On Monday, June 16, The Gateway Pundit gained an exclusive interview with Venezuela’s conservative, populist nationalist leader-in-exile, Eduardo Bittar.
Bittar spoke at length regarding Venezuela’s deep-seated corruption, Bittar’s embattled political career, his exile, and his God-centered political mission.
“I started in politics when I was 18 years old. In college, I was elected to our university council.”
“During that time, there was a lot of turmoil in Venezuela. A lot of media stations were being shut down. I became a voice of the student movement in the streets. This started in 2006.”
“I formed my ideology by fighting in the streets. In childhood, my parents taught me about the pitfalls of Communism. In college, I further strengthened my positions.”
“Then, I began to be targeted by Chávism. They tried to kill me several times. I also got physically beaten many times by Chávist groups – ten people at a time.”
“This was a frequent occurrence. I had an office at the university, and it got burned.”
“My work was to build cells against Chávism, inside Venezuela. Our work inside Venezuela had been going on for about ten years.”
“By 2017, living in Venezuela had become unsustainable, due to pressure from the leftist government. I was already facing capture orders, and I felt very unsafe inside the country.”
Chávism, extending from Hugo Chávez’s socialist revolution, is a far-left, communist-inspired, authoritarian movement that promised justice and prosperity, but delivered oppression, poverty, and the collapse of Venezuela’s democracy.
“Chávists are guerrilla fighters and drug traffickers who use politics as a masquerade. They are, in reality, a criminal organization wielding power.”
“Chávism is the result of a movement that has been going on in Venezuela since the 1920s. Chávism was not born in 1998. This ‘progressive’ movement has been growing through time.”
During the early 20th Century, many far-left revolutionaries began to take power internationally – from the Russian Bolsheviks, to the Mexican Zapatistas, to Mao Zedong in China.
“It took so long for these left-wing movements to grow because, during the 1920s and 1930s, these movements were held back by a strong, patriotic armed forces, as well as by numerous ideologists, philosophers, and thinkers, who effectively resisted these Marxist movements.”
“Socialist governments in Venezuela first began to take power in 1958. They had been building influence through university activism since the 1920s, gradually advancing leftist movements. Eventually, they toppled the government and assumed control in 1958.”
“From 1958, until Chávez’s rise in 1998, Venezuela was governed by these left-wing movements. There is a false idea that Venezuela thrived under these democratic governments during that period.”
“In reality, Venezuela’s prosperity came from foreign investments, respect for private property, and constitutional guarantees of freedom that were in place from the beginning. Precisely because of the constitution, the left-wing had limited tools to directly challenge the public, making their progress slow.”
“So, they began gradually implementing measures to acclimate people to the new leadership. However, corruption also started to take hold within the country. For example, one of the most significant practices of the left-wing movement in Venezuela — mind you, the same left-wing that today is considered the opposition — was the widespread theft of public funds from banks.”
“They basically robbed all the public funds in Venezuela from the banks. With such turmoil in the country, people became deeply upset and resentful of this corruption. This unrest set the stage for Hugo Chávez, then a military commander, to plan a coup in 1992, alongside some political parties.”
“Those same left-wing parties now praised Chávez as a hero for this action. It became acceptable for him to appear across national media following the operation, when he famously said, ‘For now, the objectives have not been conquered.’”
“This is how they started to raise his public figure, and make him more popular among the population.”
In 1992, Hugo Chávez was internationally viewed as a failed rebel, and a threat to democracy, condemned by the U.S. government and media, who favored stability. Still, Chavez’s defiant, televised surrender, in which he famously declared, “Por ahora!” (“For now!”), shifted his public perception and paved his political rise.
“This is how we arrived at 1998 — the year Chávez was elected president. Interestingly, that election saw the lowest voter turnout in Venezuela’s history.”
“People were tired of corruption in politics. From that point on, Chávez essentially transformed the establishment left-wing apparatus into his controlled opposition, crushing uprisings and advancing his agenda.
“Chávez presented himself as the virtuous alternative, while himself pushing an even more extreme, far-left ideology. Chávez created what I have termed as ‘OppoFiction’ — a fictitious opposition, and a Marxist-progressive narrative that defends anti-virtues and must be dismantled in Venezuela.”
“If we don’t get rid of these fictions, we will never get rid of the regime. For example, María Corina Machado not only introduced laws to disarm the population, but she also coordinated to ensure that the vote passed as a bipartisan, unanimous decision. She is known for attending assemblies of The Socialist International.”
María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s current opposition leader for Vente Venezuela (“Come Venezuela”), a liberal party, also heads the Democratic Unitary Platform (Plataforma Unitaria Democrática), a broader coalition focused on ‘restoring democracy in Venezuela.’
Venezuela has long cycled through various opposition leaders, most notably Juan Guaidó (2019–2023), who declared himself acting president, in defiance of President Maduro, and belonged to the social-democratic party Popular Will (Voluntad Popular).
“For the past 26 years, this opposition group has had different leaders — clown messiahs. The clown now is María Corina Machado. She, who claims to be the opposition leader and promises to overthrow the regime, in fact disarmed the population.”
On the other hand, Eduardo Bittar is guided by his clear vision to move Venezuela toward national restoration.
Bittar now implores both American and international support for a new, authentic, and effective Venezuelan government, grounded in genuine patriotism.
“Today, we need the U.S. government and the international community to understand this reality, so we can get rid of the regime. We need the resistance movement to direct the politics of Venezuela, because the political leadership cannot be in the hands of traitors, which we have had for the past 30 years.”
“If the US government keeps on supporting these traitors, who are leftists – if they keep funding them, we will never get rid of the problem. So, they need to point to the right group of people who will take care of the problem. That’s why we, who have already fought for over ten years in the streets of Venezuela against this regime, must lead this movement.”
Bittar’s singular perspective on Venezuela’s eerie political landscape evidently reveals the Venezuelan left-wing’s deep-seated stranglehold on its people.
Bittar’s many challenges allegedly extend from Venezuelan ‘OppoFiction’ — a manufactured opposition that, in reality, props up the current Venezuelan regime.
For further information on Eduardo Bittar’s vision, and his well-founded critique of Venezuela’s fake opposition, readers should look ahead to Part 2 of The Gateway Pundit’s exclusive interview with Eduardo Bittar.
The post Exclusive: Venezuela’s Populist Leader-In-Exile Eduardo Bittar on His Embattled Career and His Current Life in Exile appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.