In an earlier blog, I pointed to the fascist origins of the political radicalism of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. One index of this is the inroads of officially sponsored anti-Semitism, which includes this attack on Jews as an essentially alien, degenerate malefactor across time and space in the pro-Chavez paper, El Diario de Caracas.

Chavez is seeking re-election today and seems to be facing stiff opposition from Manuel Rosales, governor of the state of Zulia, behind whom other candidates have rallied after withdrawing from their own campaigns. However, polls, many of them admittedly government-controlled, show Chavez considerably in the lead. This is despite the poor economic performance of Chavez’s eight-year old administration, under which Venezuela has dropped by two on the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report’s list of poorest nations. Over 2 million of the country’s 25 million people live on a daily income of US$1.

Chavez’s leadership has been characterized by visceral opposition to the United States in every conceivable domain of foreign policy, from befriending Cuba and helping to install a like-minded government in Bolivia to ostentatiously backing Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear weapons and befriending radical Middle Eastern regimes. Should Chavez win re-election, he intends to alter the constitution to enable him to remain president indefinitely.

Some interesting insights into how Chavez has been managing his re-election – including saturation publicity, government-funded campaigning and illegal modes of advertising – are obtainable from this blog.