The Venezuelan Right Wing Is Floundering: Polling Firm Head Criticizes Unitary Platform’s ‘Triumphalist’ Narrative

9 June 2024

ORINOCO TRIBUNE

As the Venezuelan Presidential election date approaches, the right wing is still unable to produce a unified strategy or narrative. This is evidenced by infighting and internal criticisms amongst those sympathetic to the right.

The head of the Venezuelan polling firm Datanálisis, anti-Chavista political analyst and opposition sympathizer Luis Vicente León criticized the far-right opposition coalition Unitary Platform’s “triumphalist” narrative for “creating more problems than successes” just weeks before the July 28 presidential elections.

In a post on his X account, published on Wednesday, June 5, Luis Vicente León commented that “it is not true that the result of the July 28 election is already clear and defined and that there is no room for surprises.”

He pointed out that “this is not just an election between two candidates unbalanced in terms of the people’s preferences in favor of the opposition.”

Read More »

A socialist reply to ‘leftwing’ antivax disinformation

Antivaxxers of all stripes are a threat to public health

Cliff Conner

Climate and Capitalism | November 29, 2021

Cliff Connor is the author of A People’s History of Science and The Tragedy of American Science. This article was first published in Against the Current.

In the United States, most of the Covid antivax agitation comes from rightwing sources. It is dangerous and reprehensible because it threatens legitimate public health efforts to bring a pandemic under control that has already killed at least 750,000 people in the U.S. and five million worldwide. The rightwing ideologues who carry out this campaign of disinformation are simply unconscionable scoundrels.

Unfortunately, they have “leftwing” ideological allies who devise rationales designed to appeal to progressive-minded people. A blog post entitled “The Snake-Oil Salesmen and the COVID-Zero Con: A Classic Bait-And-Switch for a Lifetime of Booster Shots (Immunity as a Service)” provides a prime example.

Read More »

HM Online 2021: Crisis, Pandemics, and Right-Wing Populism: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Neoliberalism

Morbid symptoms: The political economy of authoritarian neoliberalism

Adam Fabry, Universidad Nacional de Chilecito, Argentina

‘The Crisis of Neoliberal Globalization and the Global Rise of Authoritarianism in the 21st Century’
Berch Berberoglu, University of Nevada, Reno, USA

‘A Model State of Authoritarian Neoliberalism? An Analysis of the Orbán Regime in Hungary’
Attila Antal, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Hungary

‘Authoritarian Neoliberalisms, Social Reproduction and Social Policy in Croatia, Hungary and Poland’
Noemi Lendvai-Bainton, University of Bristol, UK
Paul Stubbs, The Institute of Economics, Zagreb , Croatia

Neoliberalism and Authoritarianism: A Long-term Perspective from the Southern Cone of Latin America

Hernán Ramírez, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brasil

Links to associated literature by panellists:

Antal, A. (2019). The Rise of Hungarian Populism: State Autocracy and the Orbán Regime, Bingley: Emerald Publishing. Available on: https://www.emerald.com/insight/publi….

Berberoglu, B. (2020). The Global Rise of Authoritarianism in the 21st Century: Crisis of Neoliberal Globalization and the Nationalist Response, London: Routledge. Available on: https://www.routledge.com/The-Global-….

Fabry, A. (2019). The Political Economy of Hungary: From State Capitalism to Authoritarian Neoliberalism. London: Palgrave. Available on: https://www.springer.com/la/book/9783….

Ramirez, H. (2019). Neoliberalismo e (neo)autoritarismo: Uma perspectiva de longo prazo a partir de casos do Cone Sul da América Latina. Available on: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat…
——————————————————————————————

This event is co-sponsored by Historical Materialism and Haymarket Books. While all events for HM Online are free to register, the organizers ask comrades who are able to please consider making a donation, which would help enormously in covering the costs of putting together this programme of events. Like all left organisations, HM had a very tough period from the beginning of 2020 and our budgets are very stretched and bank balance is sinking all the time, with very little revenue coming in. If you can make a contribution to help keep us afloat, please don’t hesitate!
——————————————————————————————

Follow us!
Twitter: @haymarketbooks
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/haymarketbooks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/haymarketbooks

SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSGmFZSBPaM

[THIS IS POSTED HERE FOR NON-PROFIT, NON-COMMERCIAL, EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE.]

Project Venezuela: Right-Wing Activists Push Wikipedia to Blacklist MintPress, other Alternative Media

MintPress News | June 12, 2020

Wikipedia Feature photo

Still unable to convince a sufficient number of their countryfolk to support them, the Venezuelan opposition has turned their efforts towards convincing an international audience – primarily Americans – to support their cause. Part of that is spending inordinate amounts of time online, arguing in English on social media, creating bot networks, and editing Wikipedia articles. Many Wikipedia articles on Venezuela are particularly biased towards the opposition, containing numerous inaccuracies, falsehoods and non-sequiturs.

Read More »

The Rise of the Right: Interview With John Bellamy Foster

by 

Countercurrents | October 02, 2019

[The following interview of Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster, completed on August 5, 2019, was conducted by Farooque Chowdhury for Kolkata’s famous socialist weekly Frontier and has appeared this month in their special Autumn issue. It was thus originally intended for a non-U.S. audience. Monthly Review is publishing it as well because of the urgency of the issues it addresses. The interview is mainly concerned with the historical conditions associated with the rise of new far-right movements of a broadly neofascist character. However, it is important to underscore that such political movements, though they appear to be ascendant at present, are still far from dominant. Rather, what we are witnessing, especially in the advanced capitalist world, is the development of what David Harvey has recently referred to as a neoliberal-neofascist alliance, reflecting the decline of the liberal-democratic state. Neofascism is the most dangerous and volatile phenomenon in this emerging right-wing historical bloc. Moreover, all of this has to be seen in relation to the structural crisis of capitalism and growing ruling-class attempts to restructure the state-capital relationship so as to create regimes more exclusively for capital. The big unknown in this situation is the response of the left, which, rooted in the working class, remains, at least potentially, the ultimate mass movement — one capable of halting, reversing, and overturning capital, and charting a new path toward a society of substantive equality and ecological sustainability (i.e., socialism)

The Editors, Monthly Review]

Read More »

In Greece, communists withstand conservative surge as SYRIZA crumbles

Peoples Dispatch | May 31, 2019

Greece Elections
SYRIZA, which came to power riding a wave of anti-austerity protests, has lost a lot of popularity for continuing the previous governments’ policies. Photo: National Herald

The ruling SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) party in Greece faced severe setbacks in the European Parliament elections and local body elections held on May 26. In the wake of the electoral defeat, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras called for early parliamentary elections, which will be held by the first week of July. The center-right New Democracy (ND) party emerged the leader, both in the European parliamentary elections, as well as the local body polls.Read More »

Brazil: MST Camp Attacked by Bolsonaro Supporters

teleSUR | October 30, 2018

Members of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) during a protest.

Members of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) during a protest. | Photo: EFE
The community fears more attacks after far-right Bolsonaro won last Sunday’s elections.

A Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) camp was burned down by a group of president-elect Jair Bolsonaro supporters in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, southern Brazil.

Read More »

Right-wing Politicians in Bolivia, Venezuela Fawning Over Bolsonaro Win

teleSUR | October 29, 2018

  • Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, far-right lawmaker and presidential candidate of the Social Liberal Party (PSL), react after Bolsonaro wins the presidential race, in Sao Paulo, Brazil October 28, 2018
    Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, far-right lawmaker and presidential candidate of the Social Liberal Party (PSL), react after Bolsonaro wins the presidential race, in Sao Paulo, Brazil October 28, 2018 | Photo: Reuters
    Venezuela’s Lilian Tintori and Victor Hugo Cardenas of Bolivia congratulate Bolsonaro: ‘God bless Brazil’ says Cardenas.

    After right-wing Latin American governments congratulated Jair Bolsonaro on his presidential win Sunday, the opposition out of Venezuela and Bolivia are doing the same.

Read More »