Hugo Chavez

The funny thing is that Noam Chomsky probably welcomes the endorsement from Hugo Chavez.

The scary thing is that, past the rhetoric of calling Bush the devil, the meat of Chavez's speech was that he was announcing his solidarity with Islamic extremists. According to Chavez, poor countries, socialist countries, Islamic theocracies, etc. are all part of one big the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend coalition against the United States. Basically he is extending the class warfare he's thrived on at home to the global scene. Not that this is really unexpected; earlier this year he got awfully friendly with the dictators of Belarus, Syria, and Iran.

None of this should be taken as an endorsement of the right-wingers opposing Chavez at home; throughout South America corruption and the huge gap between the rich and the poor is what creates the environment that feeds into popular support for communist blowhards like Chavez. The U.S. needs to be more selective and constructive when propping up third-world regimes, because the backlash against leaders we support simply because they're not communists (or not Islamic theocrats) can bite us hard.

Update: Chavez doesn't just cozy up to dictators, but actor Danny Glover, too! Not that I have anything against cheap heating oil, but be careful when you publicly endorse a dictator. Maybe Glover and Chavez can find common cause chatting about their wacky anti-Semitic friends.

The secret connection?