The 1999 Venezuelan Constitution, sponsored by the late Hugo Chávez as the foundation for his nascent revolution, has been described as “the non-sexist Magna Carta.”
The writers of the document went to great lengths to use the Spanish masculine and feminine forms throughout the text. For example, presidente and presidenta are both used in quick succession to refer to the role of president, even though it is grammatically correct to use the masculine form to refer to both genders. This unnecessary repetition makes for a very cumbersome read. Chávez himself spoke like this, occasionally making up absurd gender-neutral words.
The National Institute for Women was established in October 1999. Then in 2009, the Institute became part of the newly formed Popular Ministry for Women and Gender Equality.
“Our main political program is mainstreaming gender into every sphere of Venezuelan public and political life. Within all government programs — health, education — we want everyone to know about and think about gender issues.”
Corina Fumero, National Institute for Women. Green Left Weekly.
8 February 2006.
Was Hugo Chávez simply a man ahead of his time, a true visionary, a prophet for a new progressive movement that was about to take over the world?
Today, of course, progressives try to distance themselves from him, knowing as we know now the devastating results of his revolution, in a country with enough resources to be another Dubai. But make no mistake, everything that Australian progressives stand for today was put into practice by Hugo Chávez more than two decades ago.
You only needed to hear Hugo Chávez speak to understand how the concept of
class struggle and anti-capitalism was expanded to include
gender, race and colonialism.
A group of bad people always oppress a group of good people. The entire history of humanity is explained by this cartoonish good-guy versus bad-guy categorisation.
Group membership is what determines your moral value. The oppressed, as a group and regardless of their individual actions, are entitled not to equal treatment but to indefinite retribution. The oppressors, also as a group and regardless of their individual actions, are forever guilty and beyond salvation.
This is, for example, how official large-scale seizures of land, property and businesses are justified while sectors of the population are actively encouraged to take back what is ‘rightfully theirs’. Your legal claim to property can be overridden by fuzzy claims of oppression.
Climate change is of course an anti-capitalist dream and Hugo Chávez was an outspoken campaigner for climate action.
Many in the West today might be surprised to learn how much they have in common with the father of 21st century socialism. If they are being honest, they would admit to finding his speech at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 riveting and forward-looking.
“Let’s not change the climate, let’s change the system! And consequently, we will begin to save the planet. Socialism, this is the direction, this is the path to save the planet, I don’t have the least doubt. Capitalism is the road to hell, to the destruction of the world.”
A few short months after that crowd-pleaser of a speech, Chávez was back home trying to make people use less power.
Equity and climate change are the high moral ground from where an undeterred expansion of government control is presented as a solution. The virtuous ends that unequivocally justify all means.
This is the vindictive culture that tore Venezuela apart. These are the teachings of Hugo Chávez. And too many well-intentioned Aussies are listening.
C.S. Lewis said it best when he wrote:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
