In a war, the first casualty is truth.

So, show trials for ideological deviation have begun in Venezuela. This is characteristic of all communist regimes as they consolidate power. Eventually, the truth is the target.

Now in the seventh year of Chavez’s regime, there are new orthodoxies Chavez wants people to accept, ones that ring contrary to their own experience and understanding. And there are signs he’s not going to trust them on their own to accept it. These new truths will be enforced.

With the destruction and rubble and crime and deterioration Venezuelans see all around them, the regime needs to force people to stop thinking, to stop believing what they see with their own eyes and to believe the fantastical.

Frankly, I am horrified.

The first target is a professor of history, who teaches … history … and not the fanciful rewriting of it that is going on in the Chavista “revolution.”

This first show trial is over arcane historic details that are likely to attract little attention from outsiders. Chavez has rewritten history to show himself as a living embodiment of Simon Bolivar’s mission, which means rewriting the history a little to fit his current aims. He’s also attempting to give himself a godlike and royalistic myth in order to justify his every crazy action today. A learned professor who challenges that is a menace to his empire and coming plans.

Therefore, they are planning to make him grovel, change his views, be educated, or be cast out of society, academic pension he was waiting for gone. As Solzhenitsyn once wrote: lies and violence have an inextricable link – the lies go out and the violence is used to enforce them; the violence goes out and the lies are used to cover them up.

This Venezuelan show trial is the first of many.

There will be more.

Miguel has the monstrous and disturbing story here.