Don Nico

A few years ago, I attended, on official duty, an international conference organized by the United Nations in the city of João Pessoa in the far east of Brazil. By Brazilian standards, the city is fairly small, with barely more than a million inhabitants; it has miles of sandy beaches, restaurants, hotels and an impressive number of murders per capita. The conference center was half an hour’s drive away along a mixture of potholed dirt roads and short stretches of four-lane highway, with junctions that evidently led nowhere. None of it made a great impression, either in terms of urban planning or the sensible use of public money. When I asked the locals why the conference center had been built in such a remote place, the answer was that the governor was a good friend of the president. It is an anecdotal illustration of the corruption and clientelism that caused two left-wing predecessors of Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, to end their terms rather miserably. First Dilma Rousseff was removed from office over a corruption scandal, and then her predecessor, Lula, was sentenced to prison for similar dealings. Both certainly contributed to the fact that Brazil, tired of corruption, finally opted for an adventure with the unbalanced far-right Bolsonaro.

The first lesson of the Brazilian story is that the rise of right-wing populism is not always caused solely by economic neoliberalism; in some cases it is also due to the corruption, incompetence, lust for power and greed of those who otherwise never stop talking about social justice. The Brazilian experience also helps us understand the crisis in Venezuela in a more nuanced way. Listening to the American president talk about humanitarian motives for helping the Venezuelan people while his subordinates announce economic sanctions and even the use of military force, we are quite justifiably seized by holy anger. The American administration in general, and the current one in particular, has many reasons to be much humbler and more restrained. Not only threats of military force but also sanctions, whose aim is apparently to deepen the suffering of an already desperate population and drive them to rise up against Maduro, are not only immoral but dangerous. Historical experience shows that such an approach is often an excellent gift to sanctioned regimes, as it offers them a handy excuse to use an even harder hand in the fight to stay in power.

On the other hand, justified anger at American policy, which objectively increases the danger of even greater violence, in no way excuses ideologically driven short-sightedness and the glorification of the “democratically elected” compañero Maduro. In reaction to the crisis, virtual equivalents of the Spanish International Brigades are forming on social networks, people are searching for a “no pasarán” emoji, while the internet commentariat solemnly swears it is ready to fight for Comrade Nicolás, keyboard in hand.

Which is not serious. The sanctions are unjust and dangerous, but it was above all Maduro and Chávez who put the gun of economic collapse to Venezuela’s temple. In normal circumstances, the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world could respond to threats of sanctions with a raised middle finger dipped in black gold. The problem is that both Hugo and Nicolás treated the oil industry as a private fund for maintaining their own regime. They bought loyalty with top positions, which logically led to the industry’s collapse and the destruction of its infrastructure. The state oil company is run by a National Guard general with no experience whatsoever in the field. Crude oil is mostly exported and processed in refineries in the United States.

Chávez’s revolution and the broad popular support he enjoyed in the first years of his rule did not, of course, come out of nowhere. They were the result of injustices and hardships caused by previous governments with strong backing from American and other oil multinationals. A revolt against the economic colonization of the country and for greater social justice would certainly have been legitimate if it had brought the population greater prosperity, social influence and democracy. But Chávez and Maduro did anything but that. The UN Refugee Agency reports that by last November at least three million citizens had left Venezuela, and almost as many again are planning to leave. The reason for the biggest refugee crisis in the recent history of the South American continent is the growing shortage of basic foodstuffs and medical supplies. In a country literally sitting on oil, people queue for petrol and suffer from hunger. “Collapse in Venezuela,” wrote the weekly Mladina as early as July 2016. A year later, our media were writing about descendants of Slovenian emigrants dying for lack of medicines.

It is also worth thinking more critically about claims of Maduro’s democratic legitimacy. In Venezuela today, there is no longer any official institution capable of overseeing the executive. Maduro and Chávez packed the courts with judges who no longer even pretend to be independent. The authorities’ repression of critical voices is reflected in the often violent suppression of protests, the jailing of political opponents and the prosecution of civilians before military courts. Human rights violations go unpunished, and the authorities persecute both human rights defenders and independent media. This assessment is not the inflammatory propaganda of enemies of the Venezuelan people but a quote from Human Rights Watch’s 2019 report. Despite having subjugated almost every lever of power, Maduro lost the last parliamentary elections in 2015 by a wide margin. But since the people cannot be in opposition, as Viktor Orbán once colorfully put it, Maduro used the courts under his control to strip the democratically elected parliament of its powers and set up a parallel constituent assembly packed with regime loyalists. In these conditions, Maduro was elected last May in elections that, according to most observers, did not meet minimum democratic standards.

What is most striking in the tragedy of Venezuela and its citizens is not so much the differences between Trump and Maduro as what they and their cronies have in common and what unites them. Populists, of whatever color, need each other and complement each other. They provide each other with an alibi for legitimacy and ease each other’s path to power, while in between, both forget the people who are increasingly struggling. The “it doesn’t matter what he’s like, as long as he’s ours” attitude—part of the left ignoring or even justifying Maduro’s corruption and his violations of human rights and political freedoms—is a big gift to the populist right. Positions on the Venezuelan crisis are really not so much about divisions between left and right as about polarization over certain fundamental civilizational and democratic values. On one side are those, whatever their color, who believe that in the name of the people, or of profits camouflaged as the people, any means may be used to seize and keep power. On the other side is politics, whether left, right or center, that does not reduce democracy to elections—which, after all, they know how to organize in Hungary or Iran too—but also guarantees an independent judiciary, free media, effective protection of human rights and political freedoms, an influential civil society and the democratic rule of law with an effective defense against corruption and other abuses of power. And, of course, social solidarity and social justice, without which there is no functioning liberal democracy. Only such a democracy can bring Venezuela and its citizens lasting stability, prosperity and freedom, but neither Maduro nor Trump can, is able to, or wants to make that possible for them.