(American Thinker) Remember Bianca Jagger? You know, the disco queen and former rock-star’s wife turned leftwing “human rights activist” who was last seen mourning the electoral loss of Marxist Sandinista strongman Daniel Ortega, back in 1990?
As P.J. O’Rourke immortalized her, in this memorable passage?
On the morning of the 26th, the day after Violeta Chamorro’s victory over Danny Ortega, I walked into the Inter-Continental hotel in Managua and Bianca Jagger was sitting alone in the lobby. Bianca had been ubiquitous during the election campaign: There was Bianca looking smart in an unconstructed linen jacket and yellow socks to match, Bianca looking serious with press pass and camera, Bianca looking thoughtful listening to Jimmy Carter, Bianca looking concerned conferring with Senator Christopher Dodd, Bianca looking committed in simple tennis shoes and neatly mussed hair, Bianca looking important wearing sunglasses after dark. But this morning Bianca looked . . . her age. Here we had a not very bright, fortyish, discarded rock star wife, trapped in the lonely hell of the formerly cute — one bummed-out show-biz lefty.
I was feeling great myself, ready to turn somersaults over the Ortega defeat, full of good cheer, and pleased with all the world. But then the forlorn, sagging little shape of Bianca caught my eye and, all of a sudden, I felt EVEN BETTER.
Well, she’s back, this time supposedly supporting the student strikers as Nicaragua under her same beloved Ortega goes to hell. She’s “facing down the death squads,” as a helpfully suck-up interview with the Daily Beast reveals.
Bianca Jagger is on the phone from Nicaragua. Over the past two weeks she has campaigned for human rights in her native country, and borne witness to mounting violence as the regime uses murder to hold on to power. We had talked several times over several days, but now, as she spoke about students she had met with, and who had been shot down, she choked back tears.
Oh, barf. And by extension, that means she’s not on the side of the Marxist Ortega, whom she admits she knows “very well,” as she revealed to the Daily Beast. Yep, that she does, and it’s for a reason – up until now, she’s always been his biggest fan.
Guys like Ortega are back in power precisely because of socialist Sandalistas such as Jagger. Ortega’s victory in his second coming, back in 2007, was his chance to turn the country into a communist dictatorship. Never again would he let a mere election break his grip on power as it did in the surprise election of 1990. Polls at the time showed that Ortega would win comfortably and people like Jagger stated that this showed the wonderful appeal of socialist ideas. Nicaraguans, on the other hand, had different ideas about it, and lied to the pollsters to create that impression, the better to avoid retribution from the state for voting the wrong way, or to give Ortega the rationale to rig the whole thing and get elected dictator for life. Ortega watched and learned this lesson and by the time enough new young voters were there to not know the history, 17 years after his initial exit, he made his move to regain power in 2007 by elections. This time, he ensured that there would never be a free election again. Everything that has gone on since his recrudescence through the help of the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez has been through electoral rigging and cheating. One man, one vote, once, so the saying goes. That’s why the latest activity in that unhappy land is getting rather violent and protestors are being shot by the regime in the streets. Ortega, as with all socialists, never intends to give up power. Raul Castro and Nicolas Maduro know what he means.
That’s what socialism is, and you can expect that same result every time it’s tried. Nobody wants to be the next Ceaucescu, which is what happens when you engage in as many human rights violations as socialists do.
But Bianca Jagger soldiers on, making no recognition to the reality she helped foster so early on, nor to the culpable role that socialism plays in the creation of a dictatorship. She actually claims to speak for the students in saying the students plan to go all Gandhi in their claim to non-violent resistence, even as a socialist monster with no intention of ever giving up power is what they are staring down. They can ask their Venezuelan buddies how well that’s worked out.
What it shows is her cynical affiliation to the international human rights chi-chi crowd, with its absurd ideas about non-violent resistance in the face of totalitarian regimes. Non-violent resistance does work, very well, when it comes up against actual democracies and authoritarian regimes that nevertheless have some fealty to rule of law. The British empire and the U.S. during the Democrat-led segregationist era are prime examples, as is Chile, which transitioned easily to democracy in the wake of the Pinochet era. Where it doesn’t work is in the case of a true socialist totalitarian regime, loaded with sins, fearful of being held to account for them, and determined to cling to power by some sort of Divine Right of Marxist Progress. Those regimes cannot be dislodged through peaceful protests. Jeanne Kirkpatrick articulated this iron law of human nature in 1979, in a piece called “Dictatorships and Double Standards” back when Bianca was agitating for the wonders of Ortega.
It’s all such baloney. Does this woman believe in socialism, or does she believe in the protestors protesting socialist Ortega? Based on the Daily Beast interview, it looks like she is trying to have it both ways – an ‘ours will be a really good socialism’ as Tom Wolfe once observed, and a camera-hogging move to get out front with the protestors, who are getting good media coverage, but who will probably have to fight if they want to get Ortega out of there – and sow the earth with the salt of a total rejection of socialism if they don’t want another one.
Jagger should just beat it. Her credibility is shot, her presence is a nuisance, and her hypocrisy is showing.
Article by Monica Showalter first appeared at American Thinker. Read the original
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