WORLD

Ortega’s Condemnation Of Lula’s Meddling In Venezuela Debunks A Top Alt-Media Lie

Andrew Korybko
Wednesday 28 Aug 24

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Those Alt-Media Community influencers who aggressively gatekept all prior criticisms of Lula 3.0’s foreign policy and then “canceled” those who shared such views while continuing to insist that he’d never align himself with the US’ regime change operations in the region have just been exposed as frauds.

The Alt-Media Community (AMC), which refers to the diverse collection of non-Mainstream Media outlets and individuals, generally has a positive view of Brazilian President Lula. His arrest as a result of the US-backed “Operation Car Wash” turned him into a political martyr. Many then celebrated his victory over Bolsonaro during the fall 2022 elections after his surprise release from jail 18 months prior. He could do no wrong in their eyes and they eagerly awaited the next iteration of his foreign policy.

Much to their surprise, he became the first BRICS leader to condemn Russia and then did so once again in a joint statement with Biden, thus confirming that “Lula’s Recalibrated Multipolar Vision Makes Him Amenable To The US’ Grand Strategic Interests” exactly as the preceding analysis explained at the time. He was then endorsed by Soros for being “on the front-line of the conflict between open and closed societies” and is even reportedly considering creating a global influence network with the US Democrats.

The only explanation that accounts for these unexpected foreign policy moves is that he either transformed during his imprisonment from a proud multipolar socialist into a cheap Brazilian knockoff of the US Democrats or he finally stopped pretending to be what he might have always been all along. In any case, these moves sharply contrasted with what many expected of him, yet his most zealous followers – who can be described as the “Lula Liberals” – gaslighted and attacked all online dissidents.

The reality became such that “The Latest Hybrid War On Brazil Is Now Being Waged By Putatively Pro-Lula Forces”, not anti-Lula ones, as explained in the preceding analysis. Basically, the Workers’ Party (PT) split into liberal-globalist and multipolar-socialist factions during Lula’s imprisonment, with the former nowadays far outweighing the latter in influence. The liberal-globalists largely align with the US Democrats’ foreign policy while the multipolar-socialists are largely independent thereof.

This behind-the-scenes “intra-party coup” of sorts accounts for Lula 3.0’s other seemingly perplexing foreign policy moves with regards to Nicaragua and Venezuela, the first of which was touched upon in early 2023 here and here while the second took shape over the summer after its elections. Both involve meddling in support of US-backed regime change operations. As regards Venezuela, which is the most geostrategically significant of the two, Lula began by warning President Maduro to respect the results.

In his own words before the election, “I got frightened with Maduro’s statement saying there will be a bloodbath if he loses. When you lose, you go home and get ready to run in another election.” After Maduro won, Lula called Biden up and those two then jointly demanded that he release the full election results, which was followed by them separately demanding a redo. Lula also condemned Venezuela as “a regime with authoritarian tendencies”, prompting Maduro to remind him of his country’s sovereignty.

Nicaraguan President Ortega was much more candid in his remarks at the virtual meeting of the multipolar-socialist ALBA bloc on Monday, which can be read in full here (the English version is at the bottom) and were summarized in Spanish here. He began by saying that “servile, traitorous, groveling governments, governments that have presented themselves as very Progressive, as very Revolutionary, now say that the elections must be repeated… Ah! Brazil says it.”

He then added that “anyone who argues for you to dialogue is going to dialogue for the Gringos, and the Gringos are never going to accept the government that the Bolivarian People have elected and decided on.” Ortega continued by alleging that “you now want to become the Yankees’ representative in Latin America” and that Lula’s behavior is “shameful, repeating the Yankee talking points, those of the Europeans, of the crawling, groveling governments of Latin America.”

“Now you’re crawling too, Lula! You are crawling, Lula!”, Ortega exclaimed, before concluding with the suggestion that “If you want the Bolivarian people to respect you, respect the Victory of President Nicolás Maduro, and don’t go crawling.” He also interspersed his comments with criticisms of Lula’s hostile approach towards Nicaragua’s multipolar-socialist government, but he reserved his harshest words for condemning Lula’s selfsame approach to Venezuela, which is more geostrategically significant.

Those AMC influencers who aggressively gatekept all prior criticisms of Lula 3.0’s foreign policy and then “canceled” those who shared such views while continuing to insist that he’d never align himself with the US’ regime change operations in the region have just been exposed as frauds. Ortega is a Latin American legend whose revolutionary struggle and subsequent defense of his socialist government against the US-backed “Contra’s” counter-revolution turned Nicaragua into one of the Old Cold War’s top battlegrounds.

He can’t be smeared by the abovementioned gatekeepers as a “fascist”, “spy”, or whatever else they called those from the AMC who dissented to their deification of Lula by sharing well-intentioned fact-based critiques of his third term’s foreign policy. Doing so would instantly discredit themselves in the eyes of the broader community whose diverse members are united in their share vision of a multipolar future. In fact, they’d raise questions about whether they’re the real “fascists”, “spies”, or whatever else.

Their ideologically driven gatekeeping, which was carried out to uphold the outdated perception of Lula as proud multipolar socialist who’d supposedly never align himself with US-backed regime change operations in the region, did a tremendous disservice to the AMC and its multipolar cause. Average folks were intimidated into self-censoring their critiques of Lula’s foreign policy under fear of being viciously “canceled” by leftist AMC influencers just like dissident commentators and AMC analysts earlier were.

This totalitarian control over the AMC’s discourse on Lula over the past 18 months created a false perception about his foreign policy, which why his support of the US’ evolving coup attempt in Venezuela hit them so hard since they were duped into thinking that all such collusion was a “conspiracy theory”. Honest members of the AMC – whether commentators, influencers, or analysts – now see that those who spewed such claims were peddling nothing more than politically self-serving propaganda.

It’s unlikely that they’ll ever be trusted again even on other issues that they might not be lying about such as the Ukrainian Conflict and Gaza after betraying their audience’s trust on Brazil. An untold number of AMC members might also have been misled into thinking the same about those dissidents who were “canceled” by this leftist gatekeeping clique. They might therefore have stopped following them, or even worse, began doubting their sincerity and then started defaming them before others.

Parts of the AMC were torn apart by what some people with outsized influence did from the time Lula returned to power until now. Reputations were destroyed, both their own (and rightly so) but also those of well-intentioned dissidents whose fact-based critiques have now been vindicated, and the damage will likely prove irreparable unless these gatekeepers issue mea culpas. Few if any are expected to do so though since they were driven by ideology and ego, and many still are, which is highly regrettable.

On a closing note, those members of the AMC whose eyes were finally opened to the reality of Lula 3.0 as a result of his unabashed collusion with the US in overthrowing the Venezuelan government through a typical good cop-bad cop approach can review the following analyses that document his foreign policy. They include some of the pieces that were hyperlinked to above but are being reshared below in chronological order so that observers can see how the insight evolved and was ultimately vindicated:

* 31 October 2022: “The Geostrategic Consequences Of Lula’s Re-Election Aren’t As Clear-Cut As Some Might Think”

* 1 November 2022: “Biden’s Reaction To Brazil’s Latest Election Shows That The US Prefers Lula Over Bolsonaro”

* 24 November 2022: “Korybko To Sputnik Brasil: The Workers’ Party Is Infiltrated By Pro-US Liberal-Globalists”

* 9 January 2023: “Everyone Should Exercise Caution Before Rushing To Judgement On What Just Happened In Brazil”

* 12 January 2023: “Korybko To Sputnik Brasil: The US Played A Decisive Role In The January 8th Incident”

* 19 January 2023: “Brazil’s Explanation For Delaying Its BRICS Presidency Is Extremely Suspicious”

* 24 January 2023: “Lula Just Became The First BRICS Leader To Publicly Condemn Russia’s Special Operation”

* 28 January 2023: “Lula’s Recalibrated Multipolar Vision Makes Him Amenable To The US’ Grand Strategic Interests”

* 2 February 2023: “A Former Donbass Diplomat Threw Cold Water On Lula’s G20-Like Peace Proposal”

* 3 February 2023: “Why Didn’t Lavrov & His Brazilian Counterpart Discuss Lula’s G20-Like Peace Proposal?”

* 7 February 2023: “The Russian Ambassador To India Indirectly Rubbished Lula’s G20-Like Peace Proposal”

* 8 February 2023: “It Makes Perfect Sense Why Russia Doesn’t Support Lula’s G20-Like Peace Proposal”