Many people admire the Chinese dictatorship because they think that, unlike Western governments, it can get things done without losing valuable time trying to win the approval of the ignorant masses. It strikes them as efficient and rational. Much the same was said about the hard men running the Soviet Union before it became clear that they were presiding over a murderous mess, but that was not enough to discredit the illusion that, by their nature, dictatorships, whether “benign” or not, tend to be far more efficient than governments whose members are obliged to make out that they respect the feelings of the governed. If authoritarian regimes seem to have an advantage when it comes to tackling difficult matters it is largely because in democracies disputes between rival factions take place in the open and everyone can join in, while in dictatorships all important decisions are reached behind closed doors, but few bother to take this into account.
For Xi Jinping and his underlings, the alleged ability of the Chinese Communist Party to solve quickly problems that keep Western politicians awake at night is a major selling point which they use to impress leaders of underdeveloped countries who see democracy as a threat. However, this does not explain why so many malcontents living in democracies keenly support brutal regimes that have become bywords not for efficiency but for crass incompetence. Despite the catastrophic failure of the Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorships to get anything right, there are plenty of men and women in Argentina, other Latin American countries and Europe who would be only too happy to have their own countries governed by their counterparts.
Such people are so much in thrall to the revolutionary myth that they automatically overlook the constantly widening gap between what individuals like the Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro and Cuba’s Miguel Díaz-Canel say they stand for and what actually happens in the places they rule. Both claim they are struggling on behalf of all their compatriots against evil capitalistic imperialists who seek to enslave them, but they have only managed to kill huge numbers of their fellow countrymen and drive even more into risking their lives in an effort to escape. With the exception of card-carrying members of a very small privileged minority, almost all Venezuelans and Cubans are desperately poor and are constantly getting harassed either by mean-minded bureaucrats or police spies on the lookout for those who may be harbouring dangerous thoughts.
Is this what some Kirchnerites and most of their leftist fellow travellers really want for Argentines? It would seem so. Unless they truly believe that all Venezuela’s woes can be blamed on the machinations of the CIA and an infinitely cunning “fascist” clique that is somehow capable of ruining Latin American nations whose inhabitants allow “progressives” to take power, they would very much like to see the governments of their own countries apply policies which would be virtually identical to those that in Venezuela and Cuba have had such catastrophic effects.
Of course, in most cases they are less interested in producing tangible benefits for “the people”, something their kind have never managed to do, than in punishing those who are do not share their views. Indeed, many take pleasure in musing about the purges they would have to carry out after finally winning power; for those who think this way, having millions forced to flee for their lives, as French aristocrats did back in the 1790s, their Russian equivalents after 1917 and most of the Cuban middle class three quarters of a century ago, has long been a necessary part of the revolutionary drama. As far as worshippers of Che Guevara and his ilk are concerned, the decision by about eight million Venezuelans to leave their country to get away from Hugo Chávez first and then from his incredibly ham-fisted heir Maduro is nothing to get upset about. As good old Joe Stalin once remarked, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
With touching naivety, before last Sunday’s elections many had kidded themselves that, if outvoted, Maduro would hand over the presidential paraphernalia to the winner and dutifully assume the role of opposition leader. Needless to say, there was never the slightest chance of this happening. For him to go quietly, he would have to be given guarantees that neither he nor his associates would ever face trial for the countless crimes they have committed and that they would be able keep all the loot they have accumulated. In a practical way, such a deal would make some sense, but even if the Venezuelans themselves agreed to such conditions, there are plenty of foreign countries and international organisations that would refuse to respect them. What is more, if Maduro and the rest of them stayed home, they would be targeted by people determined to make them pay a heavy price for what they had done. Though in such circumstances exile abroad would be an alternative for some of them, they must be well aware that things could easily change in Cuba or Nicaragua, and that they would find it hard to adapt to conditions in feasible refuges in other parts of the world where few speak Spanish.
So, as was to be expected, Maduro and company replaced what most more or less neutral observers think are the true results of Sunday’s elections, in which is widely assumed that Edmundo González Urrutia won by an overwhelming margin, with their own version in which Maduro got just over fifty percent of the votes. When this rather cunning ploy failed to convince either the Venezuelan electorate or outside governments, including some leftist ones that are prone to give “revolutionary” dictatorships the benefit of every conceivable doubt, the regime stopped pretending it was democratic at heart and went full authoritarian, clamping down on street protests and rounding up people who objected.
Will it manage to survive? If the Cuban experience is anything to go by, Maduro and his cronies – who, unlike members of the Argentine junta that let itself be removed in 1983, believe themselves to be shielded from criticism by the unabashedly totalitarian doctrines to which they cling – could retain power for years to come and continue to be supported by many people elsewhere who, for whatever reason, think they are genuine leftwing revolutionaries and not just a singularly unlovely bunch of rapacious thugs.
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