the majority must be a fake, or a dictator, out to behead the rich. Who in his right mind would want the rabble to have a voice in government? What man with power wouldn't use it to make himself rich? That's how they think. And so they conjure this spook--the leftist dictator--out of past spooks (the leftist guerrilla; the communist revolutionary; Robespierre), and repeat it thousands of times, until it becomes the unconscious, kneejerk spook that pops up in peoples' mind every time they hear the name Hugo Chavez. Another word for it is brainwashing. Our of their own demons--greed, tyranny--they create this phantom leftist leader, and, with the tremendous media power they have, they plant that phantom in everyone's heads.
I've almost laughed sometimes--although it's painful, too--seeing anti-Chavistas here at DU try to defend this spook, Chavez the dictator. They sputter and hem and haw (blogging-wise). One of them came up with a plank in the Venezuelan Constitution that says that maligning the government or the country can be prosecuted. It's never been used. They said, "But what's it doing there?" A lot of people wrote that Constitution. I don't know what was on their minds. All I know is that Chavez has IGNORED it. So they have a bad law. So do we--any number of them. What does that have to do with CHAVEZ? And where is the other evidence? He just the other day squelched a plan by the mayor of Caracas to confiscate two country club golf courses for low cost housing because it was UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Venezuela's Constitution guarantees property rights. How radical and dictatorial is that? All the evidence goes the other way-that Chavez is respectful of the law and the limits on his power as president. There is NO evidence--not even a hint of evidence--that he is "authoritarian."
Nothing. Nada. He is NOT a dictator. He is the duly elected, and very popular, president of his country, with policies that respond to the will of the majority--all in all, a rather moderate program.
I should also mention that both Mexico and Venezuela have a lot of oil. Ring any bells? And both Chavez and Lopez Obrador support using some of their country's oil profits to help the poor--lawfully of course, through fair taxation. Now THAT is dictatorial.
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Note
* Perhaps an even better analogy is "Alice Wonderland." The Red Queen orders all the white roses painted red. Her minions immediately get out the buckets of red paint and paintbrushes and begin doing so--because if they don't, "Off with their heads!" Alice enters the scene, sees them painting the white roses red, and finds this absurd. She still has a logical brain from the normal world. She can see quite clearly how idiotic it is to PAINT roses--and how tyrannical the Queen is (to order them to be painted, because they are not "her" color). "Alice in Wonderland," aka, "Through the Looking Glass," is literally an inside-out, upside-down, backwards world, in which the lies of society are mirrored. People who have begun to understand how bad corporate "news" is, are like Alice. We spot the lie more quickly. But those who are steeped in corporate "news" are like the denizens of Wonderland who have learned to accept the utterly absurd as their reality. They seem to have no choice--it's all around them. Absurdity is the norm. And, in some cases--as with the Red Queen's minions--it's a matter of survival. If you don't accept white roses painted red, as real red roses, you get your head chopped off. Orwell summed up this Big Lie method of propaganda with Big Brother's phrase, 'War is peace." Sound familiar? Black is white. 2 plus 2 equals 5. The earth is flat. Say it often enough and it becomes true--sort of--because everybody seems to believe it. And I stress "seems." The human mind is always rebelling, or capable of rebelling, against lies, falsehood, deceit, propaganda. I know. I survived years of rightwing Catholic education. Alice in Wonderland Deluxe. The Catholic Church, Bush & Co., and the corporate news monopolies are similar to the Red Queen. They are painting white roses red all the time. But absurd as their assertions are, it is not that easy to step outside their Wonderland and find reality and truth for yourself. The "news' is our umbilical cord to the "nation." They use that dependence against us. If we cut the cord to their lies, then who are we? What can we trust? How do we determine what's real and true? It can be hard. But it's very important that we try.
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