Artículo: Fellow travelers

Esto me lo envió mi tía Nene y me pareció interesante:

The New Fellow-Travelers
> Why actors and models love to hang out with Hugo Chávez.> By Anne Applebaum> Posted Monday, Nov. 5, 2007, at 8:09 PM ET

>> Ninety years ago this week, a Bolshevik mob stormed the Winter Palace
> in St. Petersburg, arrested the provisional government, and installed
> a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in its place. Though the Russian
> revolution is no longer widely celebrated (not even by the Russians,
> who instead commemorate the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow in> 1612), I felt it important to mark the occasion. In honor of the
> anniversary, I reread Ten Days That Shook the World, the famed account
> of the revolution written by John Reed, the American journalist and
> fellow-traveler. Then I reread last week's press reports of the recent
> encounter between Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, and Naomi
> Campbell, the famed British supermodel.

>> Just as I'd remembered, Reed's book superbly transmits the breathless
> energy of the autumn of 1917—"Adventure it was, and one of the most
> marvelous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history at the
> head of the toiling masses"—as well as his own fascination with, and
> approval of, the violence he sees around him. After attending a mass
> funeral, he understands, he writes, why the Russians no longer need
> religion: "On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any
> heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory to die." By
> contrast, he is abashed when he has to explain that in America people
> try to change things by law—a state of affairs that his new Russian
> comrades find "incredible."

>> Fast forward 90 years, and surprisingly little has changed. True, the
> Russian revolution itself is no longer much admired, not even by
> Reed's heirs on the far left. But the impulse that drew Reed to St.
> Petersburg remains. The Western weakness for other people's
> revolutionary violence, the belief in the glamour and benevolence of
> foreign dictators, and the insistence on seeing both through the prism
> of Western political debates are still very much with us.

>> Exhibit A is, of course, Campbell. Though better known for her taste
> in shoes than her opinions about Latin American economics, she
> nevertheless pitched up in Caracas last week, gushing about the "love
> and encouragement" President Chávez pours into his welfare programs.
> Wearing what a Venezuelan newspaper called "a revolutionary and
> exquisite white dress from the prestigious Fendi fashion house," she
> praised the country for its "large waterfalls." Of course, Campbell
> did not mention the anti-Chávez demonstrations held in Caracas the
> week before her visit, proposed constitutional changes designed to let
> Chávez remain in power indefinitely, or Chávez's record of harassing
> opposition leaders or the media.

>> But then, that wasn't the point of her visit, just as it wasn't when
> actor Sean Penn, a self-conscious "radical" and avowed enemy of the
> American president, spent a whole day with President Chávez. Together,
> the two of them toured the countryside. "I came here looking for a
> great country. I found a great country," Penn declared. But of course
> he found a great country! Penn wanted a country where he would win
> adulation for his views about U.S. politics, and the Venezuelan
> president happily provided it.

>> In fact, for the malcontents of Hollywood, academia, and the catwalks,
> Chávez is an ideal ally. Just as the sympathetic foreigners whom Lenin
> called "useful idiots" once supported Russia abroad, their modern
> equivalents provide the Venezuelan president with legitimacy,
> attention, and good photographs. He, in turn, helps them overcome the
> frustration John Reed once felt—the frustration of living in an
> annoyingly unrevolutionary country where people have to change things
> by law. For all his brilliance, Reed could not bring socialism to
> America. For all his wealth, fame, media access, and Hollywood power,
> Sean Penn cannot oust George W. Bush. But by showing up in the company
> of Chávez, he can at least get a lot more attention for his opinions.

>> As for Venezuelan politics, or the Venezuelan people, they don't
> matter at all. The country is simply playing a role filled in the past
> by Russia, Cuba, and Nicaragua—a role to which it is, at the moment,
> uniquely suited. Clearly, Venezuela is easier to idealize than Iran
> and North Korea, the former's attitude to women being not conducive to
> fashion models, the latter being downright hostile to Hollywood.
> Venezuela is also warm, relatively close, and a country of beautiful
> waterfalls.>> Most of all, Venezuela's leader not only dislikes the American
> president—so do most other heads of state—but refers to him as "the
> devil," a "dictator," a "madman," and a "killer." Who cares what
> Chávez actually does when Sean Penn isn't looking? Ninety years after
> the tragedy of the Russian revolution, Venezuela has become the
> "kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer" for a whole new> generation of fellow-travelers. As long as the oil lasts.
>> Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post and Slate columnist. Her most> recent book is Gulag: A History.>> Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2177484/>>> Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC