I recently had the privilege of conducting a "cyber interview" with one of the preeminent domestic critics of the American Empire. Despite his relatively recent start, Stephen Lendman has rapidly become one of the most ubiquitous and well-respected chroniclers of truth in the alternative media community. Asserting unflinching support for social democracy, Hugo Chavez, and the countless victims of US foreign and domestic policy, Lendman has penned a growing stack of essays assailing the brutality of American Capitalism and the genocidal crimes of unbridled United States militarism.
Recently receiving a well-deserved page on Third World Traveler (1), Stephen Lendman is taking his place amongst the likes of Petras and Chomsky, men he cites as his inspirations.
Here is a glimpse of Stephen and his worldview:
What is your educational background and what type of work did you do in your "former life"?
"During my formal working life I read moderately as able and followed with horror and revulsion many world and national events but never wrote or spoke out about them. That began changing when I retired at the end of 1999 at age 65. I began reading heavily and now have an extensive library that includes many of the renowned giants I revere like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ed Herman, James Petras, Edward Said, Gore Vidal, Michel Chossudovsky, John Pilger, and dozens of others including many not as well known to the greater public like June Jordan, now passed much too young and terribly missed. Her very name inspires me for who she was and what she stood for and did in her life. A truly remarkable and courageous woman.
I tell people I never wrote anything other than business reports, memos and such since finishing my master's thesis in 1959 till, by accident, late last year I wrote a long letter to Norman Finkelstein praising one of his books. He asked permission to post it on his web site and requested I submit it to other sites which I did, got a few postings, and it all took off from there but slowly at first."
Please, tell me as much about your family as you feel comfortable disclosing.
"I grew up in Boston in a low middle-income family, never had any luxuries, but did have loving parents, never felt or was deprived, and by sheer luck and chance got into Harvard in 1952 when a full year's tuition was $600. It was $1000 when I graduated in 1956 with a BA. I then got an MBA at the Wharton School in 1960 with two years in the peacetime Army (thankfully) in between. I began my formal working life as a marketing research analyst for about seven years right out of grad school and spent the next 33 as part of a small family business until retiring at end of 1999. Overall, from back in school till I retired, I led a pretty plain vanilla life as just another face in a faceless crowd. Then it began to change.
Through your writings you have expressed your vehement support for Hugo Chavez. How do you respond to critics who characterize him as another Latin American dictator in the mold of Fidel Castro?
"I'm proud to support Hugo Chavez and hold him up as a genuine model of a democratic leader the likes of which we never had in this country from inception. It's because going back to the beginning of the republic, all the hyperbole about democracy and such never mentioned all those in the country left out of it like blacks who were slaves, native Indians who were exterminated and only white male property owners allowed to vote until that requirement was dropped in 1850 but not for woman who didn't get the franchise till 1920. I doubt there were long lines at polling stations back in those days. Hugo Chavez is demonized in the US and by the former ruling oligarchs in Venezuela, including those owning the dominant corporate media there and here, because he's a real democrat representing the greatest of all threats to the ruling class in both countries - a good example that won over the hearts and minds of the great majority of all Venezuelans once he fulfilled his campaign promises and gave them a real participatory democracy and essential social services they never had before. He changed their lives dramatically for the better, so why wouldn't they support him passionately.
Most important to Washington, his good example is slowly spreading throughout Latin America as more long-oppressed and denied people there want what Venezuelans now have. Look at what's happening now in Mexico. I've written it about several times and characterized it as possibly the early stages of a true transformational revolution that one day will free the people from the repressive ruling class and replace it with a Chavez-like government.
Chavez is different from Castro because Venezuela is a democracy and Cuba is not - with a big but. Most Cubans love Castro because he ended the brutal, corrupted, and hated old order under Fulgencio Batista who turned the country into a brothel and haven for the interests of US capital and the Mafia at the expense of the people. Castro gave his people the same kinds of social services Venezuelans now have under a socialist government with no other kind allowed. I never call him a dictator. Who ever heard of one loved by his people? When he finally passes, it will be a time of overwhelming and sincere grief that will be palpable. He'll be hard to impossible to replace, and Cubans will always revere him as a great hero. I strongly believe they'll never tolerate a return to the old order, and if any attempt is made to impose it on them they'll fight to prevent it. Try getting that reported over the US corporate media airwaves or the front page of the New York Times that only portrays Castro as a ruling tyrant over an oppressed and desperate people. Pure baloney, US-style."
The Bush administration recently waived a ban on federal funding for right wing military training in several Latin American nations, ostensibly to counter the "threat" of the rising Leftist movement. In your opinion how much do those of us amongst the poor and working class in the United States have to fear from the likes of Chavez, Morales, and Correa?
"I know about the Bush administration's attempts to fund, train and ally with the military in Latin America that, of course, means using them, if able, to counter or oust populist left wing governments if we can't co-opt them another way. I don't think they have the Pinochet model in mind as times have changed and the Chilean dictator is now held in such disgrace (even in the grave) by people throughout Latin America. He ended the most viable democracy in the region and replaced it with 17 years of ruthless dictatorship only benefiting those at the top and the well-off middle class getting enough to be satisfied and quiescent. Today the method of choice is the fig leaf of democratically elected leaders in suits and ties even if getting into office through electoral fraud in what Edward Herman calls "demonstration elections" orchestrated by the lord and master of the universe headquartered in Washington. It finds these kinds of shenanigans so effective they're now using them here routinely, the result being eight years (if he lasts) of George Bush and enough of his "elected" cronies along with him to give us 'the best democracy money can buy" and that electronic voting machines (run by giant corporations) can steal.
All ordinary working people everywhere should pray for the health and survival of leaders like Chavez, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Raphael Correa in Ecuador, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and the courageous leaders of the peoples' movements in Mexico like the APPO leadership in Oaxaca, the masses on the streets of Mexico City supporting Lopez Obrador denied the presidency he won by massive fraud, and the "Other Campaign" of Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas (EZLN) who's a modern-day Emiliano Zapata organizing a national movement to end Mexico's entrenched unjust system of predatory capitalism with an iron fist enforcing it and replace it with real social, economic and political justice for all the people.
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