Caracas Chronicles

Last night’s cadena nacional presenting the regime’s “evidence” that the opposition is to blame for getting their faces kicked in at the National Assembly is the stuff of legend.

Here’s the belief-beggaring goebbelsian job:

Here’s what I’m thinking as I see this:

1. I get it. Chavismo wants “Patria Querida” to become the new national anthem.
2. Why have a total non-entity present the cadena? Wouldn’t be better if Information Minister Ernesto Villegas did it himself? Was he too busy?
3. By indicating that Nicolas Maduro himself ordered the broadcast of this cadena, they give the game away: this isn’t about the truth, it’s just an attack on the opposition.
4. That background music! Is it a film score by Hans Zimmer or one of his proteges? Next time, why not use something from Transformers 3’s soundtrack? Do you remember when the government attacked Globovision’s “musiquita de miedo” as psychological warfare?! Here, they use it to present people talking as an automatic conspiracy. [Update: a keen-eared reader locates the soundtrack origin… watch it and weep…]
5. The musiquita conveniently pre-empts the actual footage’s soundtrack. So, whoever is listening this by chance in the radio has no idea of what the hell is going on.
6. There are security cameras in the roof of the chamber that can cover everything. Sadly this same system was quite ineffective during Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony.
7. Somehow, zoom-in footage of Julio Borges rummaging for stuff is supposed to be scary.
8. Every single opportunity to put disgraced MP Juan Jose Caldera on screen is seized.
9. Turns out fog-horns and whistles are way more dangerous than firearms.
10. By that standard, a banner is a weapon of mass destruction.
11. Alfonso Marquina is wearing a bike helmet. That makes him the leader of the evil plot. Because the events of the night in no way indicate you might need a helmet to keep your head from getting bashed in, you see?
12. Diosdado Cabello doesn’t care much about what’s happening right in front of him.
13. When the footage isn’t good enough, cut to still photos of guys with portable fog-horns.
14. Eduardo Gomez Sigala is the worst person in the world for standing his ground.
15. Using your closing statement to insist that the National Assembly is “an automomus power” is a signal that it isn’t. Also, calling this event as an “occurrence”? Seriously? So, can we expect more of these in the future? They’re selling it like is something normal.

It’s important to point out that the moment when the actual assault begins is not included, even if they remain us that they have a lot of cameras inside the chamber.

What’s to make of all this? Presenting heavily-edited clips under crazy scary music instead of the raw footage at your disposal is an admission that your argument is weak.

In the end, what we get is an arroz-con-pollos-sin-pollo, images of the actual brawl are pointedly left out, largely because what they show is little beyond chavistas wailing on opositores. Those images were already online moments after it happened, but if you don’t have YouTube or Globovision where you live, you’ll never get to see them.

What we saw last night is Communicational Hegemony not as project but as reality, folks.