Orwell and the Bolivarian Dream: When the Law Becomes Sin

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/venezuela-zte/

This is of course a somewhat self-serving article on the part of Reuters as the news agency is in this case serving the Anti-Chavez/Maduro campaign that has been mounted by the West.

And yet, it is disturbing to say the least. As the Bolivarian experiment has collapsed, the rulers of Venezuela (Maduro and the military) wish to retain control and are apparently willing to open some dark doors to do so. I don't think Simon Bolivar would approve.

The West in general is ignorant of America's multi-generational policies with regard to Latin America. With the exception of Spain, Portugal and Italy, who are indirectly connected to this larger saga, few in the Western world have paid much attention. The conclusion of the Cold War led to a resurgence on the part of Latin citizenry which rejected the decades of American and fascistic domination of their countries. And yet just twenty years later, their resurgent project (the Pink Tide as it's known) lies in ruins with virtually all the gains now lost. Venezuela is one of the last bastions of resistance and the United States (along with its allies) continues to beat the Chavez legacy into the ground and doing all it can to promote social unrest.

Somewhat reminiscent of what was done under Chile's Allende before his 1973 removal, the US is once again preparing the ground. In this case NATO is happy to help as there are fears that Venezuela will become a beachhead for Moscow in the Western hemisphere. Once again history is repeated as this same justification was used to create the meat-grinding brutal conflicts that dominated Central America in the 1980's. Venezuela hasn't broken out into open war and yet you can be sure that in neighbouring Colombia (America's top regional satrapy), preparations are underway.

Maduro knows all this and knows the history and thus in desperation he is abandoning all democratic principles and attempting to set up a totalitarian infrastructure. The socialism of Chavez and the Latin American Pink Tide was always largely bogus. In Venezuela it was a market-based system relying on patronage dressed up in socialist language. When the market collapsed, the foundations were exposed and the system imploded. The US may have facilitated the collapse but more than anything it has worked to pour fuel on the fire... a fire that's now raging.

Maduro is also looking for friends and so he's naturally turned to Moscow and Beijing and yet the actual rollout of this Orwellian program indicates just how desperate things are becoming. A wicked project to be sure, he will use it to cement his power and yet the Venezuelans are not the Chinese and it may backfire. It may be his final act before his downfall. Few will weep, least of all me but I also cannot share in the triumph that will be felt in the West.

Sadly what I fear is that the fall will be something less than complete. It will become messy and may spark a war... one which could spread.

While people in the United States are focused on walls and fixated on caravans they're missing the context. Large swathes of the Latin American world are in economic chaos and political turmoil. There's trouble and people are trying to flee. Drugs, capitalism, guerillas and the residual problems and unrest from civil war and other prolonged conflicts have ripped apart the fabric of society and created a dangerous volatility. Criminals and paramilitaries have swept in and in some cases they are but agents of the state, rival states and other powerful players such as drug cartels and Western corporations.

Few would doubt that China based telecom ZTE has a beef with Washington. They, like not a few companies in Britain and Europe are livid with Washington's attempts to control and regulate international business. Everyone is expected to bow to Washington's demands and yet some companies try to circumvent this and are offended that Washington proclaims the right to exercise such power. They scrape and bow because they have to. Otherwise they will find themselves unable to buy and sell on the international market and everyone will cut them off out of fear of American wrath.

And yet, many will use shell companies and sleight-of-hand to try and circumvent American control.

ZTE's participation in the Venezuelan ID card project is like poking the United States in the eye and I'm sure they're happy to do it.

I'm afraid the technological age is granting a degree of credibility to some of the fears proclaimed by Dispensationalists a generation ago. This is not to vindicate their eschatological scheme. Rather this trend toward totalitarianism is actually an old and recurring one. Medieval Roman Catholicism represented just such a system and yet in the Christian Right's war with secularism many Evangelicals are unable to see this. Life under the Papacy was one of total control and forced conformity. There were thought police. There was censorship and surveillance. The penalties were stiff and terrible. 

And yet, without modern technology the power of the state was curtailed and limited. You could always flee and disappear and try to start over again somewhere else. You could go underground. That option is becoming more difficult in our day and we're reaching a point in which Christians (even in the West) will have to seriously entertain the flagrant violation of the law. The Beast infrastructure will drive Christians to break the law just to eat and survive and then as a consequence they will be in violation of various other licensing, employment and tax laws.

When the state has so invaded our privacy to the point that we can no longer think, speak or worship in peace and without penalty... and when we do such basic things we are punished and consequently hindered in providing basic daily needs... then we have a problem. Let me clear, I'm not talking about political speech or being part of a subversive movement but in just minding our own business and going about our lives we de facto become subversive criminals and are denied basic things needed for survival... that's when the Beast-state has crossed a line. It's not just suggesting that it be worshipped but demanding it and that's something we will not do. We are to obey the laws and pay our taxes but when the state begins to place restrictions on our thought, our private speech, our ability to worship and demands that we give of our time and energy to its service, promotion and veneration then the line has been crossed. This is the dragon making open war on the woman-Bride and the remnant of her seed. It's time to flee to the mountains. Woe to those Christians who have so wed themselves to the world that they cannot break away. Like Lot's wife, Sodom and its riches call to them and they can't tear themselves away from it.

I would never advocate violence but I would hardly weep if someone vandalised the servers and rendered them useless.

This type of law-violation that I'm hinting at is not in any way premised on Libertarian presuppositions which are not about obeying God but instead rest on Enlightenment assumptions regarding the individual, rights and certain 'laws' concerning economics which in their metanarrative dominate and define the state.

Rather the law-violation being discussed here is not about my rights to keep my property and my guns but rather a cross-bearing refusal to bow the knee to the Beast-system. Many Libertarians would give a hearty 'amen' to this concept and yet many of them are also proponents of the American Beast (in some past or present form) and are defenders of its long history of theft and murder. Of course they too have their historical distortions. I recently heard Glenn Beck criticising Manifest Destiny and America's Indian policy because (he argued) they were part of an agenda in which the government wanted centralised control. And so they (the federal government) needed to divide people and create strife so that they could have an excuse to claim those powers. As is often the case, there are hints and traces of truth in the narrative but overall it is completely misleading. Growth of the Federal Government was not the strategic goal that then generated Manifest Destiny and the annihilation and conquest of the American Indian. It may have been a result of it (in part) or it may have gone hand in hand with it but this is to grossly oversimplify the various forces (both real and ideological) at work in America's push to the West. The narrative serves Beck's more or less Libertarian line but it's an impoverished and sub-Christian read of history.

Additionally if you listen carefully you'll realise Beck actually supports Manifest Destiny and the push to the West. He certainly champions the idea that America was destined to be rich and powerful or 'great' as Beck and the world reckons it. He has somehow deluded himself into thinking that it would have all gone well and peaceably, that the settlers and Indians could have had many a 'Kumbaya' moment if it wasn't for that pesky federal government.

It's absurd.

And so are the many Libertarian and particularly Christian-Libertarian arguments for dispensing with the law or openly breaking it. We're told to do the opposite and yet it has to be admitted there is a breaking point. The breaking point is not a call to take up arms. There's no basis for that anywhere to be found in the New Testament. Rather we are something driven to a point in which we can legitimately no longer obey the laws and we can either continue doing so (and accept the consequences) or we can flee.

Personally I would rather leave then fall into a consistent pattern of breaking the law but it may be that there are few options, few places to go. This is difficult for many in the West to understand and perhaps Americans in particular who are quick to champion armed uprising and resistance. The Christians in America have for the most part sanctified and blessed the sinful and ungodly rebellion of 1776 and woven it together with their conceptualisations of Christian history. It is but one of many examples in which Evangelicals sanction, sanctify and celebrate sin.

Returning to the issue of tyrannical technologies, one can only hope that JH Kunstler is right and that some kind of societal and technological collapse or semi-collapse is on the horizon. It is the elimination of or at least the curtailment of the technology that will arrest and restrain the totalitarian impulse.

Maduro is right. The United States is most definitely out to harm his government and the economy of Venezuela but now he will use this as a justification to continue expanding this wicked and bestial project leaving regular people but especially Christians in a terrible dilemma. It's also happening in China and it won't be long before we see it in the advanced nations of the West. Many would assume that it will first appear in Scandinavia where indeed people are already voluntarily having microchips embedded under their skin.

And yet those relatively peaceful societies may not feel the need. America is probably a better candidate and yet there will be considerable resistance. At this point the NSA can utilise phone and other meta-data but of course those who refuse to leave trails will be exempt. I'm sorry to say it but one has to wonder if the United Kingdom won't lead the way in the Atlantic zone of nations. Unfortunately I can see Westminster adopting the kind of ID-card and facial scanning schemes that we're beginning to see in China and Venezuela. Given the already oppressive nature of Britain's surveillance state it isn't too hard to imagine this kind of larger network showing up on the streets of London, Glasgow and Leeds.

Of course let's not fool ourselves. We already have a social credit system at work in countries like the US and Great Britain but it's a hybrid arrangement of official and unofficial criteria. We have things like one's credit score and if you want access to certain sectors of society one must certainly possess the right degrees, connections and postal code all displayed on one's résumé or CV. And yet we've always had loopholes. One could start a retail business or run some kind of company in which said person could access a degree of wealth and yet bypass the official gatekeepers. And yet in most cases one can only go so far. If you want to enter the premier league (as it were) you must have access to credit and to have that, you have to play by a certain set of rules. But up until now you could still get by. The economics have changed and it's getting harder. A lot of occupations require licensing and that means insurance and again that dovetails with questions of credit and overall finances. The gate is becoming more narrow but we are (it would seem) some distance from the implementation of the kind of systems we're seeing in China and Venezuela. At least let's hope so.

One aspect of this story that saddens me is that Maduro has taken the country down a wicked path that will (to the minds of many Americans) vindicate the aggressive (even imperialist) policies of Washington. Many Christians will celebrate Washington's breaking of Caracas because they will see that Maduro has degenerated into an Orwellian Beast. He has it would seem and yet Washington is not exempt from the same charge. But this development will only further blind American Christians to the realities of their own system. As long as there are governments led by men like Maduro, Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping the Christian Right can continue to fool itself that it stands for freedom and the good of all people.