Guaido's coup-by-media shows his Venezuelan revolution to be little more than a PR campaign

[Judi Lynn]

Make a video of yourself and your invariably male, invariably white pals posturing superhero-style about ‘liberating’ a supposedly agency-less, fully oppressed people. Then say you’re in control of the military, and post it online. Bingo: welcome to the 21st century Latin American coup

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
5 days ago

"Yesterday, Juan Guaido tried to pull off the first purely media-orchestrated coup in history. According to reports coming from the ground in Venezuela today, he failed. But you have to search long and hard, carefully rifling through the mainstream cut-and-paste reportage that mortifyingly repeats one and the same narrative if you want to recompose a more balanced picture and keep yourself informed.

Back in 1973, when Chile’s far-right industrialists and financiers overthrew leftist democrat Salvador Allende with the full support of the US and the sector of the army led by General Pinochet which joined at the last minute, the first thing they did was to cut off the media. Now is the opposite. You can count on them. At least that’s what the contemporary far right equivalent of yesterday’s golpistas believe.

The current wave of right-wing putchism in the Americas looks very different from the coups of the past.

Make a video of yourself and your invariably male, invariably white pals posturing superhero-style about “liberating” a supposedly agency-less, fully oppressed people. Add a sentimental story about kids and the elderly having to eat from trash cans to pave the way for the justification that you’re doing this not in your name and that of your industrialist pals but in the name of humanity; then say you’re in control of the military, and post it online.

Never mind that el pueblo, specifically the poor, used to go hungry already back in the “good old days” when the rich got richer and the poorer only got more disenfranchised, disempowered and discriminated against for their skin-colour. Never mind that you and your twenty-five pals in green fatigues actually never made it into the air base but remained outside in the Altamira overpass, or that the video shows no trace of the airplanes and helicopters you’re going to use “to bring back liberty”. Tweet a one-liner about the “decisive phase” of “Operation Liberty” (not “freedom”, freedom is too complicated, too liberal, too lefty) and that will do it.

More:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/venezuela-coup-juan-guaido-leopoldo-lopez-nicolas-maduro-chavez-media-a8894891.html

[2naSalit]

1. K&R