Can I call Hugo Chavez a thug?

Some many years ago, I was taken to task on the Internet by a lefty gadfly who was miffed that I would dare to refer to President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela as a "thug" and a "strongman." My critic maintained that Chavez's democratic election to office excused his authoritarian excesses which, after all, were legitimate expressions of the will of the Venezuelan people, opposed only by reactionary fans of the old regime.

Well, a big, fat raspberry to that.

The Chavez administration's shut-down of RCTV, the only opposition-linked television network with national reach, is about as thuggish a move as you can make without overtly outlawing political criticism. Pretending to protect free speech while simultaneously muzzling outlets for speech critical of the state is a classic authoritarian tactic. Why create political martyrs when you can just deny critics the ability to reach an audience?

That Chavez immediately replaced RCTV with a pro-government station says all that needs to be said about his intent in the matter.

But the thuggish Chavez isn't about to stop at gagging explicit opposition; his government is also looking at anything that might be inferred as criticism. According to news reports, government officials are now investigating Globovision, the last remaining opposition TV outlet, for implied attacks on the state.

Willian Lara, the communications minister, called for an investigation of Globovisión, a 24-hour news channel, saying semioticians hired by the government had determined that video run by the channel of an assassination attempt in 1981 against Pope John Paul II could be interpreted as hostile to Mr. Chávez.

Semioticians? Really? Is any further proof required that Hugo Chavez and his cronies are dead-set on suppressing even the most subtle dissent?

Actually, I suspect that my lefty gadfly is still out there somewhere, cheering on the Venezuelan government's latest oppressive excesses. People willing to cheer on dictators are unlikely to flinch at a little run-of-the-mill political repression.

Beyond the borders of Venezuela, the closure of RCTV holds a warning for media outlets even in countries with relatively strong free speech protections. Technically, RCTV wasn't censored; it was denied a renewal of its broadcast license. That's a nice bit of sleight of hand that allows the government and its supporters to hide behind a regulatory move.

Broadcast media (and sometimes print media) in other countries, including the United States, also rely on licenses from the state. Those licenses aren't supposed to be dependent on chumminess with the political powers-that-be, but bureaucratic rules can certainly be wielded as clubs against people out of favor with the government. Even in the United States, politicians have threatened broadcasters with non-renewal of licenses over sexually suggestive and violent content, and the Canadian government has pulled the plug on at least one radio station for "hate speech."

It's all done in the name of the "public interest," of course.

So, while we justifiably tag Hugo Chavez as the threat to freedom that he is, let's not be too smug about our own supposed immunity to similar outrages.