It also explains a bit of the western confusion in the mind, thanks to the MSM press.
"Zimbabwe and the Power of Propaganda: Ousting a President via Civil Society"
"Zimbabwe is [1] a strategic country for the United States because events in Zimbabwe have a significant impact on the entire southern Africa region." -- (US Agency for International Development, 2005)
In 2002, America's key democracy manipulating organ the National Endowment for Democracy [2] (NED) played a vital role in supporting the temporary ousting of Venezuela's democratically elected President Hugo Chavez, so given their current interests in Zimbabwe it is critical to ask two questions: "what are their reasons for interfering in Zimbabwe's affairs, and secondly, should progressive activists be concerned about these interventions?"
The simple answer to these questions is that numerous neoliberal governments are interested in Zimbabwe not because of democracy, but because they want to remove the thorn in their side that is President Robert Mugabe. Moreover, while the West views Mugabe as a tyrant that needs to be removed from power, it is critical that progressive activists not living in Zimbabwe problematize both the corporate and alternative media's portrayal of Mugabe and Zimbabwean
politics, and their own government's manipulative interventions into other countries affairs.
Indeed not every tyrant is a tyrant. For example, the same US National Security Strategy that identifies President Mugabe as a tyrant also identifies President Chavez as a "demagogue awash [3] in oil money". {1}
However, while both Mugabe and Chavez are clearly thorns in the US administration's side they present unwanted irritations for very different reasons. For instance, since coming to power in 1980, Mugabe who has long been considered a useful ally of Western elites has been showered with military aid - much of which (between 1980 and 2000 [4] ) came courtesy of the British government - while throughout the 1990s Mugabe embraced harsh structural adjustment policies and undertook brutal military excursions [5] in Zaire which together wreaked havoc on Zimbabwe's economy.
Yet as a result of the growing tide of popular resistance to Mugabe's devastating - Western formulated - land reform policies, in 2002, no doubt as a last ditch attempt to maintain his fading grasp on power, Mugabe shirked his post-colonial neoliberal 'advisors.' Consequently, most likely owing to his straying from the Washington Consensus, Mugabe (and Zimbabwe) is being punished by the international community, and imperial democracy manipulators are now seizing this opportunity to destroy the last vestiges of the popular people power movement that liberated Rhodesia from colonialism. This 'transitional' process of course involves facilitating the ouster of Mugabe and ensuring his replacement with a Western-backed neoliberal alternative, that is, the Movement for Democratic Change.
However in Venezuela's case, when Chavez was elected president in 1998, capitalist elites (both within and outside of Venezuela) vigorously opposed his presidency, and shortly thereafter with the aid of the National Endowment for Democracy in 2002 they organized a coup to remove him from power. As fate would have it this temporary coup was quickly reversed by a massive show of people power, and in January 2005, after ongoing public displays of popular
support against ongoing capitalist attacks on Chavez's presidency, "Chavez declared [6] his political program to be socialist". Consequently, it is important to remember that while the government's of both Mugabe and Chavez are being targeted for regime change, they clearly present themselves as very different thorns in the US government's side.
As the case of 'democratic' interference in Venezuela has been well documented [7] , this article will provide a critical - although by no means exhaustive [8] - investigation into the complex issues raised by the current political interventions by foreign organizations into Zimbabwe's political affairs. Initially, this article will examine how ostensibly progressive mainstream media have acted as imperial flak machines to legitimize ongoing inference in Zimbabwe. Subsequently, it will demonstrate how Western governments' carried out an overt cultural war to successfully manipulate Zimbabwean civil society, and will then conclude by recommending how concerned citizens might best further the protection of human rights in
Zimbabwe and elsewhere."
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