In Venezuela, anti-semitism is mainstream

From Pajamas Media:

Unlike many anti-Semitic hypocrites in Europe or the USA, Chavistas don’t even bother to camouflage their Jew-hatred; it comes naked. Just take a look at Aporrea.org, their most important website, which is sponsored by the Venezuelan government. Use the searchword “judios” (Jews), and you will be amazed how similar the Venezuelan “socialism of the 21st century” and the German National Socialism of the 1930s are. In this article some examples will be given — which are perhaps not even the most bizarre ones (there are so many, and the race is really too close to call):

Pedro Mendez (“Judios, intrigantes y asesinos”) wants to prevent the Jews — who are “children of the father of lies,” according to his interpretation of the Bible — from “doing away with the race of the non-elect” and calls upon the world to unite against them before it´s too late. Likewise, Ivana Cardinale, a radio moderator from state radio station YVKE, is convinced that Jews view themselves as a “superior race,” treat non-Jews “like animals,” and aspire to control the world (“Palestina: Tierra robada por los judíos”).

Many Aporrea authors dispute the Holocaust (“Whether the Holocaust was real or an exaggeration is a pending issue”) or deny it outright, calling it a “myth” that the Jews designed in order to rule the world. When they speak about the “Holocaust” they mean the “Holocaust” that the Jews allegedly commit against the Arabs or, even more surprising, the one that the Venezuelan opposition tries to commit against the Chavistas: “They are fascists but we are not German Jews.” Evaristo Marcano Marin (“A cazar judios”) is a hunter: “To hunt a Jew should be a labor of peace and love. Every Jew you hunt down, catch him with a net of love and affection. Tell him that we humans know that they could also become humans and that if we achieve that noble purpose, they will be capable of: respecting, loving, feel solidarity with people, feel and love others. Tell him that those feelings exist and are part of some humans.”

Luis Rivero Badaracco, author of the article “Los Holocausteros,” mocks the victims of the Holocaust. “Why,” he wonders, had “the Jews (in the concentration camps) never rebelled?”  There is “no evidence that they had ever rebelled,” he claims, and answers his silly question himself: “Jews are selfish.” They were thinking: “If I am good, I may be saved. To hell with the others.” As a “proof” he mentions the Jewish members of the Sonderkommandos: “The workers who brought the Jews to the gas chambers and collected the bodies were Jewish.” Who would give Mr. Badaracco — who, by the way, is a professor of agricultural engineering — some lessons in history? Maybe his Aporrea colleague James Petras (professor emeritus of sociology at Binghamton University), who calls Barack Obama “the first Jewish president of the USA“?

Under Chávez, Venezuela has turned into a madhouse where every anti-Semitic crank passes as a philosopher and fighter for social progress. Like the Nazis, the Chavistas associate the Jews with all the alleged evils of capitalism. They are perceived as a “dark force” that controls every part of the world economy.

Some of the propaganda can actually be described as incitement to genocide. This is best illustrated by the article “La Verdad sobre la Dominación Sionista: Genocidio Global Controlado y el ‘Armageddon’ Artificial” by Ever Pisani, director of the “Fundación Proyecto Libertador.” Mr Pisani starts with a paragraph about the “world today.” The decade began with the “collapse” of the World Trade Center, followed by the “sudden” and “mysterious” appearance of diseases like mad-cow disease, bird flu, and pig flu. Then came the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial crisis. Guess who is to blame for all the mess? Pisani knows.

...Of course, there are loonies in every country. But in Chavez’ Venezuela the hatred against Jews is endorsed by the government. “For the first time in recent history we see what I would call government sponsored anti-Semitism in a Western country,” says Sammy Eppel, a Jewish activist in Venezuela. In his notorious Christmas speech in 2005, Chávez deplored that “the descendants of those who crucified Christ … have taken ownership of the riches of the world.” Last year he called Colombia the “Israel of Latin America.” Police raids in Jewish schools foster a climate of fear and stigmatize Jews as the enemy of the “Bolivarian Revolution” — especially those Jews who dare to oppose the government.

This is worse than what one can find in any government sponsored Arab sites. Muslims at least pay lip service to Judaism being a "divine religion" and, for the past ten years or so, Arabs have made an effort to publicly distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism (often just a word-substitution.) But this Venezuelan anti-semitism is unfiltered and extremely dangerous.