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Sunday: March 30, 2008

Who Put the Chav in Chavismo?

Filed under: — site admin @ 11:00 PM GMT-0500

Austin Bay on Castro’s Mini-Me:

Chavez styles himself as South America’s new liberator, a new Simon Bolivar. Chavez’s “Chavismo” (echoing Fidel Castro’s “Fidelismo”) combines machismo, socialism, caudilloism, populism, anti-Americanism and the flamboyant dream of a new “Bolivarian state” in South America.

Etymologically, shouldn’t ‘Chavismo’ be ‘Chavezismo’? The -ez seems an essential part of the name. More important, do Brits find ‘Chavismo’ an amusing name? According to Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English, ‘chav’ is “derogatory slang” for “the lower class; uneducated and ignorant people” — derogatory British slang, I would have said.

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