By Joe Emersberger

May 24, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "teleSur" - From the Americas to the U.K., progressive openings exist all over the world but exploiting them is an uphill battle against the “free press.”

At home and abroad, threats to Empire and rising inequality must be crushed. That should be the motto of Western elites and the media outlets that serve them.

The U.S. government has always been savagely opposed to social reform in Latin America and propped up the worst governments it could at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives over the past half century. But when numerous left governments came to power over the past two decades, the U.S. focused on demonizing one government in the region more than any other — even more than Cuba’s — and that is Venezuela’s.

Its oil wealth alone gave it the potential for independence from U.S. power. It was also viewed, with justification, as one of most radical of the left governments to take office in Latin America. Thanks to Wikileaks, we know that for many years U.S. officials viewed dividing Venezuela from other left governments in the region as an important strategy. In 2006, a U.S. official wrote that Brazil, then under President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, “can be a powerful counterpoint to Chavez's project” in Venezuela. Predictably — just as U.S. government strategy required — Lula’s left government in Brazil received vastly different (i.e. better) press than Venezuela’s for many years. Nevertheless, the parliamentary coup against Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, that took place on May 12 was winked at by the U.S. government although it elicited some disapproval from the western media. No doubt, many years of presenting Brazil as a “powerful counterpoint” to Chavismo in Venezuela had something to do with that, not that Brazil’s corrupt, coup-installed government today has anything to fear from the international press.

As in Brazil, a brutal recession has emboldened the opposition in Venezuela to press for a coup. A U.S. backed military coup briefly deposed Hugo Chavez in 2002 and it was applauded by the New Times editorial board. Henrique Capriles, who was jailed for participating in that coup, spent years trying hard to reinvent himself as a moderate Lula-like leftist. “In Venezuela’s presidential election, everyone wants to look like Lula” reported Reuters in 2012. Capriles has now dropped the charade of being a reformed putschist and has publicly appealed to the military to perpetrate another coup. The international media has always been ready to legitimize that kind of stance. A New York Times editorial board member, Ernesto Londoño, wrote on May 18 that Dilma Rousseff “was ousted from office last week to be put on trial for financial mismanagement” and noted that the “country’s new foreign minister, José Serra, has called Brazil’s silence on Venezuela’s abuses ‘shameful.’” Londoño happily anticipated that “other leaders in the region” would “take on Maduro,” Venezuela’s current president, whom he called “a petty dictator.” The parliamentary coup against Dilma Rousseff was depicted by Londoño as part of a positive democratic trend in the region. If there were a coup in Venezuela tomorrow, the New Times editors could simply make some minor edits to their infamous editorial from 2002.

Venezuela’s deep recession — partly the result of a massive fall in oil prices since mid-2014, but greatly exacerbated by an exchange rate system the government has refused to abandon — has allowed the media to intensify, especially in recent weeks, a stream of hostile coverage that has been aimed at Venezuela’s government for almost two decades. A really effective smear campaign must recruit liberals. The liberal Guardian’s coverage was 85% hostile to the Venezuelan government between the years 2006 to 2012 when the economy underwent rapid growth and poverty reduction.

At home, the Western media constantly promotes bigots and demonizes (or ridicules) progressives when it cannot ignore them entirely. The results of this reactionary process sometimes produces embarrassment for political elites. Donald Trump’s now formidable presidential campaign in the United States is an excellent example. However, as the process continues, Trump could well become yesterday’s embarrassment like George W. Bush — an extremist now regarded as somewhat moderate. Worse characters than Trump (not that he isn’t outrageous enough) may eventually exploit a system that makes the far right seem like the only viable or visible option for many voters who are quite understandably disgusted with the status quo.

So are Western elites — and their media outlets — stupid for not giving progressives much more attention and fairer coverage? Not really. Bernie Sanders, for example, may well be a safe and wise choice from the standpoint of Empire, an excellent person to rebrand it the way Obama once did. Sanders would be the first Jewish president. His domestic polices, like single payer national health care and breaking up big banks, are popular. He is not plagued by personal scandals as are the Clintons, and his foreign policy positions have often been compatible with Empire — reprehensible to be blunt. Elites could probably count on him to support U.S. imperialism in exchange for fixing some of its most glaring problems at home. The key point is that elites could “probably” count on him. It is also possible that a Sanders presidency would unleash a tide of reformist zeal that gravely threatens Empire and corporate rule — a tide that Sanders might not be able to reverse once it gets going, even if he wanted to reverse it.

The right has been on quite a roll in the United States — and in most western countries — since about 1980. Likes a sports team that is clobbering an opponent, it must understand, instinctively or otherwise, that letting down intensity can be very dangerous. Continuing to run up the score by pushing policy and discourse towards fascism is risky, but so is reform.

In the UK, the media has launched a vicious campaign against Jeremy Corbyn since he became leader of the Labour party — much worse than what has been directed at Sanders in the United States. Corbyn’s foreign policy positions have been consistently progressive, unlike Sanders’, and the domestic policy he advocates is at least as good. He is also the leader of a major party, not merely an insurgent progressive like Sanders who has been successfully kept at bay. The Media Lens editors just wrote a very good analysis of the intensified media hysteria against Corbyn that took place just before municipal elections took place across the UK. Despite the media onslaught, the local elections showed that Labour was the most popular party, though you would never have guessed from the headlines.

It should be noted that Corbyn becoming Labour leader — and even Sanders’ strong campaign to be the Democrat’s presidential nominee — illustrates that electoral politics offers much more potential than leftists often acknowledge, myself included. I would never have anticipated Labour’s Blairite faction being anything but dominant. It has been reduced to marginal rump, unelectable within the party, collaborating with the media to attack Corbyn.

Progressive openings exist all over the world but exploiting them is an uphill battle against the “free press” and not just its hard-right Murdoch faction. It is no exaggeration to say that everyone’s survival depends on winning that battle.