MANUEL CABALLERO
SPECIAL ARTICLE FOR EL UNIVERSAL
 
Every time the government of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez is in a situation of apparent people's disagreement, it attributes its own failures to a "media conspiracy." At the beginning, it was due to the Venezuelan TV and press. With the course of time, and as the media have been gagged in one way or another, it has become an "international plot," very much like the plot that Hitler used at any time and in similar fits.

This helps the government deny the blatant reality, replace it with a similarly conspicuous lie, and attribute the actual version to the dire plot of the media from Santiago de Chile to Wellington; from San José de Costa Rica to San Marino.

Such behavior dates back to Chávez's inauguration. As an appetizer of what would be his nowadays usual blustering, he threatened to be in the front line of those who would take the streets to wipe out the "neoliberal" Supreme Court of Justice. In the face of sweeping criticism on such confession of his intolerant style, he argued that the press had misunderstood his clear threat. Anyhow, this did not prevent him from accomplishing his threat. However, and also in his usual way, he did not face the danger.
 
But, do not think that it is an original creation of the lieutenant colonel. On the contrary, attributing to the enemy what one intends to do is the oldest of the warlike trickeries. For instance, over the past few days, Marulanda's narco-terrorists have complained that the government of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe holds "as hostages in infra-human conditions" their comrades caught with the arms in their hands and facing trial under a vigilant, free press. This is exactly what they have done with civilian hostages.
 
Forged papers
Additionally, in order to unleash a crisis, some documents have been entirely forged. This is what happened in December 1909 to an alleged ciphered telegram sent from abroad by Cipriano Castro to his friends who were around acting President Juan Vicente Gómez. "Kill the sneak on its head." Gómez was supposed to be the head snake. Castro was suggesting assassination. Truly enough, there was never any evidence of such telegram, not even that "the Little Conscript" drafted it, but helped "the Worthy" to give him a "historical kick" and tie himself to the presidential chair until death separated them.
 
This is fairly similar to the cause of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. It is known as the Ems Telegram. Bismarck needed a war to complete the German unification led by Prussia and knew that the French were unprepared for war.

In this way, he set the stage: the Prussian Emperor and the French ambassador had held a meeting in Ems to deal with a relatively minor issue on the succession to the Spanish crown.

As the French gave in and left Bismark without an alibi to wage the war, he resorted to provocation, to lie. Therefore, he released a report sent by his own ambassador, stating that the French delegation had been insulted by their German interlocutors. An insane -present company excepted- Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte -Napoleon the Little; as Victor Hugo called him- fell into the trap and declared the war to Prussia. Not very long afterwards Prussian troops deployed in France, the leaders took refuge cowardly in Versailles and the Parisian people upraised and took power there. The Paris Commune lasted three months.

There is another form of provocation: to cash in on a real fact and blame it to the target of extermination. Perhaps the oldest known case was the Rome fire under Nero's empire.

Christians to the lions
It is said that the sadly renowned emperor ordered to set a fire to chase the Christians. As a matter of fact, all the Jews were probably persecuted. At that time, the tiny Hebrew sects were not clearly distinct yet, and Christians were just one of them and the most recent one.

There is another famous fire. It occurred in the 20th Century: the German Reichstag in 1933. And an assassination attempt was used to unleash repression.

The Reichstag fire was real, not one of those "self-attacks," which are common also in the history of lie. The German Parliament was neither set in fire by the communists, as Hitler argued, nor by the Nazis, as the former replied. A flustered Dutchman called Van der Lubber set fire to the building. During the trial, he declared himself an "anarchist." Rather than anarchist, he was anarchical. Above all -present company excepted- he was completely nut. But this helped Hitler to end with the parliament and bar leftwing parties.

By the same token, everything points to think that some flustered "leftists" killed right-wing Spanish deputy Calvo Sotelo. However, the murder was attributed to the Republicans and was a pretext for the uprising of "the four generals" headed by Francisco Franco.

In Colombia, when Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was gunned down, the enraged Bogotá's people shattered half the city. The conservative government dismissed the murder and focused on the "very Bogotazo street riots." They put the blame of all that mess on "two Russians," who had landed in Colombia that day and spoke not a Spanish word. Anyhow, they never showed up. And this happened more than half a century ago.
 
So, in different forms, the list could stretch to fill quite a few volumes.

But here we are subject to the worst of tyrannies, the real "media terrorism:" the space tyranny. Let us leave the examples in the inkwell and finish off with one of the most recent and widely known events. Six years ago, on April 11th, a crisis was provoked and attributed to the enemy.

As Chávez conceded later, he himself prompted the April crisis and caused deliberately the dismissal of the Pdvsa executive directors. He impudently attributed the event to the opposition which, together with the media multinationals, framed an evil plot. Since them, he has not stopped "contaminating," as it termed in the police slang, any proof that may arise to contradict the official lie.

Such lie helped him absolve convict criminals, such as the Puerto Llaguno gunmen and leave three Metropolitan chief police officers to rot in jail. Six years have passed since the events and after three years in prison, no evidence of their alleged crime has been proven; no verdict has been issued.

Translated by Conchita Delgado