Source: www.3quarksdaily.com – Wednesday, March 06, 2013
Bhaskar Sunkara in Vice: Everyone else seems to be both mourning at or dancing on Hugo Chavez's grave, but I’m feeling decidedly unmoved. And no longer out of some deep apathy. It’s simply that the Chavez being invoked by way of each supporters and enemies can't be dead, as a result of that man by no means existed. One useless Chavez used to be a despot. Democratically elected time and again, popularly reinstated after a 2002 coup, however nonetheless some type of Stalin or mini-Pol Pot. (They each had that impossible to resist smile .) The opposite dead Chavez used to be a saint. Some demi-god sent from above to massage away our earthly struggling and sing us tender bedtime songs later on. He could do no unsuitable. These narratives are utterly incompatible, environment the showdown for a month's price of heated Twitter sparring and inane net-remark dueling. Now, there's nothing I admire more than a excellent battle , but I'm now not choosing a facet. Or I suppose I'm selecting each. In its 14 years in energy, Chavez's administration was without delay authoritarian and democratic, crudely demagogic and actually participatory. History is messy like that. El Presidente used to be part of an extended line of Latin American populists, the left-wing variety of which has at all times attracted cheering fan boys. And for just right purpose: It's the fiery rhetoric of Italian fascism tempered by using the warm-and-fuzzy egalitarian core of Scandinavian socialism. And Chavez lived up to some of these socialist ambitions: He was extra committed to redistribut

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