Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

It’s becoming abundantly clear that Hugo Chavez is nothing more than self aggrandizing, institution destroying, soon-to-be dictator who is fast creating a personality cult  in Venezuela.  While he doesn’t appear to be particularly pernicious leader, as far as dictators go, we on the Left would do well to quickly distance ourselves from him and openly call him out for his authoritarian, repressive nature.  Yes, conservatives often use Chavez as a cudgel to bash us, and while I don’t want to sound like Jamie Kirchick or Nick Cohen, crying crocodile tears over the fall of the “decent left”, I’d prefer that in 20 or 30 years, when Chavez is still  in power and has fully devolved into a Venezuelan Castro, we’re not remembered for being taken in by another charismatic Latin America populist.  The guy is not very much different from Putin, Musharraf, Mubarak or any other sundry dictator.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we have to turn into Rick Santorum and go around claiming that Chavez is part of deadly anti-American alliance whose goal is “the destruction of our civilization.”  We’ve done great damage to ourselves by turning a blind eye to Stalin in the 30s, Mao in the 60s and, in some corners, still hedging on Castro (just don’t talk about the Cuban health care system, ever). Should we try to destabilize Chavez or meddle in the upcoming referendum? Of course not.  And we should eschew brinksmanship or anything resembling our Cuba policy.  But none of this makes Chavez remotely palatable.  Let’s not get this one wrong.