Episode 57 - Why Socialism Keeps Winning in Venezuela

Empire Files

News

4.9 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2017

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On October 15, Venezuelans went to the polls for its gubernatorial election. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela won 18 out of 23 states. It was a resounding democratic defeat for the opposition movement, the US Empire and corporate media, all which have asserted for months that the Maduro government is so unpopular that foreign-led regime change was needed. In Caracas, Venezuela, Abby Martin sat down with Professor Chris Gilbert to understand why the Chavez movement remains so strong in Venezuela despite all the attacks, the history behind it, and the threats it faces today. Gilbert is a historian and professor of political science at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela. His articles on the struggle in Venezuela appear on CounterPunch.org and more. FOLLOW // twitter.com/empirefiles LIKE // https://www.facebook.com/TheEmpireFiles

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Empire Files podcast. This is Abby Martin. This is the audio version of each episode of
0:06.2	the Empire Files hosted on Telesaur English. You can watch every episode at the Empire Files.TV.
0:15.4	Trump closed out his speech to the United Nations General Assembly with several minutes of totally false regime
0:21.5	change propaganda against Venezuela.
0:24.3	The socialist dictatorship of Nicholas Maduro has inflicted terrible pain and suffering
0:31.9	on the good people of that country.
0:35.3	This corrupt regime destroyed a prosperous nation by imposing a failed ideology
0:41.3	that has produced poverty and misery everywhere it has been tried. We and all others have a goal.
0:52.3	That goal is to help them regain their freedom, recover their country,
0:59.0	and restore their democracy. We are prepared to take further action if the government
1:06.0	of Venezuela persists on its path to impose authoritarian rule on the Venezuelan people.
1:14.5	What Trump and the corporate media continue to ignore is that the Bolivarian movement started by Chavez
1:19.2	has mass popular support. Yet these millions of Venezuelans are silenced in every discussion
1:25.1	about the crisis. To understand more about this movement and the challenges it faces,
1:29.3	I sat down with Professor Chris Gilbert of the Bolivarian University of Venezuela.
1:33.3	Chavez first grew to enormous popularity in 1992, of course,
1:37.3	after the unsuccessful attempt at overthrowing the government back then.
1:41.3	Describe Venezuela prior to the Bolivarian Revolution, what created
1:45.4	such conditions for this? How did Chavez win the hearts and minds of the people?
1:49.0	Well, it's hard to know where to begin. I mean, people often began with 1989, which
1:54.1	was the Caracas, the kind of uprising, which actually didn't begin in Caracas, but
1:58.7	it ended up with that name. It was an uprising against neoliberalism.
	...

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