Tuesday was a
dark day for socialist totalitarians everywhere, including among the Hollywood
elite. Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez finally succumbed to cancer, and a pair
of Hollywood heavyweight supporters mourned him openly and proudly.
“Today the people
of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had,” declared Sean Penn, Hollywood’s most dictator-loving actor, in a
statement to The Hollywood Reporter (THR). Of course, the reason the American people
were unaware Chavez was our friend is that he had always made it perfectly
clear that he hated us.
Undeterred by
reality, Penn went on: “And poor people around the world lost a champion.” This
would be the “champion” who oversaw one of the world’s most corrupt countries and top drug trafficking sites, and whose capital has the second highest
homicide rate of any large city in the world, while he amassed a personal fortune. He left behind a
country wrestling with a housing crisis, high inflation, an electricity
crisis, and rolling food and goods shortages, all of which were fallout from Chavez’
vision of 21st century socialism.
“I lost a friend
I was blessed to have,” Penn continued. “My thoughts are with the family of
President Chavez and the people of Venezuela.” If Penn’s thoughts were truly
with the people of Venezuela, he would be rejoicing for them, since they are
now rid of an arrogant monster, although Chavez’ number two Nicolas Maduro
Moros doesn’t promise to be any
better. Tragically, “Venezuela and its revolution will endure under the proven
leadership of Vice President Maduro,” threatened Penn.
Another Hollywood
America-hater, director Oliver Stone, also expressed his sadness: “I mourn a
great hero to the majority of his people and those who struggle throughout the
world for a place,” he wrote in his
statement to THR. “Hated by the entrenched classes, Hugo Chavez will
live forever in history,” says Stone, a member of the entrenched class of
Hollywood’s socialism-promoting multi-millionaires, and a man who has made it
his mission to ensure that his heroes do indeed live forever by producing an entire miniseries devoted to rewriting history from an
anti-American perspective.
Let’s look at some highlights of the career of the man Sean
Penn and Oliver Stone call a hero of the people (courtesy of the Freedom
Center’s indispensable Discover
the Networks resource):
Hugo Chavez, elected president in 1998, was a proud
Communist and an enemy of the United States with many links to violent
terrorist organizations and totalitarian dictators. He sent members of his
private army of enforcers, the Bolivarian Circles, to Cuba for military
training in order “to carry out acts of violence through them” when they returned.
He imported hundreds of Cuban activists whose objective was “to arm his thousands
of civilian supporters.” Chavez is also alleged to have ties to the terrorist Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and to have routed weapons and supplies from
Cuba through Venezuela to Marxist guerrillas in Colombia.
Chavez was a close friend of Cuban dictator Fidel
Castro, providing him with cheap oil in exchange for military support and
training for his Bolivarian Circles. Chavez also maintained contacts with
terrorism-sponsoring nations in the Middle East. In 2001 he signed “cooperation
agreements” with Libya, Iraq, and Iran. Former Venezuelan military officials
allege that Chavez directly supported Middle Eastern terrorist organizations
including al-Qaeda,
and he has been directly linked to the Taliban.
In a 2003 article, human rights activist Thor Halvorssen wrote: “A day after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Chavez declared that ‘the United States brought the attacks upon itself for their arrogant imperialist foreign policy.’ Chavez also described the U.S. military response to bin Laden as ‘terrorism,’ claiming that he saw no difference between the invasion of Afghanistan and the Sept 11th terrorist attacks.”
In the summer of 2006, Chavez embarked on a six-week trip to a dozen countries. As the Capital Research Center summarizes:
In a 2003 article, human rights activist Thor Halvorssen wrote: “A day after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Chavez declared that ‘the United States brought the attacks upon itself for their arrogant imperialist foreign policy.’ Chavez also described the U.S. military response to bin Laden as ‘terrorism,’ claiming that he saw no difference between the invasion of Afghanistan and the Sept 11th terrorist attacks.”
In the summer of 2006, Chavez embarked on a six-week trip to a dozen countries. As the Capital Research Center summarizes:
Venezuela’s president… met with
Vladimir Putin and purchased $3 billion in Russian arms, including fighter
jets, military helicopters, and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles. He also visited
Iran, where he voiced support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran-financed
Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group; Vietnam, where he fondly reminisced
about its struggle against the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s; Cuba, where he held
hands with an ailing Fidel Castro who sent thousands of Cuban doctors and
teachers to Venezuela in exchange for oil at much-reduced rates; China, where
he struck yet more deals; and Syria, where he promised another strategic
alliance to free the world of U.S. domination.
Iranian President Ahmadinejad awarded Chavez Iran’s highest
state honor, the Islamic Republic Medal, for supporting Tehran in its nuclear ambitions.
Chavez used the occasion to say, “Let's save the human race, let's finish off
the U.S. empire. This [task] must be assumed with strength by the majority of
the peoples of the world.”
Unsurprisingly, Chavez was also no friend to Israel. He condemned
the tiny democracy for what he called the “terrorism” and “madness” of its
attacks in Lebanon, referred to Israel as one of America's “imperialistic
instruments,” and accused it of doing to the Palestinians “what Hitler did to
the Jews.”
In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Chavez called the U.S. “the greatest threat looming over our planet,” a nation whose “hegemonic pretensions ... are placing at risk the very survival of the human species”; he referred to President Bush as “the Devil,” an aspiring “world dictator,” and the “spokesman of imperialism”; and he asserted that “[t]he government of the United States doesn't want peace,” but rather “wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.”
At the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009, socialist Chavez said: “Capitalism is a destructive model that is eradicating life, that threatens to put a definitive end to the human species.”
In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Chavez called the U.S. “the greatest threat looming over our planet,” a nation whose “hegemonic pretensions ... are placing at risk the very survival of the human species”; he referred to President Bush as “the Devil,” an aspiring “world dictator,” and the “spokesman of imperialism”; and he asserted that “[t]he government of the United States doesn't want peace,” but rather “wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.”
At the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009, socialist Chavez said: “Capitalism is a destructive model that is eradicating life, that threatens to put a definitive end to the human species.”
Chavez left
behind a family fortune estimated at over $2 billion dollars, one that rivaled that
of the Castro brothers of impoverished Cuba. This is always the way of socialism – the powerful
at the top, who profess to champion the poor, live like kings while the powerless
wait in bread lines. This is the man that the Hollywood radical left – who also
live like kings – mourn.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 3/7/13)
