Evo Morales made other errors during the coup process, such as calling for the OAS to verify the votes, even though he had repeatedly denounced the OAS as a tool of the US. For instance in 2017 he said "I offer to free brother [OAS General Secretary] Luis Almagro from submission to the North American empire. All for the dignity and sovereignty of our peoples." Yet he invited in this US tool, which then found the election had "irregularities".
Corporate Media Disinformation and Building a People's Alternative
Another agent, the corporate media, as Alfredo Serrano Mancilla noted, "are never absent in each coup. They are keys to building the frame of reference before, during and after... This medium was always the maximum exponent of the fraud scenario, before and after, defending the lack of knowledge of the results from the beginning and quickly emerging to endorse the undemocratic transition."
Corporate control of the media complements control of the armed forces in creating regime change. The media can monopolize access to information and are able to effectively present disinformation as news, seen so well in the 2002 coup against Chavez, in Nicaragua in 2018, Libya in 2011, and Syria for years. Creating a popular mass media widely read both locally and internationally that is a mouthpiece for the 99% is necessary yet difficult task, something even Chavista Venezuela still has not accomplished successfully.
Our Responsibility in the Imperial Core
A serious analysis of what is happening in a Third-World country, progressive or not, must start with the role Western imperialism has played, including the role of Western NGOs. Otherwise, analysis does not put in perspective the problems the country faces, and indirectly gives cover to imperialism's role.
Alison Bodine and Ali Yerevani, writing on the US war against Venezuela, sum up well our responsibilities:
"At the root of all conflicts and battles of imperialist countries against independent countries, including colonial and semi-colonial countries, is the drive to deny them their sovereignty and self-rule. Everything else is secondary.... The best way to contribute to the struggle of Venezuelan people against the reactionary pro-imperialist right-wing opposition inside Venezuela and against the constant attack, sanctions, and interventions of imperialism, is to build a strong antiwar, anti-imperialist movement that also focuses on building a Venezuela solidarity movement in defense of self-determination for the Venezuelan people."
This must include combating regime-change disinformation, which aims to delegitimize governments not submitting to imperial dictates, justifying coups, murderous economic sanctions, proxy wars and "humanitarian" invasions. The corporate media can be a more sophisticated tool for regime change than the military, permitting Washington to take advantage of the story that anything short of outright US troop invasion is not intervention nor regime change.
Many liberal and faux "left" websites and groups have become transmission belts for this regime-change propaganda into the progressive movement, sometimes even taking NED funding. This has been countered from an anti-imperialist stance by our "tribunes of the people". Examples include Alan Macleod on Venezuela, AFGJ on Nicaragua, The Grayzone on China, Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley on Syria, Popular Resistance on Hong Kong, Consortium News and Stephen Cohen on Russiagate, 21stcenturywire.com on Libya, Dan Kovalik, Phil Wilayto on Iran.
Besides working to build a more united mass anti-imperialist movement, necessary tasks for us today include continuing to educate the public about, one, widespread corporate-media disinformation, two, the need to respect the sovereignty of other nations, and three, unmasking the faux left, which behaves like amateur soft agents of the US intelligence services.
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