It's a vast, vast, vast right-wing conspiracy. No, seriously, we mean vast!

Quico says: According to Chávez, the only reason he's getting all this flack about closing RCTV is a giant conspiracy against him. "International rightist, extreme-rightist and fascist movements are attacking Venezuela from everywhere — from Europe, the United States, Brasilia," is the way he put it. (You understand by now that he uses "Venezuela" and "me" interchangeably.)

Turns out you only thought the chorus of condemnation he's received this week was due to a diffuse but very strong consensus on this issue. You've been manipulated into thinking that, faced with such a blatant move against free speech, people right around the world can come to similar conclusions without anyone having to coordinate them. But Chávez knows better: all these reactions are being orchestrated by a shadowy international cabal of fascists.

Just how vast is this conspiracy? Really vast. Turns out extreme-rightists and fascists now run:

• The French Socialist Party
• The Spanish Government
  
• The Washington Office on Latin America
• The Carter Center
• The European Parliament
• The US Senate
  
• The Brazilian Senate
• The Chilean Senate
• The Salvadoran Congress
  
• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
  
• Amnesty International
• The Committee to Protect Journalists
• Human Rights Watch
• Reporters Without Borders
• The Inter American Press Association
  
• The International Press Institute
  

Fascists! Extreme-rightists the lot of them!

Now, if your first reaction in reading this post was "yes, but," if you can't see how loopy Chavez's defense is, how paranoid and unhinged, if you need someone to explain it to you - that in itself is a pretty good sign that you're a crank.