Reading an article on Iran's Green Movement in the New Yorker, the parallels with the Venezuelan opposition strike me as, to say the least, spooky. How can it be that countries so different and so apart exhibit the same patterns of political upheaval? Would it be that after all these years of combating the deterministic tenants of marxism we come back and find patterns that repeat itself, as if societies will be doomed to walk the same trodden paths? Or is it that the current globalization lead us to inspire ourselves in the few examples available, creating a reality that repeats itself in the most disparate circumstances? The hypothesis might multiply, but the fact is that reality mirrors itself, to our constant wonder.

On the other side, once I tweet on this similarity, I had reactions from both dutch and venezuelan friends asking what in god's name could I possibly mean. Iran and Venezuela the same? I must surely mean something else. Driven by these reactions, the following lines; so that perhaps somebody might point my own mistakes in seeing shared traits between Iran and Venezuela. Up to then, here yet another attempt to impose some order in the constantly dynamic and chaotic palette of international relations. An amateur comparison in between Iran and venezuela, then. Four statements and a conclusion of sorts.

The regimes of Ahmadinejad and Chavez originated in the same gross failure of the development policy for the third world from the seventies. 

To be a citizen of any third world country in the seventies implied reading over and over again that the future was ours. There were many projects of industrialization, massive literacy programs and the extensive growth of the public sector as a benign service provider, a combination that promised to create a welfare society with fair roads to personal development. The regime of the Sha in Iran, and the coalition between social and christian democrats in Venezuela ruled their own countries for decades, promising a bright future... that never came to be. Levels of critical poverty increased exponentially, at the same time that an incipient middle class had access to high education and well paid jobs. The subsequent decades, the eighties and the nineties, showed the hubris of the previous governments and their developmental policies. Corrupt state-run services collapsed, creating wide discontent and eventually bringing up a generation of populist left wingers that capitalized the implosion of the state, winning popular support. Whatever we call neo-liberalism might have balanced the economies of the first world, but did nothing to prevent the collapse of the third. Accordingly, with a never seen before mix of violence and democracy, the Iranian and the Bolivarian revolution came to power.

Both regimes elicited strong oppositions, based in the minimal but existent middle class.  Opposition that eventually produced street mobilizations, which in turn created the expectation of regime implosion. An unrealistic expectation, actually.

The middle class created by the previous welfare state reacted strongly to these regimes. Almost from the first electoral win of Chavez, street demonstrations grew and showed a civil society strongly opposed to the new politics. In Venezuela, this movement climaxed in 2002, when after a series of massive street protests the government was toppled by a coup. In Iran 2009 the green movement, produced widespread admiration in the western media, which expect the "government of the Ayatollahs" to crump and disappear. Reality proved these attempts to go back to the seventies quite mistaken. The coup in Venezuela retained  power for only few days, when a combination of internal squabbles and public pressure brought Chavez from his imprisonment back to his position as president, in record time. In Iran, the green movement was strongly repressed and posterior elections showed its lack of popular appeal, as much as subsequent elections in Venezuela have shown the popularity of Chavez regime. The key issue is that opposers from both the regimes of Chavez and from Ahmadinejad are middle class citizens, whom have seen their horizons dwindle. On the other side, the majority of the Iranian and Venezuelan peoples are not middle class, as in the USA or in Europe, but poor. This segment of the population is still today strongly convinced that their governments are substantial improvements in their quality of life.

The politics of Chavez and Ahmadinejad are based on surgical repression, increased control of the media and blame of internal crisis to external actors.

A relevant part of the support that both Ahmadinejad and Chavez still command is due to their strong and innovative control of the media. Both leaders still claim not to have political prisoners, and even if this is highly debatable (probably more in Iran than in Venezuela), it keeps being repeated. The Chavez government has financed a humongous network of small news maker, creating a de facto fully new “news cycle”. On the other side, prominent opposers to both regimes have been hounded up in courts and in the street to the point that they have abandoned their countries. The repression of these regimes is not comparable to the shameless and murderous repression of the third world right wing dictators of the past, rather a surgical and precisely orchestrated attack on public figures, those that can be successfully accused of being anti-patriotic. The ongoing meddling of European and North American government in foreign soil serves this strategy well. It is hard to deny today that the reach of the States is worldwide and mostly harmful.

None of the policies developed by Chavez and Ahmadinejad have even begun to tackle the structural problems of their societies. In many issues, the situation has grossly worsened. At the same time, both Chavez and Ahmadinejad have produced successes not seen since long time ago.  

The fundamental question is why the majorities of both Iran and venezuela keep on supporting Chavez and Ahmadinejad. Even if angering most of my friends involved in venezuelan opposition politics, it is impossible to deny that the Chavez administration has invested an unbelievable amount of resources in the welfare of the poor. The serious problem is that a huge majority of those efforts, the so called "missions" are rife with corruption and inefficiency, doomed from the start to fail in the long term. But when a authoritarian government have been concerned by the long term? The fact remains that as long as Chavez remains capable to blame the USA as interventionist (not a crazy accusation anyway) and the government of Chavez remains capable of maintaining the network of missions (in a country that did not see any effective poverty reduction effort for decades)  the popularity of Chavez and his government will not dwindle enough to loose an election. 

Opposition to Chavez, and likely to Ahmadinejad keep on painting them as monsters reincarnated. But as long as political opponents to Chavez and Ahmadinejad will not recognize the conquers of these populists, showing that they are not so interested in ending with the current regime per se, but are as interested in the majority pf the country as chavez is, the world will go on being amused and threatened by these two -most prominent- populists.