A Trump-like Mexican oligarch, Gilberto Lozano, is leading a coalition of corporate leaders and far-right fanatics called FRENA to try to overthrow President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
by José Guadalupe Argüello III and Ben Norton
Part 10 - FRENA brands gender equality and homosexuality a communist conspiracy
The cast of delirious right-wing fanatics arrayed against Lopez Obrador may seem too fringe to have a sizable impact on Mexican politics, but these are precisely the same kind of extremists that have touched off successful campaigns to overthrow leftist governments in Latin America in the past.
In Bolivia, similarly fascistic elements were activated to lead the US-backed military coup in November 2019, and in Brazil right-wing forces launched a soft coup against Brazil’s Workers’ Party and ushered in the current extreme-right Jair Bolsonaro administration.
A close look at the FRENA website reflects precisely the same kind of fascistic ideology that has spread across Latin America with the help of Washington.
One section of website is titled “Mexico Sao Paulo Forum Communist Plan.” Here, the anti-AMLO Front argues that the mere presence of López Obrador’s Morena party at the left-wing event – an annual conference bringing together progressive organizations from across Latin America – in Cuba in 2018 means that the administration intends to make Mexico a communist country.
FRENA also fabricated a paranoid and plan of the Sao Paulo Forum to “install communism in Mexico.”
Some of the steps in this phony blueprint include ensuring “gender equity”, “de-mystifying religions,” “reforming education for equality,” and the spooky “progressive agenda (ABORTION, drugs, homosexuality, relativism of values.”
The conspiracy theory that the Sao Paulo Forum is controlling governments and social movements in South and even North America is increasingly popular in far-right circles. This deranged accusation has even been used against The Grayzone and its editor Max Blumenthal to absurdly paint them as orchestrators of the anti-police brutality protests currently sweeping the US.
FRENA leader Gilberto Lozano has repeated this conspiracy on numerous occasions. In an interview on Mexico’s major television network La Octava on June 5, Lozano stated in no uncertain terms that “there is no doubt that Francisco Arias, Venezuela’s ambassador to Mexico, is writing [AMLO’s] agenda”.
La Octava host Hernán Gómez Bruera, a popular mainstream Mexican journalist, asked Lozano how exactly the López Obrador government was driving Mexico toward communism, noting that AMLO never talks about socialism. Lozano again pointed to Morena’s participation in the Sao Paulo Forum and insisted AMLO is “following the Sao Paulo Forum’s agenda”.
This point is particularly ironic, because Mexico’s center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, or PRD) is also publicly listed as an official member of the Sao Paulo Forum, and the PRD has joined the opposition movement against AMLO. The PRD was part of a coalition to support candidate Ricardo Anaya against López Obrador in the 2018 presidential elections, and the PRD is also apparently a member of the Broad Opposition Bloc, BOA, that is conspiring to remove AMLO from office.
On its website, FRENA also maintains a “Gallery of the Communist Dictatorship”, which is a name and shame collection of AMLO supporters, including unflattering pictures of current cabinet members, politicians, journalists, and intellectuals.
Weaponizing blatant xenophobia, this FRENA blacklist makes sure to emphasize which of López Obrador’s allies were born in foreign countries by highlighting their ethnic background next to their name – failing to mention that they are all naturalized Mexican citizens who have spent decades living in the country.
Gilberto Lozano has repeatedly resorted to this xenophobia in his attacks on AMLO. In his June 5 interview on La Octava, Lozano once again tried to portray López Obrador’s top advisors as foreign fifth columnists, insisting that John Ackerman (who was born in the US), Paco Ignacio Taibo II (who was born in Spain, but whose family fled the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco), and Héctor Díaz Polanco (who is of Dominican descent, although the FRENA website falsely lists him as Cuban) are all not truly Mexican, even though they are naturalized citizens.
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