Debunking Charlie Kirk on Venezuela

Since Venezuela is in the news, it is now time to look at one of Charlie Kirk’s and Turning Point’s favorite subjects. What I will show is that while at times Kirk has facts, his reasoning is not good. In the end, his shallow and simplistic rhetoric leaves out essential elements.

A Brief Tour

The nation is facing a deep political crisis as citizens protest the despotic reign of President Nicolás Maduro. CNN reported on Jan. 30 that the nation’s highest court, filled with allies of Maduro, forced the country to “freeze bank accounts and impose a travel ban on self-declared interim president Juan Guaido.”

The BBC has a good “explainer” on how the crisis escalated. The British news agency notes: “The South American country has been caught in a downward spiral for years with growing political discontent further fueled by skyrocketing hyperinflation, power cuts and shortages of food and medicine.”

That spiral was brought on by the socialist policies of Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013. Maduro has been “re-elected” twice now.

Both men concentrated power in their presidency. But they also have ruled in a form of democracy. I say “form” because the country’s main democratic institutions have been co-opted by the powerful.

I also say that to note differences between Venezuela and other countries Kirk associates with it.

For example, the New Yorker sums up the difference between Cuba’s socialist state and “the “twenty-­first-century socialism” of Venezuela: the latter is built on “electoral democracy; opinion polling and elections qualify as national obsessions. Chávez ruled in permanent campaign mode — there was always a referendum, a parliamentary election, a Presidential contest looming.”

But Maduro is less charismatic and more defiant of democracy, controlling institutions that have so far forestalled or controlled any vote that might oust him.

Oil has propped up the economy but can’t save it now, according to The New Yorker: “When the oil price plunged two years ago, it sparked the present economic disaster. But the price has since rebounded, and oil now trades in a middling range, and the Venezuelan economy continues to crater.”

Kirk’s Tweets

And that brings us to Kirk and his hashtag #socialismsucks.

I want to identify some of the sources for the facts Kirk has been tweeting about the nation.

This story has reputable sources, outside the Fox Business segment Kirk is tweeting. Food delivery is a dangerous job, according to a May 29, 2017 report from PRI. NBC News did a similar story in 2015.

The 2017 and 2016 numbers are good, as Forbes notes: “In 2018 Venezuela’s GDP is expected to contract by double digits for the third straight consecutive year. Economic output in Venezuela fell by 16% in 2016, 14% in 2017, and is expected to drop by 15% this year.” I will assume the previous years are good, too.

On the diseases and child deaths, Venezuela has seen a rise in them since the economic crisis began, according to CNN: “Since 2016, newborn deaths have been on the rise, but official records are difficult to come by. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro fired Health Minister Antonieta Caporale in early 2017, days after her department released its first batch of health- related data in two years. It showed soaring infant and maternal mortality rates. Pregnancy-related deaths rose 66% and 11,466 infants died — a 30% increase.”

Reuters reported in 2017: “Last year 31 Venezuelan infants died every day on average. Many were victims of diarrhea, bacterial infections and other diseases that, according to the local pediatric society, could have been prevented or easily treated.”

This obviously does not name the diseases Kirk does. The “society” mentioned in the Reuters article is the Venezuelan Society of Childhood and Pediatrics. It has told Global Health Intelligence, a market research firm for healthcare infrastructure in Latin America, that “there are no precise figures on the number of deaths due to malaria at the national level, but in Bolívar there were 56 reported deaths due to malaria (until July 10 [2017]), approximately 30% more than last year in the same period.” There is a lack of vaccines for many diseases in Venezuela.

Kirk is good with the malnourished children number, too. According to Caritas, a Catholic relief agency, “in January [2018] 68 percent of the children under 5 examined by Caritas Venezuela showed signs of a nutritional deficit.” And it repeats that stat here.

The 300,000 number was reported by the Panama Post, citing Caritas.

On the numbers of people who have fled, it of course depends on when Kirk begins the clock. In other words, when was socialism “implemented?” Chavez was first elected in 1998.

A United Nations estimate suggests during the current crisis — roughly beginning in 2015 or 2014 — about three million have left, not near the 14 percent.

But it is most likely that Kirk is citing a broader estimate by the libertarian economic think tank Foundation for Economic Education, quoting an Economist study. The FEE argues “the total number of displaced Venezuelans may already have reached four million out of a population of about 30 million, which represents 13 percent of the population of Venezuela.”

The Guardian, using a Colombian prediction for 2020, notes: “ The UN estimates that 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled since 2015 with Colombian authorities predicting 2 million more could follow by 2020. That would mean some 4.3 million people — 14% of Venezuela’s population — had taken flight.”

Naming Isms

It’s clear Kirk uses facts in his tweets about Venezuela. Some are not as up-to-date as others, but they do check out.

Of course what Kirk does with facts is key. He is using these facts to show the failure of socialism. Or in his tweet — the perfect implementation of socialism.

[He has a similar line for Facebook: “It’s not that Socialism wasn’t properly implemented, it’s that it was PERFECTLY implemented!”]

The “socialism has been tried and failed” line of argument is not unique to Kirk. It is a response to advocates of socialism or Marxists who suggest it has not ever been implemented (here the implication is “perfectly” or “broadly enough” to judge).

The Mises Institute, an Alabama-based think tank on Austrian economics, often libertarian and then anti-socialist, notes “‘Real Socialism’ Has Indeed Been Tried — And It’s Been a Disaster.” The Institute of Economic Affairs, the UK’s original free-market think-tank, argues “‘real socialism’ would also be a recipe for permanent social conflict and resentment.”

Yet what is “perfect implementation” to Kirk? He doesn’t say. He uses the adjective not for its definition content but for its superlative effect.

But the isms here are all of one kind to Kirk. But he admits “leveling of degrees” between Marxism, socialism, and communism, between, say North Korea, Venezuela, and other nations.

On the one hand, there is perfect implementation in all places because socialism must fail in all its guises, and yet there are degrees of implementation across the globe. This strains logical coherence.

There is certainly an argument to be made about whether Marx or his writings actually support the isms done in his name. I’ll leave that to others.

But what is rhetorically interesting is how Kirk conflates. He narrows down to a common denominator that erases important and powerful nuances.

Kirk was asked to describe how socialism leads to communism in a Q/A after one of his rallies. His answer: “When you centralize power it leads to totalitarianism.” He then lists some countries: Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, USSR, North Korea.

Certainly these countries centralized power. But how and when and why are details that matter. Cuba’s revolution led by Castro was a rebellion against authoritarianism. It nationalized industry.

Like Cuba, the United States’ rebellion was against authoritarianism. Of course the US does not have centralized power in the same manner as Cuba, nor its dictatorship. It has a central, federal government, but of course Kirk has not said that the US is heading to authoritarianism.

Kirk narrows the criticism of socialism, communism, and Marxism to centralized power. In another video, he says “Marxism” but the headline provided by Turning Point says “socialism.” He calls this “a single ideology.”

But at least in one view of Marxism, it began as a revolt against centralized power, the power of the people who owned the means of production. And a literal definition of communism erases the centralizing function of the state.

Why does Kirk conflate all three into a “single ideology?” There are historical reasons for linking them but Kirk doesn’t do that historical thinking.

It may be many people now note differences.

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation does an annual poll on these concepts. In its 2018 poll it discovered that “half of Americans associate socialism with welfare states in Western Europe and Scandinavia — not Marxist dictatorships.” In other words, “when Americans — especially Millennials — think of ‘socialism,’ they primarily think about Bernie Sanders, Western European democracies, income equality, and access to healthcare. They also do not associate socialism with communism and authoritarianism.”

It is not surprising that this group listed the same counties as Kirk in its statement about the poll: “As Marx and other leading socialists have made clear, socialism denies the concept of individual rights, rejects transcendent truth, and favors a collective understanding of justice. This system also now has a past record of practice in places like the USSR, China, Cuba, North Korea, and now Venezuela, among dozens of others around the world since 1917. Marxist governments have caused enormous political, economic, and humanitarian catastrophes — some of which continue today.”

The link from socialism to authoritarianism is not always made thru centralized power. Venezuela is a good example. Chavez initially brought needed reforms to the nation but renounced those in favor of an “eternal presidency” where there were no limits on his re-election. But he did this through re-writing the nation’s constitution, changes voted on by the citizens.

The Brookings Institute noted in 2007 when those changes were afoot: “the Venezuelan people” have “the choice of continuing with their socialist charter, or choosing to give their President dictatorial powers…” It’s what the Brookings Institute calls “an uneasy reminder of the continuing threat of charismatic dictatorship to existing rules and institutions.”

The ism that Kirk hates was taken over by a dictator. A dictator didn’t necessarily become the effect of the ism. If it was, we would see a dictator in Sweden or Norway, no?

Kirk’s isms and Trump

Kirk wants to place Venezuela into the same category as any government that centralizes power. In other event videos, he has suggested any “socialist” program in America — programs that “centralize” power — has failed. He mentions the Veterans Administration.

Finally, that leads me to President Trump. He “alone can fix it.” He has made strong moves toward centralized or what Turning Point and Kirk call “big government.”

The National Review, a leading voice of conservatism in America, uses Kirk’s own words against him: “Trump does not oppose big government. He believes that we simply haven’t been doing it right. Trumpism, like the ‘true Communism’ beloved of Berkeley sophomores, has never been tried. Or so he thinks. Of course it has: in Italy, in Germany, in Spain, in Venezuela…”

Trumpism may be an incoherent, instinctive ism but it has tendencies toward the isms Kirk dislikes. Yet Kirk again and again has defended Trump, even attacked conservative critics of the president on the grounds of disloyalty: “He is all we have.”

Centralized power is a helluva drug.