José Vicente Rangel: There are no innocents in this underworld of infamy

“Never before has something like this been seen. This harassment by local and international sinister interests has no precedents,” begins the most recent article by chavista journalist José Vicente Rangel.

Rangel, without providing evidence but appealing to performative hyperbolism, narrates how never before in the history of Latin America has a government been subject to such an “organic, compact aggression by the right-wing, softened democratic sectors, economic groups, paid [tarifadas] NGOs, and the fiercely aligned media.”

These local conspiracy groups are but the local manifestation of a foreign evil, according to Rangel: “The harassment against Venezuela is being directed by recalcitrant sectors of the United States right, the aggressive intelligence apparatus of that nation.”

The Venezuelan opposition to the government also represents, for Rangel, a unique and unprecedented case in the world history of evil conspiracies: “Never before in Venezuela, or in any other nation, has there been an opposition so divorced from the concept of fatherland, or more willing to sell the country to the highest bidder.”