Venezuela and Regime Change

Venezuela is in the middle of a political crisis that makes the US’s look normal (which, incidentally, it is, pundits notwithstanding). The coutnry’s current President, Nicolás Maduro, took over from former Pres. Hugo Chávez after the latter’s death from cancer and related complications. Following this the country has become embroiled in political violence, economic catastrophe, mass protest, and scandals that range from the disturbing to the ridiculous. Maduro’s opposition is calling his most recent actions an effort to illicitly maintain his power by rewriting, while Maduro accuses them in turn of dismantling the path towards socialism which Chávez set for the country.

I will leave readers who are interested to pursue their own answers to that question — opinions range wildly on both the right and left. Instead I want to call attention to the prospect of regime change itself, specifically as regards the extreme right. While the opposition to Maduro is generally understood to be largely conservative, recently a newer face of the opposition has emerged — Óscar Peréz, former B-movie actor, military policeman, and now extreme right militant.

Last month Peréz and others commandeered a helicopter and fired grenades at Venezuela’s Supreme Court of Justice, which in the political crisis has been granted legislative functions. None were injured, but the attack has been called an attempted coup by the government.

What makes this something more than an unfortunately common attack on government offices by a military officer is Pérez’s rhetoric, something noticed on the left in the US. In a video released before his attack, Pérez is seen flanked by four armed men and reads a speech arguing his case and using the rhetoric of the extreme right. Calling Maduro’s government “transitional” and “criminal,” he goes on to state that he and his comrades “do not belong to any political party” but are only “nationalists and institutional patriots.” The government must be transformed. He closes saying that he and his comrades are “warriors of God.” After the attack Pérez and his allies escaped, and have been seen at recent protest marches

This rhetoric is precisely the kind we would expect to see in a country like Venezuela, facing a political crisis on the left, with a large and multifaceted right wing and conservative opposition. Pérez and his compatriots are precisely the kind of militant extreme right opposition force that emerges in these contexts — recall that Mussolini and Hitler were both veterans, and that right wing political movements often deeply involve the military and police. It is also characteristically fascist to claim to be neither of the right nor the left but instead a “third position” that is purely in favor of the people, or the nation, which Pérez says verbatim in his video.

If we are concerned about the dangers of fascism, we must pay attention to every invocation of this rhetoric and every right wing attack, even if we disagree with the government they are attacking. Fascism has historically succeeded in being elected (in Germany or Italy) or imposed (in Spain and Romania) where it has been able to claim that it is a necessary defense against the left. Even if Pérez disappears from the scene, his message likely will not.

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Daily analysis of the contemporary right from a PhD candidate in History at UC Berkeley

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