The imperial media are lining up behind the official line on Venezuela’s elections, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman in 2019. (Kremlin)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
Listen to a reading of this article:
“Let there be no mistake — Sunday’s regional and municipal elections in Venezuela are nothing more than a sham,” reads a recent statement authored by Republican U.S. Sens. Jim Risch and Michael McCaul. “The illegitimate Maduro regime has taken drastic measures to dismantle or control every independent institution in the country, including hijacking political parties and the National Electoral Council to ensure state-sponsored electoral fraud.”
“Today’s elections in Venezuela are as illegitimate as Maduro’s tyrannical regime,” reads a tweet by Republican Senator Rick Scott. “The Venezuelan people deserve free and democratic elections NOW. The U.S. and all freedom-loving nations must stand up, condemn these sham elections and support the people in their fight for freedom.”
The imperial media are lining up behind the official U.S. government line on Venezuela’s gubernatorial and mayoral elections, with The New York Times assuring us that conditions “are far from freely democratic” and The Washington Post reporting that opposition parties “say the elections have been stacked against them by the socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro,” who sees the elections as “a chance to reassert strength while projecting a veneer of legitimacy.”
This level of intrusiveness into Venezuela’s heavily internationally monitored democratic process is typical of what we’ve been seeing from the U.S. political/media class with regard to electoral contests in empire-targeted Latin American nations like Bolivia and Nicaragua. Which is really silly, because the U.S. has no more moral authority over the legitimacy of democratic processes than a totalitarian monarchy like Saudi Arabia.
U.S. elections are of course corrupt and fraudulent, entirely dominated at the federal level by legalized oligarchic bribery in the form of campaign contributions, manipulated primaries, gerrymandering, voter suppression, shutting out third parties and the worst voting system in the Western world.
More than this, though, the United States is also the world’s single most egregious offender when it comes to interfering in foreign elections. As Claire Bernish has observed in The Free Thought Project, the U.S. government’s own data shows that it interfered in no fewer than 81 foreign elections just between the years 1946 and 2000. You’d never know it from the shrieking of the political/media class post-2016, but this would also include brazenly interfering in Russia’s elections in the nineties to ensure the presidency of Washington lackey Boris Yeltsin.
And that’s just election interferences. It doesn’t include more brazen interferences in who governs foreign nations like direct military invasions, staged coups, color revolutions and proxy wars.
As a completely undemocratic country whose government is also far and away the world’s single most aggressive saboteur of democracy, it is fair to say that U.S. institutions are the absolute least qualified to comment on the validity of any nation’s elections on the entire planet.
Everyone would laugh if Saudi Arabia’s psychopathic Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman began opining on the quality of various nations’ democratic processes, especially if those criticisms were directed at the so-called liberal democracies of the west. But this same scrutiny of a power structure that has no business commenting on electoral integrity never gets directed at the United States, whose institutions issue such criticisms on a daily basis despite being no more morally qualified to do so than the House of Saud.
If you think about it, Saudi Arabia is nothing other than a more honest version of the United States. Its oligarchs and its official government are the same people, it doesn’t pretend that its warmongering is humanitarian, when it wants to kill a journalist it just dismembers him with a bone saw rather than trying to squeeze him to death with lawfare in a maximum security prison, and it makes no pretense about being a democracy.
The more I observe its behavior on the world stage the more hilarious it gets to see U.S. political and media figures criticizing the democratic processes of foreign nations. It’s like McDonald’s evaluating whether mom and pop restaurants are sufficiently eco-friendly and vegan.
Very silly stuff, mate.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Her work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following her on Steemit, throwing some money into her tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of her sweet merchandise, buying her books Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Venezuela has been hounded by the USA for its “illegitimate” elections and governments ever since it started to have a leader the people actually wanted and who made a tremendous difference for the better in all aspects of life for the vast majority of his people. Chavez also influenced most of the other former repressed nations in Latin America to unite in organisations to advance their development. His untimely death did not stop the harassment as we see with Maduro, and no amount of evidence will convince domineering,vicious countries bent on power and violence to allow free elections and real democracy to flourish.
Well said! With both American political parties led by oligarchic sociopaths, you can be certain that the odious, “Build Back Better” plan only pertains to the building of a permanent wall between the rich and the poor in this country forever. Sociopaths pride themselves on telling their intended victims just what they plan to do to them. Then they feel free to do what they already have planned. Remember what Nietzsche said: “Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations it is the rule.”
When is CJ going to get reprinted in her home country’s MSM, instead of dollops of fake news from the NYT, WaPo, UK Tele, AP, AFP, Reuters, Bloomberg, etc.? Don’t hold your breath.
Thanks for this. You are correct that the Saudi regime is more honest about what it is than Mordor-on-the-Potomac.
It’s captive big media is beyond outrage at this point.
Spot on. Jimmy Carter thought that Venezuela had a great electoral system. But making statements like these guys about another country is about all we’ll get, and, really, why should you listen to American politicians.