Venezuela's anti- gringo hate campaign should not be taken lightly
By Miguel Octavio | The Devil's Excrement
05.04.05 | I am a little concerned that people don’t seem to be taking seriously Eliezer Otaiza’s words about promoting the hate towards US citizens or “gringos”. With time, I have learned not to take lightly anything said by Chavez and his cohorts. In this particular case, there are many reasons to take it even more seriously, since Chavez in his Sunday program yesterday talked now about 2 million reservists in order to “defend together with the people the sovereignty and greatness of this land” adding later “the best way to avoid war is to be prepared for it”. Thus, it is not Otaiza’s fertile imagination which is thinking war, but it is a line of thinking that in my mind, comes all the way from the top.
This is all being accompanied by an amazingly irresponsible purchase of weapons of all sorts at a huge cost to the country, rather than spending these funds social programs or making the economy grow. This shows once again that the people are not the priority, despite what the “revolution” claims. Venezuela is buying boats, planes, rifles, bullets and uniforms in quantities never before seen in its history. This is a path typical of non-democratic and autocratic leaders. This is typical of the type of fear societies created by autocratic leaders like Chavez, who in the words of Natan Sharansky “do not depend on their people; their people depend on them”.
You need force and an external enemy to encroach a fear society, so that people will always justify their hardships on the presence of an external enemy. This actually provides internal stability. The formula is old (Think Castro!) and Chavez is following it to the last detail. While Venezuela will hopefully never go to war with the US, Otaiza’s proposal represents the type of immoral campaign that autocratic regimes start in order to justify what can not be justified: create an invsible, external enemy that will create sympathy for the autocrat.
Otaiza may have been a stripper, but I am sure that what he says has been discussed by Chavez and his advisers in private. Even Petkoff in today’s Tal Cual, translated below, takes this lightly and points to the reaction by the President of the National Assembly yesterday as an example. However, Maduro is not part of that inner circle of former military startegists. Maduro does not share the same military mind of Chavez’ close circle. Otaiza does. Anyone with a true democratic mind would not even be considering the possibility of a war, least of all the immoral promotion of hate against any national group. But these guys are doing it. Otaiza will remain in his Government position, because what he said does not offend Chavez, in fact, I am sure it started with the President himself.
Otaiza was Chavez’ intelligence Chief and has been moved to other positions of importance. He followed Chavez’ own brother as head of the supposedly “all important” Land Institute. He has Chavez’ trust, he is part of the inner circle. Don’t take his words lightly, had they offended Chavez' sensibility, he would have removed him or scolded him. Neither of these has happened and I doubt either will. This is part of the society of fear they are turning Venezuela into. They have already taken us for a much longer ride than any of you thought possible.
I guess Petkoff does disagree with me, as do most of the readers in the comment section. You have been warned!
How can Otaiza have a position of responsibility? by Teodoro Petkoff
The truth is that nobody who is deemed sane can take Eliezer Otaiza seriously. His latest intellectual feat, that probably left his brain fired, was that one of proposing that Venezuelans devote their time to hate the gringos, can not be taken but as a ravings by someone that is not in his right mind. The only thing missing was for him to propose the daily “two minutes of hate” that Orwell painted in his famous “1984”. In this sense this mini-reporter, at least, will not devote more than nine written lines that he has written up to here about that demential rhetoric. But, on the other hand, this should be a lesson for Chavez. Each time that he releases one of those calculated extravagances or he lets loose one of his outlandish occurrence, product of his verbal incontinence, he should take into account that among his supporters there is more than one guy with a softened brain, that takes it seriously and believes this is a directive. You see around, as an example, a bunch of nuts, civilians and military, talking about the “asymmetric war” theme, for which amazingly, the first premise they postulate is that our Armed Forces would be swept in two days by the yanqui invader. Not without reason, Nicolas Maduro (President of the Assembly), in an interview for El Universal yesterday, asked the reporter, laughing, not to ask him about “that”. “That” was Otaiza’s interview.
He probably felt someone else’s shame
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