No one has answered this question for me, yet.
@supermila @Lunella Can someone please explain to me the bird thing here. Like do you really think something evil was happening here, like training a bird to land on the podium? Or was it just a coincidence that reminded you of other communist leaders?
ETA: This is not to be argumentative. I'm just truly curious what you thought was going on here and why you think this is evidence he's a communist.
I will try my best to explain this to everyone, I know my "hunches" are not scientific and sadly I cannot prove anything, it is simply a pattern that I am able to detect because I lived through it for 14 years. I heard Chavez speak from anything between one to six hours every sunday in Aló Presidente, his TV show. I heard them because he would tell what he was planning to do and so many things of our day to day life depended on it. During the show he would always subtly hint at things and at first people brushed it off as a random comments or extravagant behavior, but we would see that idea materialize months later. We learned to interpret these signs because a seemingly innocent comment he said during one of his speeches could mean that we wouldn't be able to buy dollars tomorrow. Or he would nationalize the internet company and put us all behind a proxy, he could close a TV station, or close the border with Colombia so nobody could leave by land. You see, our whole lives depended on his "whims" it weren't really whims, mind you, there was a strategy behind everything he did because he was nothing but a proxy for Fidel. Chavez was the Castro regime taking over Venezuela, not a homegrown phenomenon. We had to develop such a fine sense of smell with him that during the last years of his presidency I was able to tell on the first 10 minutes of any speech whether he was going to say something important or just ramble for 6 hours straight. There was a cadence, an intonation, a look, etc. So I am extremely sensible to these things, to their strategies. You might not understand why I am telling you about Bernie Sanders, how he is not a social democrat, but a straight up communist, but I will make an effort to explain myself as best I can.
No communist ever wins an election by declaring himself a communist. Taking the country by arms is harder, and even then it isn't convenient to say you are a communist until you have a firm grip on the country. Most people can't fathom this but Fidel Castro denied being a communist until 1961. He gave the coup d'etat to Batista in 1959 and pretended to be a democrat, a humanitarian that was fighting against an unjust system. At the time in the US there were long debates on whether Fidel Castro was or wasn't a communist. Some people thought he was, naturally, but had no way to prove it. Others called them conspiracy theorists. Even so, they managed to get the Congress to start an investigation on Fidel Castro's ties to communism. It wasn't until 1961, three years after gaining power that he declared himself a marxist-leninist. Here are both videos of him, first saying "We are not communists, I want to be very clear. Not communists" and the second one calling himself a marxist-leninist 3 years later (skip to 0:30 to see Fidel)
It wasn't only Fidel Castro who duped their country into communism by creating a cult of personality and telling them what they wanted to hear only long enough to take all power for himself. Chavez did the exact same thing. This is a video from 1998, Chavez was only a candidate back then, and people liked him because he was an outsider fighting against the establishment. He was interviewed several times and asked directly if he was a communist or a socialist, and he would deny it all. Keep in mind in 1998 socialism had a really bad rep, it isn't like it is right now, so he couldn't say outright that he was a socialist. I will post one of the videos. You won't understand cause it is in spanish but before reading my translation I want you to observe his body language, his demeanor, his outfit. He is wearing a suit!
Interviewer: if you are elected President, would you raise or lower taxes?
Chavez: some would have to be lowered, here we have a tax rate that is very inflationary, the sales tax, maybe we would have to lower that. We are thinking of halving it. But we would have to create other taxes for social welfare for example: building hospitals, schools,
Interviewer: will you let the currency exchange rates be free or are you planning on controlling them?
Chavez: That is such a variable issue that I think the answer might change depending on the circumstances the country is going through. If I was President today I would be okay with what the Government is doing currently. But we will have to see.
Interviewer: when it comes to the industry... will you privatize or nationalize sectors? Keep it short and simple please.
Chavez: when it comes to privatization we are completely on board with most sectors being kept in private hands such as hotels, tourism, gambling, etc. But what we do not agree with is privatizing PDVSA because it is one of the biggest oil companies in the World, and that has to be in the hands of the State, which doesn't mean PDVSA won't accept international investments.
Interviewer: banks: private hands or in the hands of the State?
Chavez: we agree banks should be in the hands of the private sector
Interviewer: national debt, will you pay it or will you slam the door on the international lenders?
Chavez: [laughs] no, no, I think you have to get along with everybody, we want to re-negotiate the payment terms so that we don't spend half our national budget on paying for the debt, but of course we will pay.
Interviewer: let me confess that I am a bit surprised. I was under the impression, from what I have read, that you are a leftist man, a socialist, and now from what you are telling me I am not so sure. Do you consider yourself a leftist man? Would you say you are a socialist if you had to use an ideological tag? How do you define yourself, Hugo?
Chavez: that is a very interesting question. You probably have read one of the many things that people have wrote about me, Jaime. No. I am NOT a socialist. I believe this world, the world of today, and especially in Latin America, we need to make a leap forward, we need to go beyond socialism and beyond wild capitalism, as Pope Jean Paul II calls it, I believe in a humanist project, a project that integrates things, that is capable of looking at globalization from Venezuela. And if I had to explain my political tag I would say I am a bolivarian. This is an original tag, a Venezuelan tag.
Even before the interviewer asked him if he was a socialist directly and he denied it, anyone watching that interview thinks Chavez is a moderate. He is so well spoken, there is so much balance to his words. Nobody would have thought this guy was a communist. And it took him almost 6 years to reveal himself as a communist, and he did it only when he had the country firmly in his grip. Once he had everything he needed to become a dictator the first mask was off. He now called himself a socialist, but he was supposedly a democrat. It took about 10 years more for the world to finally see that he was a dictator from the very first day. And it was only after he died that people began to see the food rationing and started to call him a Communist, almost 18 years late.
So... where I am trying to get at? That if there is a communist candidate you will never hear that from the communist's lips. He will swear up and down he is a democrat, a moderate, a social democrat at best. He will never
ever say what his plans are for the country because the truth is
nobody wants communism and he would lose. He doesn't want to lose, he would want to win. So he has to do everything in his power to convince people he is innocent and a good choice. Only then, when he has access to power can he start dismantling the democracy that gave him a chance to get there. And then it will be too late.
When I see Bernie Sanders speak, and when I see the tactics the guy has used I have the same feeling I have now when I see Chavez in retrospect. I would swear he is working closely with Castro who was probably funding his campaign and offering him the manual on how to give a soft coup d'etat using democracy. I cannot prove any of this, but I know it in my heart. I have no way to know if the birds were trained or not but if I had to gamble 1000 bucks I would put them all on the "trained birds" side. Do you think the 2 white doves that flew into Castro's podium in 1960 was also a coincidence? What are the odds really? And training birds is quite easy, they do it in theme parks, there are hundreds of videos on Youtube. It isn't even that hard.
Many people will not believe any of this and I don't blame them, I have no proof. I don't really care, Bernie is gone and is no longer a threat, he never was. But I know what I know and that is enough for me.
I don't know if I would ever want to live there, but anyone can visit, so maybe I'd go see what it's about. It's pretty interesting that they manage to have a small society against all the "rules" that we generally think of when we think about the formation of a society. I think it's at least interesting as a social experiment. I don't know if it's ideal, but it's a nice idea. We'll see what the future holds for them, they've only been around since '88.
