The Pravda headline for August 23 read: "U.S. preacher Pat Robertson calls upon the USA to kill President Hugo Chavez." There followed a subheading: "Cuba and Venezuela to unite Latin American states to confront the growing imperial aggression of the USA." According to Pravda, America exports freedom to the countries of the former Soviet Union while its Latin American neighbors are creating a "center of active resistance...." The main figures in this center of resistance are Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and "the unsinkable Fidel Castro." The two communist leaders recently made a joint appearance on Cuban television and declared that "America" is threat number one. According to President Chavez, "The grand destroyer of the world, and the greatest threat ... is represented by U.S. imperialism."
Think about this for a moment. The greatest threat is not al Qaeda. The greatest threat is not Red China or the Soviet resurgence under Vladimr Putin. One may dismiss the threat posed by a nuclear-equipped Iran or a communist revolution sweeping Latin America. President Chavez, who championed the cause of Saddam Hussein and gave millions to finance the Taliban's war effort, said on Aug. 8 that America is the "most savage, cruel and murderous empire that has existed in the history of the world." Here we find the narrative of the Marxist-Leninist: "Socialism is the only path ... [to] save a world threatened by the voracity of U.S. imperialism." Chavez offered these words (earlier this month) at the 16th World Festival of Students and Youth, a communist extravaganza first hosted in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. According to the communist way of thinking, the terrorists of 9/11 and the narco-terrorists in Colombia (i.e., the Revolutionary Armed Forced of Colombia) are allies in the struggle against U.S. imperialism. The real terrorist nation is America. The crimes of Stalin were committed to stop the Americans. The atrocities of Mao and Pol Pot were necessary in order to combat the stooges of American imperialism in China and Cambodia. The communist purges in North Korea, Vietnam and the African red states were necessary measures to ensure the victory of socialism. Since America is the greatest evil "that has existed in the history of the world," then ruthless measures are always justified.
In terms of "politically correct" history, the dictators of the communist world were the "good guys. America's leaders were ever and always the bad guys. It is useful, of course, to denounce Stalin and Pol Pot. They are gone, so why defend them? Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, hides his communist beliefs. He is a new man - a man whose crimes haven't been fully documented (as yet). But he nonetheless follows the path of Lenin and Stalin. According to Peter Baker and Susan Glasser of the Washington Post, "Putin essentially threatened to mutilate a French reporter's penis for asking about Russian tactics that endangered Chechen civilians." Brutality will always be a characteristic of political communism. It is the key to Chavez and to Castro. The Black Book of Communism documents the crimes, terror and repression of Castro's regime - thereby anticipating the terrorism of Chavez. "During the repressions of the 1960s, between 7,000 and 10,000 people were killed and 30,000 imprisoned for political reasons," the Black Book noted. Castro formed neighborhood committees "for Defense of the Revolution" so that his followers could keep watch on "counterrevolutionary activities." The result was tight social control in the totalitarian style. One may hear ignorant persons talk of Cuba's vibrant economy and free population. But nonsense is nonsense, however colored by the false front of the regime.
Predictably, some readers will complain that America is "the real" totalitarian country. But nobody is fleeing Miami for Havana. You can always tell a totalitarian state by the fact that people vote with their feet - by leaving the country (at personal risk). In decrying the imperialism of the United States, the totalitarians tell one lie after another. They are the great distorters of history. And they have insinuated their dangerous propaganda into the political discourse of Europe and America. Consequently the masses, unwary in their acceptance of disguised communist ideas, have swallowed the Great Fable of American imperialism. Ask someone if they think America is the main threat today and I'll show you someone who picked up the wrong magazine or newspaper - not realizing its slant or pedigree.
The Nazis denounced America as a Jewish state and blamed the Jews for starting World War II. The communist denounce America as an imperialist state and prepare to blame the Americans for starting World War III. The writing is on the wall. The propaganda has already done its work. And should the American economy falter, the propaganda will get more and more blatant until it begins to resemble the old Stalinist rant (and the raw insistence that America should be destroyed if the world is to know peace). Communism conceives itself as the principle movement for stopping (American) imperialism. Many decades ago, the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, said: "We who struggle against imperialism represent an alliance demanding close military solidarity, and any attempts to disrupt this solidarity will be viewed as a totally inadmissible phenomenon, as betrayal of the interests of the struggle...."
In a Russian military text with the title "Marxism-Leninism On War and Army," we read: "The deepening of the general crisis of capitalism in the post-war years and the intensification of its contradictions have made the politics of imperialism more adventuristic. It now constitutes an ever greater danger to the peoples, to peace and social progress. The imperialists are preparing a new world war, and have repeatedly provoked international crises, which have pushed mankind to the brink of thermonuclear conflict."
According to the Russian communists, "U.S. imperialism has become the most aggressive force of international imperialist reaction. It is marked by ferocious hatred of socialism and the revolutionary movement...." If you imagine that this way of thinking no longer directs Moscow's policy or Beijing's policy, then you have misread the situation. The pretense of democracy, the trick of adopting capitalism (in China and Russia), is a long-term strategic maneuver. Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez have a role to play in this maneuver as they threaten to spread communism to Bolivia and Colombia. Take note of their theme: All terrorists who oppose America are justified in their terrorism. Stalin was justified in his terrorism, and Pol Pot and Mao and Kim Jong Il. All justified because America - they tell us - is the enemy of mankind. America is the true evil. "We are the good guys," say the communists.
Communist propaganda has a strategic objective. Blacken America's name, place a question mark over America's motives and rally the malcontents. There is only one reason the communists have failed to take over the world. That reason is the United States (i.e., American imperialism). Without American nuclear weapons to counter Soviet nuclear weapons the rest of the world would have been forced into a totalitarian straitjacket. It therefore makes sense that Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro want to remove the United States as an obstacle. It makes sense that both men are obsessed with fighting a future war against America. I believe, given the right circumstances, they would provoke such a war, and are willing to sacrifice their respective countries. According to Georgie Anne Geyer, who interviewed Castro four times, "Castro's ambition was always bigger than the island of Cuba." As Geyer explained, "countries normally mean nothing to men with these enormous pretensions...."
Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro aren't normal people. As for Pat Robertson, he shouldn't have suggested violent measures against a foreign head of state. As the death of President Kennedy showed (in the wake of failed assassination attempts against Castro), American leaders are more vulnerable to violent measures than totalitarian leaders.
