It’s a growing spectacle. Troops are taking control of every productive aspect of Venezuelan society as the private sector seeks to close shop. They’re in food production, in hotel security, in road maintenance – you name it. They are everywhere to be seen, something that Indonesia under Suharto and China before Deng Xiaoping’s reforms were. It’s fascist nationalism, particularly because of the pocket-lining aspects, something that the Suharto regime was especially noteworthy for. We often look to Eastern Europe as the model for Chavez, but the proto-fascist regimes of East Asia before the economic crisis of 1998 are also pretty instructive.
Two essays describing the creepy and discredited phenomenon going on in Venezuela are from Gustavo Coronel, who does a thorough job explaining just how far militarization has gone in Venezuelan society, and from Alek Boyd, who discusses the Saddamization of Venezuela.