In 2001, shortly after the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced the US invasion of Afghanistan, a British journalist based in Caracas (who would go on to spend years maligning the Chavez government) wrote that “Since Chavez assumed the presidency in February 1999, the U.S. motto in dealing with him has been: ‘Watch his hands, not his lips.’” By 2002, the US had clearly seen enough of Chavez’s hands and backed a briefly successful coup against him.
You can’t blame the US government for being a bit slow to figure out that Chavez was sincere. Latin Americans had been electing fake leftists into office many years before Chavez. Look at campaign rhetoric of some of Chavez’s neoliberal predecessors in Venezuela for example and you’d swear they were Chavistas. But they were phonies, and the US government does not have a big problem with fake leftists in power. After all, insincere progressive rhetoric is a tactic that Democrats regularly use themselves.
In 2008, Candidate Obama made noises about withdrawing from NAFTA, reviving US trade unions through the Employee Free Choice Act, and even told people he supported a “Single Payer” health care system. With a Democrat controlled Congress during his first two years in office, and the US business elite totally discredited, conditions were about ideal to follow through on a progressive platform. The Democrats did the opposite. Unions continue to sink as they have for decades, the health care system remains a huge scandal compared to other rich countries, and Obama is now trying to push through the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) – “NAFTA on steroids” to steal from Maude Barlow. The TPP and its companion agreements (TISA and TTIP) are deals that will seriously undermine the prospects of major health care reform in the USA – the “single payer” system Obama claimed he believed in – and also threaten to destroy successful health care policies abroad. We know that thanks to leaks because the deals have been negotiated behind closed doors for several years with hundreds of corporate insiders.
Watch his hands, not his lips indeed.
By now, exposing Obama as a fraud is too easy. What about those Democrats in Congress who are delaying passage of Obama’s “fast track” negotiating authority for the TPP? What about the “socialist” Bernie Sanders?
I was very pleased to see Robert Naiman challenge Sanders to declassify the TPP. Members of Congress could have declassified it legally (as Naiman suggests) or, if that failed, illegally. Members of Congress, had they been courageous enough, could also have exposed the NSA’s secret assault on constitution rights. It would have saved Edward Snowden and his family a lot of grief and made Obama’s incredibly vicious war on whistle-blowers way more difficult. Progressives should get in the habit of demanding courage of elected representatives, significant acts of defiance in the public interest, not just soothing rhetoric or the kicking up a fuss before approving yet another corporate power grab. Recall that not one US senator – not Sanders, not Elizabeth Warren – dared to oppose a resolution that applauded Israel’s murderous rampage in Gaza in 2014. It may be that what is really lacking is basic decency, empathy for the victims, not courage. Regardless, calling for actions to match progressive words is healthy departure from the tendency of US progressives to demand and receive next to nothing from Democrats.
The Syriza government in Greece is quickly approaching the point where the courageous and defiant words it has recently used will have to be matched with deeds. Greek Finance Minsister Yanis Varoufakis revealed the other day that he had asked the big EU powers (plus the IMF) months ago about immediately legislating reform proposals on which they all agree. Their response was to tell him that if he asked again they would break off negotiations. The big powers have tied the hands of Syriza legislatively, and also strangled them financially, hoping it will sap Syriza’s popular support enough to destroy them. More suitable “partners” would then be elected in Greece to manage the humanitarian crisis that Greek oligarchs, EU elites and the IMF have created. Nobody should downplay the tough spot that Syriza is in, but the malevolence of the big players can, ultimately, only succeed if Syriza lets it.
Argentina’s default in 2001, as well as Iceland’s in 2009 and Ecuador’s in 2008 all provide very important lessons for Greece. Russia and China provide alternative sources of credit if Greece leave the Euro.
Months ago, in the left wing Jacobin magazine, in an interview of Syriza MP Costas Lapavitsas, the interviewer (who otherwise did a fine job) made dismissive remarks about Argentina’s experience since the 2001 default. Thankfully, Lapavitsas responded by saying “let’s not fall for the ideological claptrap that the Right and the lenders have maintained about Argentina for many years” and made a very informed assessment of Argentina’s experience. Encouraging words from Lapavitsas, but will words be matched with deeds?
Eduardo Galeano explained the widespread admiration for Che Guevara by saying that we live in a world “when words and deeds run into each other in the street, they don’t say hello, because they don’t recognize each other.”
When it comes to politicians of all stripes, watch their hands not their lips.
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