Yesterday saw the passing of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s longtime president (or “dictator” as many would say), following a lengthy battle with cancer. Ironically enough, yesterday was also the 60th anniversary of the death of Josef Stalin, arguably a fitting date, given that many of Chavez’s critics saw more than a little of Stalin (albeit on a much smaller scale) in the political ideology and behavior of the Venezuelan leader. Some Leftists, meanwhile, celebrated Chavez as an egalitarian reformer during his lifetime, and some (including at least one sitting member of Congress) appear prepared to do so now that he is dead.
Naturally, most of Chavez’s critics came from the Right, and his defenders came from the Left. However, this fact obscures a wider point: namely, that while Chavez was uniformly despised on the Right, he was far from universally loved on the Left. Indeed, barely a day after his death, liberals have kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism, including (in some cases) representatives of very prominent liberal institutions.
ThinkProgress, for instance, published a blog post today titled “Why Democrats Shouldn’t Eulogize Hugo Chavez,” and even Oliver Willis of Media Matters described pro-Chavez liberals as “derpy” (ie “awkward or embarrassing”) on Twitter for thinking Chavez was “a good guy”................
What Was Life Really Like Under Hugo Chavez? We Show You the Brutally Honest Facts | Video | TheBlaze.com
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