Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Why Venezuela and Syria Cannot Fall

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Why Venezuela and Syria Cannot Fall

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook.

Vltchek talks to a Scandinavian "progressive" crowd but for some rather obscure reason they, for the most part, cannot understand his view that people in countries like Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia are in a desperate battle for survival against the US-led Empire and its selfish individualism.

I am well aware of the fact that many of my readers are from the West. Somehow, particularly in Europe, I cannot explain, anymore, what it really is to be a revolutionary. Recently I spoke at a big gathering of ‘progressive’ teachers, which took place in Scandinavia. I tried to fire them up, to explain to them what monstrous crimes the West has been committing all over the world, for centuries.

I tried and I failed. When the lights went on, I was drilled by hundreds of eyes. Yes, there was an applause, and many stood up in that fake cliché – a standing ovation. But I knew that our worlds were far apart.

What followed were pre-fabricated and shallow questions about human rights in China, about “Assad’s regime”, but nothing about the collective responsibility of people of the West.

To understand what goes on in Syria and in Venezuela, requires stepping out of the Western mindset. It cannot be understood by selfish minds that are only obsessed with sexuality and sexual orientation, and with self-interest.

I believe that the "rather obscure reason" is the success of Western propaganda to infect the minds of its more "educated" subjects, or the essential (for the survival of the capitalist class) upper-middle class pampered workers, with identity politics, the latest version of self-seeking that capitalism propagandists have used for centuries to fool its subjects to support the rule of this increasingly tiny, rich, and very powerful class of people.

For example, this "progressive" commentator, a Cuban-American, objected to the term "gusano" because he argued that it was an ethnic slur--and not an ideological slur which it is.

Let me be clear, I am not opposed to identity politics, but it has been used by the ruling capitalist classes to divert attention from the issues related to wars and precarity for the vast majority of people.