UPDATE: A Reader pointed out that the "trained in Belgrade" link below now takes you to a permission only page. Forturnately, and randomly, the same story was reprinted in the Kuwaiti Times. Here.
Have you been following the “Marigold Revolution?” Honest to god, that’s what they’re calling Venezuela’s opposition student protests. You'd be hard pressed to come up with a stupider sounding name, and not just because marigolds don’t have anything to do with Venezuela but also because it just sounds sort of gay. The gun-packing frat boys in the streets have got to be dying a little death inside each time they have to use it. Seriously, why not just call it the “Petunia Revolution” or the “I’ve Got a Dildo up My Butt Revolution”?
This is what happens when you outsource your political discourse. Love Chavez or hate him, at least he gives his campaigns names that imply that he’s been to Venezuela before and is familiar with its customs. This current “student movement,” brainstormed in Washington and trained in Belgrade, makes no such pretensions to being homegrown.
So how does it work? At their core, these “movements” rely on journalists being lazy little scribes with no sense of context or history. In other words, you could pretty much launch one in your bathtub. Here’s How:
First, start by drawing international media attention around some demonstrations. Next you do another round of demonstrations only this time you send a small group of Molotov cocktail tossing hooligans out to provoke the police. Then you just sit back as the ensuing crackdown brands the government as ruthless and illegitimate. Wash, Repeat! The best part is you’re playing with other country’s citizens so no actual troops are harmed in the process.
Problem is that the Venezuelan government is not playing its part right. After days of being barraged by rocks and improvised explosives, they are refusing to respond with anything harsher than tear gas and the occasional water cannon, which, if you’ve ever been to a globalization rally in the United States, is barely even getting to first base. Even when the dainty Marigolders managed to gun down four cops in Merida, the response has been remarkably restrained.
But this isn’t about actual behavior, of course. Like any marketing campaign, it’s about perceptions, and the press corps has been playing its role like summer stock champs.
And so the Marigold Revolution marches on. Blastin’ a botanical cap in yo’ ass.
>>> AP doesn’t even need actual repression to occur before they report on it. Check out this story about a police “crackdown.” How far did you have to read before you figured out they were talking about a crackdown that might happen someday but hasn’t yet?>>> Then there’s these photo captions. Keep in mind that the gunmen here have yet to be identified, let alone captured; yet somehow the photographer is able to note their political affiliation.
>>> Then, as always, there’s the Fox News coverage. Here John Gibson explains to his audience how the street violence is planned and carried out by the president himself.
>>> And, since you were probably wondering what Ollie North thinks about all this, here. Sigh.
