"Idioterne vender tilbage"

Alvaro Vargas Llosa har skrevet en umanerlig god artikel i Foreign Policy med titlen “The return of the Idiot”

Alvaro Vargas Llosa skrev sammen med Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza og Carlos Alberto Montaner for 10 år siden bogen Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot, om Latin Amerikas manglende økonomiske udvikling i det 20. århundrede og forkærligheden for

“ill-conceived political myths despite evidence to the contrary. The “Idiot” species, we suggested, bore responsibility for Latin America’s underdevelopment. Its beliefs—revolution, economic nationalism, hatred of the United States, faith in the government as an agent of social justice, a passion for strongman rule over the rule of law—derived, in our opinion, from an inferiority complex”

Dette har (desværre) ikke ændret sig i de forgangne 10 år, for som Llosa sikriver;

“Two leaders in particular inspire today’s Idiot: President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Evo Morales of Bolivia. Chávez is seen as the perfect successor to Cuba’s Fidel Castro (whom the Idiot also admires): He came to power through the ballot box, which exonerates him from the need to justify armed struggle, and he has abundant oil, which means he can put his money where his mouth is when it comes to championing social causes. The Idiot also credits Chávez with the most progressive policy of all—putting the military, that paradigm of oligarchic rule, to work on social programs.”

Ikke mindre rammende er Llosa, når han skal beskrive den interlektuelle venstrefløj, der bakker op om de “neo-socialistiske” eksperimenter i Latin Amerika.

Om en af antiglobaliseringsbevægelsens koryfærer, Joseph Stiglitz positive holdning til nationaliseringerne i Venezuela og Bolivia bemærkes det at;

“Stiglitz also ignores the fact that in Latin America, there is no real separation between the state’s institutions and the administration in charge, so government companies quickly become conduits for political patronage and corruption. Venezuela’s main telecommunications company has been a success story since it was privatized in the early 1990s; the telecommunications market has experienced an increase of about 25 percent in the past three years alone. By contrast, the government-owned oil giant has seen its output systematically decline. Venezuela today produces about a million fewer barrels of oil than it did in the early years of this decade. In Mexico, where oil is also in government hands, the Cantarell project, representing almost two thirds of national production, will lose half its output in the next couple of years because of undercapitalization”.

Llosa har også fundet følgende citat af Jeseph Stiglitz:

 “Chile has had impressive success over the past 15 years. . . . [It] imposed capital controls. It only privatized part of its copper mines, and the privatized mines arguably did not perform better than the nationalized ones, though the profits were sent abroad, while the profits of the nationalized mines could be used in the nation’s efforts to develop.”
—International Herald Tribune, Feb. 14, 2007

Og stiller et ganske simpelt spørgsmål, nemlig If the policies Stiglitz cites—capital controls, nationalized mines, and government intervention in allocating the profits generated by commodity exports—explain Chile’s success, why isn’t any other Latin American country with the same policies nearly as successful?”

Hele artiklen kan læses her.

Men måske er det væsentligste der binder “idioterne” sammen på tværs af kontinenterne deres had til USA, for som den Brasilianske Økonom Roberto Campos for mange år siden konstaterede;

“The sweet exercise of cursing Americans in the name of nationalism frees us from researching the causes of our underdevelopment and allows any moron to draw applause at stump speeches.”

Et citat der vist desværre også er betegnende for en del af (Vest)Europa – jævnfør vores lidet imponerende økonomiske udvikling i en række lande de seneste 3 årtier. 
 

1 thought on “"Idioterne vender tilbage"

  1. Ole

    Linken til The Return of the IdiotBy Alvaro Vargas Llosahttp://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3805&page=0Günter Grass, Nobel Prize in Literature, 1999 Ignoble Quote: “Cubans were less likely to notice the absence of liberal rights . . . [because they gained] . . . self respect after the revolution.”— Dissent, Fall 1993 Reality Check: How would you feel, Günter, about trading your bourgeois liberal rights, including the right to publish, for a bit of Cuban dignity?

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