What Does the Most Rightwing Country on Earth Look Like?

It looks like Colombia.

Rightwingers must wonder what a rightwing country looks like. What happens to your country when the Right takes over everything, gets almost all of the vote, controls all of the media, and the vast majority of the population would have to identify themselves as rightwingers if they were honest? You end up with Colombia!

What I find frightening about Colombia is that if they are the most rightwing country on Earth, the US must not be far behind. Does the future of America look like Colombia? I keep worrying that it does.

It is certainly possible for countries to not have much of a Left. One example is Colombia – the most rightwing country on Earth after the US. There is a spectrum down there, from “Left” to “Right.” The Left is represented by the Liberals. The Liberals claim to be a social democratic party but there is nothing socialist or democratic about them. The Conservatives apparently hate the Liberals, but they each seem to be about the same – extremely rightwing.

There are a variety of other parties. Most of them appear to be some version of the same extreme rightwing fascism of the Liberals and Conservatives. So you see, in Colombia, there is no Left, and the “Left” and the “Right” are both just the Right.

They represent the interests of a tiny group of rich Colombians who run the country like a personal fiefdom. These group is mostly made of thieves and murderers. They spend most of their time stealing land and money from the vast majority of Colombians (last I heard 8

Much of the agenda is to steal the land of the people and give it to large landowners and corporations. Armed groups, including the military and police, come onto the lands owned by the poor and demand that they vacate their land. If you don’t, the thugs, the army and the police come out and arrest, beat, torture, kidnap or kill you. Hence the poor are constantly leaving their lands at gunpoint.

The rich Colombians then come in and steal the land use it as part of their huge landholdings. Or else the stolen land is given to a large corporation, often an American one. If you go to Colombia, you will see vast areas of land that are now owned by rich landowners. All of that land was formerly owned by poor farmers. They were driven off their land, and their land was stolen by the latifundistas.

If you go through these areas, you will run into constant checkpoints manned by the military, police and rightwing death squads. They are the armies of the rich. The checkpoints are to keep the people from rising up and trying to get their land back. In cities near these areas, you will see vast slums stetching as far as you can see over the hills.

The worst slums on Earth. Guess who lives in those slums? The poor farmers who were driven off their land at gunpoint by the armies of the rich. Now landless, they were forced to move from rural to urban areas because they no longer have any land.

There’s no work in the city, so they wallow in the worst misery. These people hardly have enough food to eat. There’s no electricity, sewage, water or other amenities in the slums. The education system is poor and there’s little to no health care. There’s no work. As you might expect, crime is off the charts, much of it involving the poor preying on the rich. The poor slums are guarded by rightwing death squads to make sure that everyone keeps quiet about their condition.

Anyone rising up to complain about the state of affairs in the slums is called a “Communist.” Fullscale repression, which often includes disappearance and murder, typically results. If you go against the system down there, you can easily die. Repression is perhaps most intense against organized labor. Every year, more trade unionists are murdered in Colombia than in any other country on Earth. This is because in Colombia, if you are a trade unionist, you are a Communist. In Colombia, once you are labeled as Communist, you can be killed at any time.

In such a situation where all peaceful protest has been walled off, as you might expect, the Left has been forced to take up arms. You can either sit there and wait for the government to come out and kill you, or you can pick up a gun so you at least have a fighting chance when the government comes out to kill you.

Recently, the Democratic Pole ran in the elections. This is actually a Left party. Many of their candidates were threatened, beaten, arrested and tortured. A number of Polo candidates were out and out murdered by the government. In the last election, I believe that they got maybe 1

Colombia is probably the top 3 US ally on Earth. Colombia gets the third highest foreign aid of any US country. Colombia is the US’ favorite country in Latin America, and it’s one of the last US allies down there. Barack Obama loves Colombia. He signed a deal to put 7 US military bases down there. The purpose of those bases is to help the armies of the rich down there to repress, disappear and slaughter the people. So you can see that Obama just loves Colombian fascism.

This is pretty scary right there. What does a US ally look like? Apparently it looks like Colombia. What kind of values does America have that this country is #3 in US foreign aid, almost all of it military aid.

And yes, of course, this blog does support the FARC and the ELN, the armed Left down there. I was going to do some work for the ELN translating some of their web stuff, but I was afraid it would be illegal under the Patriot Act and I could go down for 10 years.

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20 thoughts on “What Does the Most Rightwing Country on Earth Look Like?”

      1. They take over the damn blog, and I’m sick and tired of reading their stupid comments. We don’t have enough Left and liberal commenters on here for some reason, but that’s really what I want. Most Left blogs censor all rightwing comments, which to me is proper.

        And I don’t agree with your view. They’re about as fun to keep around as an untrained pit bull.

  1. I dunno Robert. If by “right” you mean “conservative”, I always thought that ideology included a respect for property rights. If we debate it, we’ll end up arguing about semantics.

    1. at one time that might have been their main point, like at the beginning of the usofa but i think that changed when every one got the right to vote. no longer limited to white male land owners. if most corporations are owned via stocks where is the property ownership? if 10% of the citizens own their property outright, home, and the rest either don’t own any or owe the bank for most of the assets then whose rights are we talking about and if its their rights, the banks, then are we talking about a fascist freedom? and everyone else is just out of the ownership class and have no rights? property ownership is just a minor aspect of freedom, my opinion. maybe if its the only one for conservatives and their ideology. that does seem limited and dangerous.

  2. “The Left is represented by the Liberals. The Liberals claim to be a social democratic party but there is nothing socialist or democratic about them. The Conservatives apparently hate the Liberals, but they each seem to be about the same – extremely rightwing.”

    I would characterize the Alternative Democratic Pole and the Greens as to the left of the Liberals. And if polling is any indication, these parties have a lot of support in urban areas. If elections were free and fair in rural areas, these parties might do better and in alliance with a progressive party that could appearl to a rural base, the left could probably challenge the status quo. Actually Obama/Clinton have the power to pressure Santos to hold fair elections but apparently they prefer to build more military bases..

    Another thing I think is worth mentioning is that the conservatives in power claim they are the ones promoting the rule of law and democratic accountability. In practice many of their actions are illegal, but instead of trying to justify illegality like a fascist would, they use media manipulation. This indicates to me that the Colombian people have not actually embraced facism–on the contrary they believe Uribe was a reformer.

    With regard to FARC, I don’t understand your position. But then I know very little about them. Basically, what I’ve read about them paints them as
    1) reactionary, behind the times, without public support in urban areas. Some seem to argue that the Farc lost touch with the people now that they can rely on drug taxes for cash.
    2) Strategically confused. Some elements possibly in collusion with the military. Kidnaping Betancourt seems a good example of this–this public relations fiasco undermined the farc among democratic leftists worldwide. Worse, one gets the impression that the Farc leadership actually believed Betancourt was their enemy. What was it that made her a threat? Was it her speaking out against corruption, speaking out against kidnapping, or just being an abrasive arrogant woman, or some combination of these? One gets the impression that the guerilla leadership is totally closed off from reality and has no idea how to reach or relate to the Colombian people via the media,
    3)Morally bankrupt? I know the right-wingers in Colombia use child soldiers but imo that doesn’t justify FARC doing the same shit. There’s also the objection that the communist ideology they promote is essentially a kind of Machiavellianism for the working class, and that their ideology really has no moral legitimacy than a fascist ideology. If FARC were to take power, what prevents the AUC from carrying out their own guerrilla revolution, and why would the AUC be in the wrong this time?

    For me to support a violent revolution alot of conditions have to be met. Any violent revolution is going to create a whole new set of problems, so the outcome desired (in this case social equality) has to be very valuable, and there needs to be reasonable assurance that the revolutionaries would actually carry out their program. And even if the revolutionaries and their motives are flawless, the revolution still might not be worth it if a substantial number o people have to die. Especially if the same aims might have been achieved peacefully.

    Not only does the armed struggle in itself seem wrong, but also it’s not clear that Farc and its leadership being in control of the country would be a good thing.for Colombians or anyone else. They look like militarist reactionaries to me…but that’s me.

    All that said I admit I dont know a whole lot about Colombia and I’d be happy to be corrected on matters of fact or theory.

    1. Doesn’t someone have to support the people? Why should the FARC lay down their arms? They tried that in the 1980’s with the formation of the Patriotic Union and they were slaughtered like flies. At this point, the Colombian state simply kills anyone who is on the Left. As long as they are doing that, doesn’t the Left have to be armed? If the FARC lay down their arms, won’t the state simply continue to kill the Left? Suppose you are on the unarmed Left in Colombia. The state can come out and kill you at any time. Don’t you think that you ought to have some way to fight back? The FARC should quit fighting when the state quits killing the people, right? The FARC defends the people from the murderous state. Don’t the people need someone to defend them? As long as the state slaughters the unarmed Left, doesn’t the Left have a right to arm itself and fight back?

      I don’t think the FARC are reactionaries at all. It’s not true. Ideologically, they ally with Chavez and the Bolivarians. They are also with Morales in Bolivia and Correa in Ecuador. They are about as radical as Chavez is.

      I agree that they blew it as far as kidnapping goes. They need the support of the people, and they are not getting it right now, partly for this reason.

      As far as moral bankruptcy, not sure, but you can join the FARC if you are 15 years old. I’m not sure if that is the worst thing in the whole world. The FMLN in El Salvador used child soldiers too. It’s pretty common in the region.

      The Polo + the Greens would be an excellent ticket, I agree.

  3. We are talking about 15 year olds joining up with a militant communist guerrilla organization that is criminalized by the government. I doubt even a 22-year-old has the experience and judgement to make a commitment like that, much less a 15 year old. I’ve read that 90% of the Farc is under 19, and appalling figure.

    Alot of valid criticisms of the farc are deflected by the retort that right-wing paramilitaries do the same thing. Or alternatively, that cruel things need to be done in war. This reminds me of a Hannah Arendt passage

    “the danger of the practice of violence, even if it moves consciously within a nonextremist framework of short-term goals, will always be that the means overwhelm the end. If goals are not achieved rapidly, the result will not merely be defeat but the introduction of the practice of violence into the whole body politic. Action is irreversible, and a return to the status quo in case of defeat is always unlikely. The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world. ”

    This is what I mean when I call the FARC reactionary. Marxism is dangerous insofar as it divides the world into black/white good/evil where anything and everything is justified in order for good(in this case the ‘oppressed’ or ‘the people’ or ‘The Left’) over the bad (basically, whoever opposes the Farc). And Marxism/Leninism seems to have been completely caught up in the 20th century cult of violence and too easily approves of violent solutions for problems that could be solved via reason, negotiation, and non-violent action.

    Most of the shit I’ve read about Colombia indicates that the problem of violence in Colombia stems from the conviction among the guerillas as well as the military that violence is the best means of achieving their agenda. When people criticize Farc cruelties like the kidnappings, Farc defenders point to the atrocities of the opposition. As if any act of violence is legitimate as long as the other side is also doing it. The game of war harms both sides and triggers the moral break-down.

    And the problem goes deeper than that.. There are many writings in Marxist-Lennist-Maoism that seem to believe in creating conflicts with the goal of discrediting the state at large. Consider the tactics and actions of the Shining Path. If the Farc are of this mindset, then its difficult to negotiate with them in good faith.

    Even worse, the very fact that the conservatives are determined not to lose to the Farc hinders the potential for a broad social compromise. If any concession to social-democratic reform is regarded as a victory for the Farc, how do you break through the logjam?

    This is part of what motivates a left-winger like Petro to say

    “The Pole’s position is clear. What happens is that the [Uribe] government and its friends want the Pole to criticize the FARC from the right, but we criticize them from the left – which is the critique that really does them damage. For example, President Uribe calls them terrorists, but we say that they are like Pol Pot’s movement in Vietnam [sic.], one of the most criminal and anti-democratic in history. We say that the FARC are not revolutionaries, that they are not leftists, that in fact that they are right-wingers and criminals.”

    Petro is, justifiably, trying to disassociate egalitarian reformism from the Farc. He and other progressive Colombians do not share the opinion that the Farc is Colombia’s best bet for a social compromise.

    I guess my final reason to oppose the farc is the pragmatic one–that they simply won’t win. Even if they achieved power in Colombia it would spark a larger regional war and more active participation by the USA. All at the expense of the people and ecology of Colombia. Meanwhile, there is no way to predict what a Farc regime would look like or whether it would actually beneift poor COlombians. And there is no indication that the Farc have broad public support, indicating that a Farc regime could easily become an outright tyranny.

    1. Well, as long as the state is massacring the unarmed Left, then the FARC has the Right to take up guns to defend the Left. The day the FARC puts down their guns is when the massacre will really begin. The FARC protects the people when the government comes out to kill them.

      If you are on the Left in Colombia, you really need to support the FARC because they are the only people defending you. Whenever the state stops killing the unarmed Left, the FARC can put down their guns.

      The FARC is not particularly radical. Their ideology is the same as that of Chavez of Venezuela.

      It’s true that the Shining Path did take up arms when the state was not killing the Left. And the Shining Path did practice “deepening the contradictions” and “worse is better.” But the FARC believes in none of these things. The FARC is part of the Bolivarian Movement in Latin America – they are allied with Chavez, who calls himself a Bolivarian.

      Sure the Polo condemns the FARC. They have to. If they don’t, the state will say that they are members of the FARC. But the FARC are the only people defending the Polo, and the state massacred many Polo members and candidates.

      When the state is coming out to kill the unarmed opposition, the people need guns.

      The FARC wants some basic changes in the way that Colombia is run. This would be along the lines of the peace settlement that the FMLN negotiated with El Salvador – the FMLN secured many changes in the way that society is run, then they turned into a peaceful party and now they are running the country.

      When the FARC laid down their weapons and tried to take power peacefully as the UP, they were slaughtered like flies. Now they are very leery of laying down their guns again. Who could blame them.

      When the FARC was given a large part of Colombia to run, the peasants loved living under FARC control. In one town, there were 350 murders a year. After the FARC took over, there was 1 murder. The FARC have done many great things for the people in the areas they control in the way of developmental projects.

      I am not sure what kind of support they have, but in some parts of the countryside, basically everyone is with them. And I understand that there are some small cities with so much FARC presence that they have de facto control over the town and people are afraid to go against them.

  4. ugh, you Mr. Lindsay and you apparent lack of testosterone are what is wrong with America. Your naivety is astounding, please do the world a favor and kill yourself

  5. Ok.. I understand this is an old article… BUT, I not only enjoyed reading the article…
    LOVED the comment that NO RIGHT wingers are ALLOWED….

    I’m so SICK and tired of the right wingers infesting forum after forum
    talking their sick game…

    Often times I feel dirty just reading their racist comments….

    Personally, I wish the south would go secede….

    They have done nothing but become more and more
    extreme EVERY year since Reagan…..

    I’m look forward to reading your blog…. This article was a great introduction….

  6. Good article. It would appear, as usual, that the right-wing don’t like having mirrors held up in front of their faces.

  7. I would advise you to actually visit Colombia, its a beautifull country, economic opportunity, liberty, great people, good livingstandard considering all the problem the left is causing. The most happiest people you will ever meet is in colombia. And due to the government not taxing the poor or regulating economic activity for the poor there are many jobs in the cities. Get your fact straight. You just want to cencor right wingers because you are afraid of debate. I’m not right wing, I support Obama, and you are dead wrong about Colombia. FARC is a racist organization and I have black family members who have been forced out of south colombia because they are black, they fled to Cali to escape FARC terrorism. That you support a racist organization show how racist you extreme leftist really are.

  8. This guy is a joke. You’re just an left-winged extremist who bans everyone that doesn’t agree with you. You don’t care about having your facts straight, or having a debate or a discussion. All you care about is people accepting your ideals and otherwise you will just ignore or ban them.

    Basically you’re just as crazy as extreme religious people are.

    1. No rightwingers allowed! There’s nothing to debate anyway. We’re right, they’re wrong! It’s that simple! I look at all the rightwing arguments all the time, and I almost never find one that makes any sense.

      I used to open this board up to everyone, but it got overrun by rightwingers and soon all it was was rightwingers. WTH? This is a socialist blog. Why is it overrun by rightwingers? I realized the only way to control the situation was by banning the rightwing jerks.

      And you are banned too!

      HAND!

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