Their favourite dictator

Most outrageously, Chávez attacked Angela Merkel, a European moderate, for being a Nazi (National Socialist) although his tax-and-spend policies are possibly closer to Hitler’s than hers. And then there was former African-American Secretary of State, Republican Condoleezza Rice, whom he labelled “Condolence” and a “Little Girl”.

The dictator, oddly enough, enjoys targeting women with filthy jibes.

And Chávez uses international events to distract from local bloodbaths. To the Martini Marxist, Venezuela is his personal ant farm: “During the first seven years that Chávez was in power, 100,000 people were killed in Venezuela, a country with scarcely more than twenty million inhabitants.”

On average, a Chávez year in power equals 15,000 crime-related deaths. And: “As a sobering comparison: by August 21, 2008, over five years after the war in Iraq commenced, the total number of American casualties was 4,148, and in Afghanistan the number was 574.”

Even in Australia (outside the ABC, I mean) the Australia-Venezuelan Solidarity Network is selling beautiful lies about Chávez.

No wonder Arab dictators adore him so. “But Chávez has a particularly strong group of fans in Hollywood. Danny Glover (whose movie projects Chávez now bankrolls), Sean Penn, Harry Belafonte, Naomi Campbell (‘the supermodel turned Latin American specialist,’ as Tony Allen-Mills wittily put it), Peter Coyote, and Kevin Spacey, among others, all fawn over the Great Leader.”

Like Gore, Chávez is above debate because “eagles do not hunt flies”. People with opposing views are “dwarfs”. Or “fags”. Or “limp-dicks”. Or “squealing pigs”.

The cult of personality is a force to be reckoned with, to be sure. Unlike Bolivar, Venezuela’s founding father, however, Chávez is completely non compos mentis.