Caracas Chronicles

Sometimes reality can be better understood by breaking apart the given order and recomposing the pieces into different patterns to reveal deeper meanings and relationships. The teleidoscope does exactly this—it makes a kaleidoscope of reality itself. As images grow and shrink, join and separate, new relationships, unities, and images emerge in the visual field. Dominant features of the environment recede, while previously unremarkable details take focus in a fluid interplay of fracturing shapes and colors, revealing rearranged meanings and significance.

Through a Venezuelan teleidoscope, November 5, 2024, in the United States, might look remarkably similar to December 6, 1998, in Venezuela. Two men, who had previously attempted coups against their respective governments, won the presidency in their respective elections. They rose to power at a time when their respective two-party systems of liberal democracy were losing their luster. Reform was needed and half-heartedly underway, with gains often ignored or unacknowledged. Both men had authoritarian ambitions from the start—aiming to take control of all branches of government in the name of “ending corruption,” “cleaning house,” and advancing some glorious, mythic project of restoring their country to greatness in the future.

I’m not the only one to have compared Hugo Chávez to Donald Trump. Many analysts of populism have spent recent years cataloging the similarities and deconstructing the differences. Jennifer McCoy, for example, opened her classic article from March 2016 with the question, “What do a small-town paratrooper from Venezuela and a billionaire real estate mogul from New York have in common?” Her answer: “Hugo Chávez and Donald Trump are both outsized personalities who see themselves as the sole leaders capable of restoring their countries to greatness. They eschew political correctness and speak in an informal, unscripted style, directly connecting with voters who have felt invisible. They are both polarizing populists, and 17 years of Chavista government in Venezuela may provide a cautionary tale for the United States.”

Clearly, a majority of North Americans ignored—if they ever heard of—the “cautionary tale” from Venezuela. Even if they had, they may not have recognized the similarities between the two, given the divergent elements of their respective political scripts. 

Trump is often perceived as a right-wing “fascist” populist, while Chávez is largely seen as a left-wing “socialist” populist. Yet populism, as a political style, is more about the approach to power than any specific ideological framework. As Cas Mudde defines it, populism is a “thin-centered ideology,” meaning it lacks substantial ideological content. It frames politics as a battle between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite,” and argues that politics should express the general will or volonté générale.

Whether on the right or left, the goal of populism—at its revolutionary extremes—is the manipulation of a liberal democracy into an illiberal autocracy. The national contexts of the populists and their constituencies largely define their rhetoric, but the underlying strategy of creating insecurity, fear, and resentment, followed by the consolidation of power, remains remarkably similar.

The populist spectrum

Since populism first emerged as a distinct phenomenon of liberalism over a century ago, in both Russia and the United States at the end of the 19th century, we’ve seen both left-and right-wing versions of populism repeat the same cycles. In Russia, the left-wing populism, rooted in class resentment, found its spokesman in Lenin, whose older brother Alexei was a significant figure in Russian populism. Lenin diverged from his populist roots, but his Marxism could be seen as simply populism dressed in “scientific Marxist” clothing. We should remember that Steve Bannon has no problem describing his brand of populism as “Leninist.”

In the United States, populism emerged among the largely white working class and farmers, with a class critique at its heart, but often veering into nativism. As both types of populism evolved in their contexts, their rhetoric and discourse shifted. Lenin’s populist origins faded, or were intentionally hidden from view, while the ideological framework morphed into a socialist-communist guise. In the United States, where race, rather than class, has always been the most divisive force, figures like Huey Long and the Ku Klux Klan adapted populism to fit a nativist agenda.

A. James Gregor demonstrates how both forms of populism were transformed by the early  20th-century crisis of Marxism. Fascism, focused on ethnicity or race, distinguished the “pure people” from “mongrels” or “corrupt others,” as seen in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Francoist Spain, and other parts of Europe and the United States. Socialism, on the other hand, maintained a class-based analysis, advocating loyalty to the “pure” proletariat in its struggle against the “corrupt” capitalist class. Both forms, however, opposed liberalism and democracy—rejecting principles such as multiethnic politics, freedom of thought and expression, the right to assemble and organize, individual autonomy, private property, and free movement.

One might turn the Venezuelan teleidoscope to discern where Trump’s version of populism might lead the United States. No doubt, the outcomes of Chávez’s regime offer abundant examples of national ruin in the hands of dictatorship. As Venezuelan researcher Margarita López Maya told me, anti-liberal projects invariably “end in totalitarian or authoritarian systems.” This has been true whether on the right (with Italian or Spanish fascism and German National Socialism) or on the left (with Stalinism in the Soviet Union and in Central European countries). Clearly, none of these authoritarian projects fared better than even the most dysfunctional liberal democracies, such as the United States in its decline.

We can only speculate about Trump’s policies—if he even has any beyond vague “concepts” as he does for his healthcare plan. What we do know from history, however, is that the autocracy he appears to be planning will lead to ruin, much like Chávez’s project did.

The dead end of anti-politics

It is worth recalling that Stalin had all his anti-fascist fighters from Spain, Germany, and elsewhere imprisoned or executed upon their return to the USSR. Stalin feared that these anti-fascists might eventually recognize the underlying unity of illiberalism on both the right and the left. 

The populist projects of Trump and Chávez, in fact, embody what my Venezuelan friend Gustavo called “anti-politics.” We exchanged voice messages the day after Trump’s election, and Gustavo said, “People voted for anti-politics, and you can’t solve political problems with anti-politics.” “Politics,” in its essence, is the science of governing the city, the polis. It is a “positive-sum game” where different interests are brought to the table, compromises are forged, and deals struck—all in the name of solving the problems confronting citizens and their city, and ensuring everyone benefits in some way. In this sense, politics is utopian in private but pragmatic in public. 

You may desire a world where everyone lives harmoniously, but the objective is solving concrete problems in the real world, engaging in the common good, and allowing every citizen the freedom to pursue their development, while restraining those who would cause harm. These are the goals of a liberal democracy, and I remain committed to defending it against all enemies, foreign or domestic.

In contrast, “anti-politics” is the refusal to compromise, bargain, or even discuss the issues of the city. It’s a zero-sum game where the winner takes all—and much of that “all” is taken from the other side. Meanwhile, the winner plays the victim, accusing the opposition of being an “internal enemy”—an apátrida, pitiyanqui, escualido, or similar terms for othering. It’s a con as crude as the pea under the walnut shell or a simple card trick. But what astounds me is who Trump has managed to con and get away with it. 

Majorities believing that “anything is better than what we’ve got” led to Venezuela’s descent into interminable autocracy, just as it led to Trump’s victory.

Now is the time to recognize that “politics”—that problem-solving approach to governance—is the only way we will begin to address the serious and enormous challenges we face. To begin this process, we must abandon the hope that a strongman will save us, and instead look to our own communities—and beyond the left-right divide—to find solutions.