A Deep Reading of Hate in Venezuela

By Misión Verdad – Aug 5, 2024

Political hate speech has consistently been part of the regime change strategies used against the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. It is part of the psychological operations which seek to generate changes in attitudes in the population in the face of important political events such as elections.

In the recent case of the presidential elections of June 28, the hate campaign activated in the country resulted in accusations and persecutions that led to physical aggression, a climate of harassment, and psychological pressure on different layers and sectors of Chavismo.

Among the most relevant attacks recorded is that of the community radio station Radio Venceremos, carried out on July 30 at the headquarters of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in Carora, in the Torres municipality of Lara state. A group of hooded opponents destroyed the media outlet’s equipment and savagely beat about 20 people, leaving at least two seriously injured.

Acá el testimonio de uno de los sobrevivientes de la radio comunitaria Venceremos de Carora estado Lara.
Relata que le comenzaron a lanzar bombas molotov, resistieron hasta que ya no pudieron más.
Lograron salir, con la mala suerte que unos cayeron en la platabanda de un… pic.twitter.com/Ff5fUJB9yz
— Madelein Garcia (@madeleintlSUR) August 1, 2024

Other cases of post-election violence have been characterized by the use of social media as a vehicle for instigating and targeting political actors ranging from the local, with attacks on neighbors and community leaders, to the international, with calls for military invasion or the assassination of Venezuelan political figures.

Fear and Anger in a Spiral of Hate
Regarding the psychology of hate, Misión Verdad interviewed José Garcés, M.Sc. in Psychology and research professor at the International University of Communications (Lauicom), who commented that “hate is like throwing burning coals with your bare hand. If you grab a burning coal from a grill and throw it at someone else, you obviously hurt them, but you also hurt yourself.”

The specialist points out the consequences of hatred in dimensions such as the physiological, psychological, and family dimensions of citizenship, but leans towards a social interpretation. In this field, he stated that “on a social scale, it generates a terrible shock, a disruption, and an anomie within that order.” In addition, he referred to the fear–rage paradigm, which consists of instilling fear towards the person in whom one wishes to generate aversion, the vehicle of which is social media networks, he pointed out.

Hutu refugees fled Rwanda in 1994 to camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Thirty years later, the effects of a genocide fueled by the Rwandan media persist (Photo: Sky News).

The professor stated that hate campaigns are part of psychological operations, a methodology of war, particularly cognitive warfare. Garcés referred to situations such as the Rwandan genocide, where hatred was incited in the population and a war was generated that left a million dead. Professor Garcés insisted that “it is not nonsense what social networks do when hatred is incited.”

A recent example is underway in the United Kingdom, where riots and a hunt for immigrants were unleashed after a fake news story that blamed a Muslim immigrant for a multiple murder.

Psychological Warfare: Dehumanization and the Prolonging of Conflict
Nerliny Carucí, a Venezuelan scientific journalist and social psychologist, was also consulted regarding the post-election hate campaign. She explained that the imperialist war is waged through an intense and very aggressive propaganda deployment, through surveillance capitalism or digital capitalism.

The specialist affirmed that “the forms, methods, and effects have been going on for more than two decades; this undermines the life of the Venezuelan people, makes many see their country as a wasteland, lacking achievements, an image that has made them want to distance themselves from this homeland.”

She added that the psychological dimension of this type of war is brewing beyond political polarization and that “it is taking the country to a critical point of irritability in which all sectors, both Chavismo and opposition, have a deficit of real coexistence.” She refers to the hopelessness in the opposition sector, and places the focal point of the conflict in “the promotion of conditions for a mentally affected society that is not allowed to reason but only to respond from the most basic instincts.”

She specifies that psychological warfare produces:

Irritability and psychological rigidity. There is an absolute conviction that one has a monopoly on the truth. People affected by this rigidity are not capable of reflecting or dialoguing with others who think differently.
This rigidity works hand in hand with rumors and accusations about certain people who are considered enemies and who must be eliminated. That is, expressions are used that foster hatred and resentment.
Another element is intolerant behavior. Coexistence is sought to be fractured to such a level that friends and family fight. On this occasion, the frenetic campaign around Edmundo González and María Corina Machado generated political expectations that triggered higher levels of frustration and anger in opposition groups, expressed in death threats, violent actions, and hate crimes. The displacement of a political sector is expressed through the attack on symbols and public spaces by sectors encouraged by hate speech.

Regarding the communication dimension of this war, she describes that “it is not a technological issue: it is a political and psycho-community issue; beyond that, ethical. Today, we no longer have time to continue seeing the symptoms. We have the responsibility to identify the causes and work to change the state of fear, anguish, anxiety, and existential loneliness generated by the modern capitalist model and its imperialist scheme.”

According to the expert, the psychological operation activated against Venezuela “strengthens predispositions for the dehumanization of the victims, a step towards hate crimes.” In this regard, she analyzes how dehumanizing actions, on this occasion as on others, have been preceded by a campaign that accuses Chavistas of being “murderers,” “cruel,” “drug dealers,” “paramilitaries,” “delinquents,” “communists,” “repressors,” “snitches,” “accomplices of the dictatorship,” “freaks,” “pigs,” etc.

This “absence of humanity,” she reflects, seeks to legitimize the attacks against Chavistas, inside and outside of Venezuela. “It is the basis of violent narratives spread by the [social media] networks to frame hate crimes as ‘acceptable’ and ‘necessary’—the application of extreme suffering, attacks, sieges, [and] physical or symbolic murders—against specific Chavista people and groups who are denied their historical status as subjects of rights.”

She concludes by quoting Ignacio Martínez-Baró, a Jesuit murdered in El Salvador (1989), who said that “hateful labelling seems to alleviate feelings of guilt, endorse violence and, what is more deplorable, promote dispositions so that the prolongation of the conflict is desirable.”

Electoral Theater in Venezuela: A Tale From Election Day in Caracas

Attacking the Symbolic to Create Unity and Discord
Other specialists, such as Iginio Gagliardone and collaborators, affirm that hate speech sends a message that divides and segregates society. At the same time, it also plays a cohesive role for its senders, reinforcing their feeling of belonging to a group. In this sense, the symbolic has played a preponderant role in the recent events in Venezuela.

The attacks on spaces and symbols linked to Chavismo, including statues, pharmacies, mayors’ offices, electoral headquarters, police stations, health centers, and houses of PSUV members, among others, are an expression of a desire to generate the feeling that the opposition is an overwhelming majority. Added to this is a “popular” component that stigmatizes natural leaders in the communities “for being complicit in fraud,” which seeks to generate the image of displacement of this political sector through criminalization.

In November 2017, the National Constituent Assembly approved the Constitutional Law against Hatred and for Peaceful Coexistence and Tolerance to prevent the hostility generated by expressions that promote prejudice or intolerance. This legal instrument is intended to eradicate discriminatory acts or violent attacks such as those described.

The path to hatred is difficult to reverse. Venezuela has overcome it on multiple occasions through the exercise of politics, respect for institutions, and dialogue between public actors.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/KW/SL