In a Soviet Era Like Move, the US Censorship State Condemned a Youth Orchestra Concert

Anti-Venezuelan Propaganda Was Spewed Against Venezuelan Musicians After a Recent Concert

An old joke goes like this: a lost tourist asks a New Yorker,” How do I get to Carnagie Hall from here”. The New Yorker answers “practice, practice, practice. Apparently, the criteria have changed. It’s now “practice, practice, practice and be on the right side of the United States”

Regardless of what your opinion is about classical music, whether you find it boring, thrilling or background music, this should send chills down your spine. A US funded human rights group condemned a concert by a youth orchestra. It’s bad enough that social media has been shamelessly censored, but to let this spill into the arts puts us in Soviet Era propaganda territory.

Gustavo Dudamel is a classical music conductor born in Venezuela. He undoubtably was a child prodigy. At a very young age he was conducting The Youth orchestra of Venezuela. He received much acclaim for his work and soon headed to the United States at age 27 to become the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

On August 2nd, he performed a scheduled concert at Carnagie Hall. Dudamel conducted the National Children’s Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. This sounds benign enough, however remember that the wrong side (according to the US) won the latest Venezuelan presidential election, and Venezuela is now on the top of the list of public enemies. The US has stated that the election was fixed, and that Maduro is a dictator. The US has not supplied any evidence for this accusation, but truth is not the purpose here. Venezuela is an oil producing country and there has been banter in the US about stealing their oil. In the last Venezuelan presidential election, A US coup failed to keep Maduro out of power.

The Human Rights Foundation, a US sponsored organization “happened” to be in the audience, almost certainly to make a stink about this:

The foundation took to social media and said, “Last night, Gustavo Dudamel, the famous Venezuelan conductor, gave a concert directing the Maduro regime’s top youth orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York City. HRF was present as well, to remind the world of Maduro’s fraud and to call out Dudamel for engaging in shameless propaganda and providing cover for the Venezuelan dictator.”

This is the latest condemnation that Dudamel is receiving following his silence after the Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in the Venezuelan elections.

Recently pianist Gabriela Montero spoke out against Dudamel stating, “A regime that has destroyed our country and is stealing yet another election will send its most effective propaganda machine – children – to America’s most illustrious halls under Dudamel’s baton, and no fellow musician among my friends joins me to condemn it.”

There is much to be said about this. What a disgraceful and disingenuous statement by a sketchy organization. This children’s orchestra has performed in the US many times. The idea that they were sent as a propaganda tool is beyond insane. The idea that a music conductor doesn’t have the right to stay out of politics is simply the sign of a highly disturbed society. That a Human Rights Watch group is attending a concert, just to make a stir, speaks volumes about priorities. Perhaps we should suggest on their Substack that they spend more time in Gaza and less time at youth concerts.

They purport to be a human rights group, but they act like a mouthpiece for the US establishment. On their site, there is no discussion of Israel being charged by the ICC for war crimes or the crimes the Saudis’ commit. They claim to be a site that stands up for dissidents, but people who scream in public in favor of US policy are not dissidents. They are herd animals. That is why the past US coup in Venezuela is not mentioned as a human rights violation.

An interesting fact about this foundation. Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexi Navalny was elected as the chairperson. Navalny was a far-right, neo-Nazi Russian dissident. There was an uproar when Navalny died. It was blamed on Putin, which turned out to be false. The “logic” here is that since Navalny, despite his neo-Nazi background, opposed Putin. Therefore, an enemy of my enemy is my friend. Just extend this to “the widow of my enemy of my enemy is my friend” and you can understand the nonsensical thinking.

The idea that the US has such venom for Venezuela because they believe that Maduro is a dictator, matches US propaganda but does not match history. The US has a long history of installing dictators, such as the Shah of Iran, Batista, Pinochet and Suharto. The US also sides with dictators they haven’t installed, such as how they are currently supporting the Egyptian dictator, El-Sisi and Saudi Arabia.

The only time the US screams “dictator” is when the leader refuses to bow to the US. We hear about how the people of that country are suffering so badly, and how the United States has to come in and liberate them. When a dictator does bow down to the alter of US imperialism, they get full US support. The United States actually prefers to deal with dictators. After all, with a democratic country, a vote could go against the United States’ wishes, but that’s unlikely to happen in a dictatorship. “Regime change” is the code phrase for replacing a government with one “friendly” to the US.

There is precedent for going after classical musicians. After the Ukrainian war started, the US began its Neo-McCarthyite purge against Russian born musicians unless they completely denounced Russia. They had to say that the war was due to Putin’s imperialism, and that the attack was unprovoked.

Russian born Anna Netrebko, arguably the world’s finest soprano, was asked to renounce the Russian role in the Invasion. She did renounce it, but not to the liking of the Philharmonic, so she was promptly fired,

During the Soviet Era, tremendous pressure was put on Soviet artists and composers to only create art or music that was nationalistic. A Soviet composer tried writing music from his own personal experiences rather than nationalistic propaganda and found a letter in the newspaper the following day saying calling his composition “muddle, not music” and “things might end very badly for this young composer unless he changes his way”. In the Stalin era, we know that meant imprisonment, torture, death or all three. In the United States in 2024, Dudamel risks have his career “cancelled”. A sad state of events that shows the US need to go to this length to protect itself from the slightest dissent, even in the arts.

It’s ironic that Dudamel was caught up in all this. He has his own foundation that states “We believe access to music and the arts is a human right”

He is correct. Music should transcend not only the soul, but also politics and nation-states. To subject a fine artist like Dudamel to such scrutiny is just the sign of a flailing empire needing to defend its turf. Unfortunately, these types of events are commonplace nowadays in the United States. It sounds like the United States wants to have two sets of free speech, one for policy it sanctions and one for when it doesn’t. The latter is subject to censorship, public humiliation and cancelling.