Chavez’s 21st Century National Socialism By Jacob Laksin

Hugo Chavez has long vowed to turn Venezuela into a laboratory for “21^st century socialism.” But if the latest bully-boy tactics of the Chavez government are any guide, the better name for his platform might be 21^st century National Socialism.

Most telling in this regard are the ruling regime’s rapidly deteriorating relations with Venezuela’s Jewish community. As reported recently in the Jewish Forward, it was only last month that a goon squad of government police swarmed down on the Hebraica Jewish community center in the capital of Caracas. Officially, the police had been searching for signs of “subversive activity,” the term’s definition having been expanded under Chavez’s ten-year reign to include any and all dissent from the government’s growingly authoritarian line. In the event, they found none, leading Venezuelan Jewish leaders to protest, compellingly, that the raid was little more than an act of state-backed intimidation and harassment aimed at the Jewish community.

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