Hugo Chávez-adoring, Marxist-preaching Tariq Ali is the proud recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Center for Social Justice has long admired the work of this left-wing activist who was a ready apologist for Venezuelan dictator Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro.
The College Fix reports that the center has bestowed on Ali the 2017 Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship Award — an unwieldy title that celebrates the “distinguished and extensive record of scholarly achievement in the critical tradition of social thought.”
Ali will pick up his trophy at an October gala ceremony.
Ali is no stranger to UW-Madison. He spoke at the social justice center a decade ago and he’s returning this October, UW-Green Bay student Jessica Murphy reports in an article for the MacIver Institute.
Murphy notes that Ali joined the International Marxist Group, known today as Socialist Action, during the 1960’s and has written glowing articles about Hugo Chavez that whitewashed the authoritarian leader’s well-documented human rights abuses.
Murphy reports that Ali was “also invited to speak at the inaugural Hugo Chávez Memorial Lecture in 2014 hosted by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, an organization that supports the tyrannical reigns of Chávez and Maduro.”
One Venezuelan activist interviewed for Murphy’s article, Jorge Jraissat, said that in the past three months alone, 80 student opponents of the current regime — like himself — have been murdered and another 3,000 imprisoned by the Venezuelan government.
As Murphy notes: “Venezuela, with the world’s largest oil reserves, once had potential to be the richest country in Latin America” but is now “spiraling out of control — people are rationing toothpaste and imprisoned protesters say they are forced to eat raw pasta mixed with human excrement.”