We think Chavez is cool, and not just because he is obviously a pirate.

In a stunning victory for the working classes in both Scotland and Venezuela, and much to the chagrin of the imperialist pigdogs that control the media, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has announced that he is to employ 200 new staff members to help him deal with the daily deluge of twitter @replies he is getting from the Scottish Socialist Youth. Already there’s been a clear positive response, with Chavez commenting on our blog, “jajajaj chicos, ¡que diversión!” (‘hahaha guys, very funny!’). Sources point to a soon-to-be-announced extension of the Bolivarian Revolution to Scotland. It is set to begin with the Maryhill branch of the Scottish Socialist Party declaring independence from the unionist swine in Westminster and becoming officially annexed to Venezuela. The rest of Scotland will soon follow suit, and join the international struggle. A twitterquake will follow, with #SSYbloginitiatesworldsocialism becoming the top trending topic, EVER!

Nah, only joking, he’s not got back to us yet… But it is true – Hugo Chavez’s twitter account is now such a popular forum for Venezuelans attempting to voice their grassroots concerns to President Chavez that he has employed 200 people to help him sort through all of their comments and requests, replying to as many as they can. It’s been hugely popular, with his followers set to hit the 1 million mark by the end of this month.

It’s not been without trouble for the President, who says that over 18% of the comments he gets are just pure abuse. But he takes it in good spirit, tweeting back jokes to people that think sending Hugo a nasty twitter message is going to break the Revolution’s spirit!

Far from being a waste of money and staff time, clearly Chavez is taking the internet seriously and agrees with SSY that it will be one of the major battlegrounds in the struggle between ideas that will shape the 21st century. It’s also an easy and simple way for Venezuelans to directly petition their government, and for the government to keep in touch with the basic concerns (in 140 characters) of the people. He’s using social networking websites to cut through bureaucracy and allow people to directly hold the President to account, and we applaud him for doing so. He has created a fund to address the problems the people of Venezuela face that they have contacted him to ask for help with – mostly related to housing and health, so it’s already having a real impact on the lives of Venezuelans that otherwise would still be feeling alienated from the political process.

So SSY decided to get in on the act and send Hugo some greetings from Scotland, and the link to this here humble blog. We wrote

@chavezcandanga ¡Saludos desde Escocia! le invitamos a Hugo Chavez pasar por ssy.org.uk ¡Que viva la revolución socialista internacional!

I see u, spoiling Doctor Who over twitter.

Which says “Greetings from Scotland! We invite Hugo Chavez to check out ssy.org.uk. Long live the international socialist revolution!”. One of the drawbacks of twitter is that you must fit each message in to 140 characters of less, so although we’d have loved to have said more we were a bit limited for space. But we are FULLY confident that Hugo will receive our message and be so bowled over by our witty, irreverent yet SERIOUS take on socialism and politics that he will set the wheels in motion for the Venezuelan-Scottish superstate of dreams.

Our hope is that young socialists in Venezuela will be able to use our blog as a source of information about the socialist struggle here in Scotland and the UK, and we’d love to get updates from comrades involved in the struggle in Venezuela about what affects their lives.

SSY would also love to invite the PSUV (the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, of which Chavez is the leader) to send some young members along to our socialist summer camp this August, where they could learn about socialism from a Scottish perspective and share their experiences of living in a socialist country and the pressures they face from the capitalist forces that regularly attempt to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution and other progressive movements in South America. ¡Que viva la revolución socialista internacional!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 4:19 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.