Paul Buchanan on Hugo Chávez (Mar. 17, 2013)

“His supporters ADORED him—we don’t see that in Anglo-Saxon societies."
Paul Buchanan on Hugo Chávez
Radio New Zealand National, Sunday 17 March 2013

Generally interesting and fair, as one would expect from a commentator as respected and decent as Paul Buchanan. However, there is still some muddle-headed stuff here, especially when Laidlaw allows Buchanan to make the ridiculous, stereotyped statement that “Anglo-Saxons” don’t get carried away with adoration of their leaders like South Americans do. That will come as a surprise to anyone who watched the wedding of Kate to Prince William, and to anyone who listened just over an hour later to Laidlaw interviewing Sir Don MacKinnon, who raved like a young lover about how he ardently admires the Queen: “We don’t see enough of her laugh! She has a GREAT chuckle!”

Then, near the end of the interview, he lets Buchanan get away, unchallenged, with the assertion that Chávez “did not systematically torture or kill”, which implies that he did some torturing and killing. Of course, the democratically elected Chávez government did not kill or torture anyone, not even the vilest of the extreme right wing saboteurs who never stopped attempting to ruin him.

Anyway, here are the highlights that I managed to jot down….

CHRIS LAIDLAW: We move now to Venezuela. Hugo Chávez, that ebullient, populist politician died just over a week ago. This rumbustious country has hit some real head windswhen it comes to stability. We’re joined by Paul Buchanan, an academic and former CIA operative who spent many years living in South America, and knows the Venezuela situation very closely. Paul, Chávez called his regime Bolívarian. What did he mean by that?

Paul Buchanan proceeds to give a quick outline of Bolívar and the ways that Chávez resembled him.

LAIDLAW: But Simon Bolívar wasn’t the bombastic [snicker] character Chávez [snicker] was, was he?

PAUL BUCHANAN: Hugo Chávez was a nationalist populist, similar in many ways to Juan Perón. He was very personality driven. And the trouble with this is the same as with every populist regime: it is inherently unstable. This movement will fragment and splinter over the next few years.

LAIDLAW: Really? And then you’ve got trouble?

BUCHANAN: Indeed.

LAIDLAW: I’ve been reading around Chávez [snicker] and it seems to me that his appeal was very Cuban-like, he was like a televangelist.

BUCHANAN: His supporters adored him, in fact they are deifying him as we speak. And that’s something you don’t see in Anglo-Saxon societies.

LAIDLAW: He claimed rather flamboyantly that he’d been poisoned. [snicker] What do you make of that?

BUCHANAN: Well this is the unfortunate thing. He called Bush “the Devil” at the U.N. There was a coup against him 2002 and the United States was the only government that recognized the coup. If you’re going to run a coup, you must make sure the guy doesn’t survive…

LAIDLAW: Yeah. [snicker]

BUCHANAN: You don’t let him return.

LAIDLAW: Ha ha ha!

BUCHANAN: He did not systematically torture or kill. He did bring about the abridgments of basic freedoms, but it was all legal.

LAIDLAW: He started to stack the judiciary, civil service and the armed forces.

BUCHANAN: He did a lot of good things, but he was resisted, from the beginning, by the middle classes and the United States.

• Murray Olsen18.1

  17 March 2013 at 6:05 pm

  Maybe Anglo-Saxon societies don’t adore the democratically elected, but only those who attain their exalted positions by accident of birth? Or maybe only cringing Tories who need a structured class system to give their lives meaning do the adoration bit? Or maybe, just maybe, the CIA agent doesn’t know what he’s talking about?
•