ik ik

This article from a few months ago goes into some more details

Found something:

The Maduro regime’s relationship with one of its traditional allies – the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) – has sunk to a new low. Their differences, which until recently seemed tolerable, have grown more acrimonious recently. Communist leaders increasingly support opposition labor unions demanding better wages and have loudly denounced the rampant corruption at top levels of the government, calling for an investigation that includes President Nicolás Maduro himself. The PCV party has also called for an “independent” investigation into the death of Leoner Azuaje, former president of the state-owned cardboard factory, Cartones de Venezuela. Azuaje was jailed during Maduro’s recent anti-corruption purge and allegedly committed suicide in his cell a few days after being locked up. The frequent clashes in the National Assembly between PCV representatives and the legislative leadership headed by Jorge Rodriguez have grown more heated recently. The PCV is against the president’s liberalization of the economy and has demanded a thorough investigation into top-level government corruption.

Meanwhile, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Venezuela’s ruling party since 2010, has accused the PCV of colluding with the opposition and the United States to subvert Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution. The PCV countered by claiming that its two representatives in the National Assembly have been denied the right to respond to these accusations on the Assembly floor.

A recent statement from the PCV politburo blames the increasingly tense relationship on “… the systematic breach of the PSUV-PCV Unity Agreement signed in April 2018, and the implementation of an aggressive, ultra-liberal program against the people.” The statement was referring to the government’s economic liberalization measures in response to the nation’s financial collapse. PCV Secretary General Oscar Figuera says they have evidence of a plan by the Maduro administration to abolish the PCV through legal maneuvers used against other allies-turned-critics of the chavismo movement, such as the Patria Para Todos and Podemos parties. The PCV has accused Diosdado Cabello of spearheading the effort. Cabello is the first vice-president of the PSUV and the second most powerful figure in the party.

The PCV has been part of the Bolivarian revolution since Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1999. It banded together with Patria Para Todos, the Tupamaro Movement, and other minority leftist organizations to create an alliance with the PSUV called the Polo Patriótico, a political voting bloc established by Chávez to defeat the opposition. In late 2022, the PCV denounced the Maduro government in Havana during the 22nd International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties hosted by the Communist Party of Cuba. When he was given the floor, PCV politburo leader Héctor Rodríguez told a surprised audience, “Venezuela’s recent experience reveals the limits of progressivism. It has abandoned anti-imperialist policies of nationalizing strategic industries, confronting large landowners, and defending social and labor rights in favor of a neoliberal economic agenda of privatization, price liberalization, landowner capitulation, labor deregulation and the dismantling of social achievements.”

It’s the only recourse they have. They know their position is immoral, that future generations will look back at their meat-eating ancestors with absolute disgust, similar to how we look at the crimes of our own pasts. But rather than self-reflect, they get defensive and lash out.

It’s the purest, most unadulterated, form of cope.

I’m reading the manifesto rn I’m safe hahahahahahha

Yeah, I’ll give them a read. As I said, I trust people here enough to not reflexively dismiss the sources. I was just stating my issues with them and why I tend to not use them that often.

I guess our mileage varies on the AP article. I’ve shown it to people to convince them that China isn’t genociding a million Uyghurs. That leads us to the other parts of the propaganda, yes, but at least it stops them from saying it’s a new Holocaust, which is a win in my book.

I’ll go through these. I’m sure I’ll have questions.

One of the problems I know already is that blogs etc. are not valid news sources. Even if I trust people here and extend that trust to the blogs y’all cite like Red Sails, that will not convince anyone whose not already pro-China. Their anti-anarchist screeds don’t help their case as an arbiter of truth, btw.

The article by Associated Press a year or so ago that goes over how the camps etc are basically shut down now does far more to convince people than sites like Gray Zone whose front page looks identical to any number of far-right news sources. Stuff like their anti-vax BS really hurts their credibility and calls into question how accurate their reporting really is.

Even Sixth Tone, which literally run by the Party, is much more reliable and trustworthy as a source. Unfortunately, they are not a proper daily news outlet, so they don’t cover everything and mostly focus on cultural issues.

These aren’t non-issues or “whatabout-isms” either. How you treat an issue people know about (in the case of libs, it’s anti-vax bs; in the case of leftists, it’s anarchism) effect how much trust they afford to the source in other issues.

It’s usually faces, isn’t it? The body and stuff are good too, obviously, but it’s the face that gets ya.