China Confidential reports on communist dictator Hugo Chavez’s new propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the world that research into biodiesels and other alternative fuels is a capitalist plot to hurt the workers and destroy the environment.

Venezuela’s leftwing, populist dictator, Hugo Chavez, has personally approved funding for a covert propaganda campaign against alternative fuels, including ethanol and bodiesel. The money will be diverted from Venezuela’s oil revenues; and there is reason to believe Chavez may have sought financial support for the project from Iran, after successfully persuading Cuba’s Communist dictator, Fidel Castro, to condemn biofuels as “capitalist genocide.”

With or without Teheran’s aid, the Crackpot of Caracas aims to discredit the biofuels industry by subsidizing the production and placement of a series of negative articles, essays and TV programs promoting claims that it robs the poor of productive agricultural land, drives up the price of food for humans and animals alike and actually consumes more energy than it produces.

The best part of the whole story is that Chavez is demanding that biodiesal be referred to as “deforestation diesel” from now on. If this move doesn’t start to drive a wedge between Chavez and the hippies on the left, nothing will.

The Devil’s Excrement has a list of other actions Chavez’s government is taking that should worry any supporter of civil liberties. This would theoretically include Democrats, but I’m not holding out any hope.