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<h1 class="reader-title">How Western Left Media Helped
Legitimate US Regime Change in Venezuela</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Lucas Koerner - January 22,
2020<br>
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<p>It’s been a year since Juan Guaidó began his
US-anointed mandate as “interim president” of Venezuela.</p>
<p>Following the opposition leader’s <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14755">failure
to secure</a> reelection as National Assembly
president this month, Washington and its corporate media
stenographers have hysterically decried a “coup” (<b>FAIR.org</b>,
<a
href="https://fair.org/home/for-western-press-the-only-coup-in-venezuela-is-against-guaido/">1/10/20</a>)
against the coup leader, moving absurdly to recognize a
new <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14759">parallel
parliament</a> that he can still be in charge of.</p>
<p>However, the January 23 anniversary of Guaidó’s
farcical <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14244">self-proclamation</a>
has a darker legacy largely ignored by the corporate
media: the almost unprecedented US decision to recognize
a leader with no effective state control has unleashed a
level of economic warfare unseen outside of Cuba, Iran
or North Korea.</p>
<p>The recognition was a not-so-subtle signal to
transnational economic actors to terminate their
business with Caracas, and was followed by a crippling <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14268">oil
embargo</a>, later upgraded to a blanket <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14615">ban</a>
on all dealings with Venezuela’s state. Last year alone,
illegal US sanctions are <a
href="https://zcomm.org/zblogs/francisco-rodriguez-answers-some-questions-i-asked-him-about-venezuela/">estimated</a>
to have destroyed one quarter of Venezuela’s economy,
which had already shrunk by half since 2013, in part due
to longstanding US economic siege.</p>
<p>Why is it that Trump is able to get away with what is
effectively a policy of mass murder in Venezuela,
similar to simultaneous US <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/sanctions-iraq-economic-warfare/">economic
warfare</a> against Iran?</p>
<p>The Western media has certainly played a crucial role
in delegitimizing the democratically elected Maduro
government (e.g. <b>FAIR.org</b>, <a
href="https://fair.org/home/theres-far-more-diversity-in-venezuelas-muzzled-media-than-in-us-corporate-press/">5/20/19</a>,
<a
href="https://fair.org/home/media-delegitimize-venezuelan-elections-amid-complete-unanimity-of-outlook/">5/23/18</a>,
<a
href="https://fair.org/home/writing-off-democracy-in-venezuela-us-press-and-politicians-dream-of-a-coup/">5/16/18</a>),
while systematically concealing the deadly impact of
sanctions (<b>FAIR.org</b>, <a
href="https://fair.org/home/so-who-is-reporting-that-trump-sanctions-have-killed-thousands-of-venezuelans/">6/26/19</a>,
<a
href="https://fair.org/home/study-linking-us-sanctions-to-venezuelan-deaths-buried-by-reuters-for-over-a-month/">6/14/19</a>).</p>
<p>However, despite nominally opposing Washington’s
Venezuela policy and its corporate media gendarmerie,
global North progressive media have, like during the
recent coup in Bolivia (<b>FAIR.org</b>, <a
href="https://fair.org/home/how-the-global-norths-left-media-helped-pave-the-way-for-bolivias-right-wing-coup/">12/10/19</a>),
tended to repeat imperial ideological tropes, casting
the Maduro government as authoritarian, corrupt and/or
guilty of much worse human rights violations than the US
and its allies.</p>
<p>While invariably couched in the language of “left”
analysis, this coverage weakens domestic opposition to
the US and other Western states’ murderous onslaught on
the Venezuelan people.</p>
<h3><b>The 2019 Coup</b></h3>
<p>Western progressive outlets have a peculiar habit of
rolling out their “critiques” of leftist or otherwise
independent governments in the global South right at the
moment when these states are under imperial assault,
echoing the corporate media’s unanimous regime-change
chorus (<b>FAIR.org</b>, <a
href="https://fair.org/home/zero-percent-of-elite-commentators-oppose-regime-change-in-venezuela/">4/30/19</a>).</p>
<p>In the days and weeks following the January 23, 2019,
start of the US-backed opposition’s sixth coup effort of
the past 20 years, Northern leftist publications posted
a number of articles featuring scathing attacks on the
Maduro administration.</p>
<div id="attachment_9012084" class="wp-caption">
<p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9012084"
src="https://fair.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/NACLA-Venezuela.png"
alt="NACLA: Venezuela and the Left" width="351"
height="492"></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-9012084"
class="wp-caption-text"><em>…and in <strong>NACLA</strong>
(<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/05/venezuela-and-left">2/5/19</a>),
the “left” position is that “Maduro was not
democratically elected”—mainly because people who
had tried to overthrow the government were not
allowed to run for president.</em></p>
</div>
<p><b>NACLA </b>(<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/05/venezuela-and-left">2/5/19</a>)
and <b>Jacobin </b>(<a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/venezuela-noninterventionism-self-determination-solidarity">2/5/19</a>)
led the charge, simultaneously publishing a piece by
sociologist Gabriel Hetland denying that Maduro was
democratically elected and accusing him of “increasing
authoritarianism.” On top of numerous <a
href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/global-left-danger-dirty-war-venezuela/255501/">factually
problematic </a>attacks on the Venezuelan government,
Hetland went as far as to outline hypothetical
conditions that “potentially warranted” foreign
intervention—namely a “humanitarian catastrophe”—but
declining to say that they apply to Venezuela, despite
the existence of what he termed a “humanitarian crisis.”
The Trump administration repeatedly cites “humanitarian
catastrophe” as a justification for its coup and illegal
sanctions, a charge that has been echoed by corporate
media and the Western human rights industrial complex.</p>
<p>Also in <b>NACLA </b>(<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/26/venezuela%E2%80%99s-popular-sectors-and-future-country">2/13/19</a>),
Rebeca Hanson and Francisco Sanchez professed their
agnosticism regarding whether Guaidó’s US-backed
self-proclamation constituted a coup, stating that
“depending on how the constitution is interpreted, one
of the two men has a rightful claim to assume executive
power.”</p>
<p>They went on to anecdotally note a “general sentiment
in many popular sectors…that neither [the government nor
opposition] ‘side’ can be trusted,” conveniently
ignoring the fact that around 31% of the Venezuelan
electorate voted to reelect Maduro in May 2018 and a
similar percent of the population told <a
href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/25/venezuelans-have-little-trust-in-national-government-say-economy-is-in-poor-shape/">Pew</a>
they trusted the government a few months later. A
smaller percentage of the electorate routinely wins
elections in the US. That is, around 6 million
people—overwhelmingly from Venezuela’s working-class and
poor sectors—still support Maduro.</p>
<p>Despite the authors’ pretension of ethnographic
“nuance,” the mask drops when they editorially decry
Maduro’s “cronyism, corruption and exploitation”—claims
they make no effort to factually justify. They also
falsely accuse state security forces of having “killed
21,752 people” in 2016, when the very report they link
to places the figure at 4,667, which is still quite high
but must be properly contextualized (<b>Venezuelanalysis.com</b>,
<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14583">7/12/19</a>).</p>
<p>Vanessa Baird hit on similar themes a few days prior in
the <b>New Internationalist </b>(<a
href="https://newint.org/features/2019/01/24/whatever-you-think-maduro-regime-change-venezuelans-not-us">1/24/19</a>),
lampooning Maduro as “hardly a model leader or
democrat.” Indeed, the author appeared to be unaware
that Maduro was ever elected at all, stating that his
“lamentable rule…started when Hugo Chavez died in 2013.”</p>
<p>A month later, as the US prepared to force
“humanitarian aid” into Venezuela and fears of war
loomed large, Baird (<b>New Internationalist</b>, <a
href="https://newint.org/features/2019/02/12/beware-americans-bearing-gifts">2/12/19</a>)
mused about “the desirability of Maduro stepping down.”
She then produced a laundry list of misrepresentations
about Maduro, which appeared to have been partly lifted,
albeit with even less nuance, from Hetland’s article for
<b>NACLA</b> (<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/05/venezuela-and-left">2/5/19</a>)
and <b>Jacobin </b>(<a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/venezuela-noninterventionism-self-determination-solidarity">2/5/19</a>).
“Technically, Maduro was the winner of the May 2018
elections—but only after banning leading opposition
parties and candidates from running,” she claims:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This—along with cancelling a recall referendum in
2016, dissolving the opposition-led National Assembly
in 2017, and “stealing” the October 2017 governor
elections—has seriously dented his democratic
credentials.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this last assertion, she goes well beyond what even
anti-Maduro analysts like <a
href="https://venezuelablog.org/15o-fraud-fatigue/">Francisco
Rodriguez and Dorothy Kronick </a>have claimed.</p>
<div id="attachment_9012085" class="wp-caption">
<p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9012085"
src="https://fair.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Nation-Venezuela.png"
alt="Nation: Venezuela’s Deadly Blackout Highlights
the Need for a Negotiated Resolution of the Crisis"
width="350" height="712"></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-9012085"
class="wp-caption-text"><em><strong>The Nation</strong>
(<a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/venezuela-blackout-us-sanctions-maduro/">3/13/19</a>)
for a “negotiated resolution” in Venezuela—i.e.,
regime change.</em></p>
</div>
<p>Following the devastating March blackouts, <b>The
Nation</b> (<a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/venezuela-blackout-us-sanctions-maduro/">3/13/19</a>)
likewise posted a piece by Hetland, lambasting Maduro as
“corrupt and increasingly repressive” and claiming that
his “authoritarian” government “bears primary
responsibility for the country’s dire situation,” though
conceding that “US sanctions and violence by the
US-supported opposition have contributed to Venezuelans’
suffering.”</p>
<p>The article contained <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14392">wild
factual inaccuracies</a>, including the claim that
Caracas residents were collecting water from the
extremely polluted Guaire River, as well as misleading
death statistics from the blackouts. Hetland also cites
pro-opposition pollster Datanalisis to assert that an
“estimated 15% of the population” supports Chavismo, a
dramatic underestimation refuted by the fact that Maduro
won 6.2 million votes in 2018—or 31% of the total
electorate—which is firmly in line with Chavista turnout
levels since 2013. Datanalisis also badly overestimated
what opposition turnout would be in both the 2017 <a
href="http://www.2001.com.ve/en-la-agenda/171868/luis-vicente-leon--participacion-en-las-regionales-podria-ubicarse-entre-50--y-60----video-.html">regional
elections</a> and the 2018 <a
href="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/mundo/america-latina/venezuela-es/article208285434.html">presidential
elections</a>, undermining its credibility.</p>
<p>Around the same time, <b>NACLA </b>(<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/04/04/untangling-gordian-knot-negotiating-shared-power-venezuela">3/26/19</a>)
published an article with the claim that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Maduro’s record includes suffocating democratic
institutions and procedures, colossal economic
mismanagement, vast corruption, repression, human
rights violations and a humanitarian crisis.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The author, Dimitris Pantoulas, offers no evidence to
support his accusations and, more incredibly, makes no
mention of illegal US sanctions, which have severely
exacerbated Venezuela’s crisis, blocking political and
economic solutions. Pantoulas goes on to blame the
US-led coup on democratically re-elected Maduro, whose
“resistance to democratic solutions made his
opponents…concentrate their efforts on ousting him by
any means necessary.”</p>
<p>Just one day after the failed US-backed April 30
military putsch, <b>Dissent</b> (<a
href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-venezuelan-crisis">5/1/19</a>)
published an article with the sensational claim that
“Venezuela today is simply not a democracy.” The author,
Jared Abbott, fired off a series of deceptive claims,
including repeating US propaganda that illegal sanctions
“were supposed to target” only government officials,
rather than intentionally destroy what was left of
Venezuela’s economy. Not content to delegitimize the
2018 elections with the <a
href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/global-left-danger-dirty-war-venezuela/255501/">canard</a>
that an opposition victory “was close to impossible,”
Abbott recited US State Department talking points
impugning “past elections under Chavismo” as “hardly
models of fairness” on the grounds of unequal access to
state resources, ignoring the US government’s massive <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/venezuela-washington-funded-counterrevolution/">support</a>
for the opposition over the course of its six coup
attempts since 2002. The author also rehashes Hetland’s
dubious Dananalisis-sourced claims about Maduro’s
support, lamenting the “insidious pathologies” and
“authoritarianism” of a global South political movement
under murderous imperial siege.</p>
<p>A few weeks later, <b>Jacobin </b>(<a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/05/venezuela-maduro-juan-guaido-intervention-sanctions">5/23/19</a>)
published another article by Hetland. The university
professor backpedaled on some of his previous claims,
but nevertheless made a point of excoriating “government
repression of peaceful protest and dissent amid a
broader turn away from political democracy and towards
authoritarian rule.” Hetland appeared to be entirely
unaware that the opposition attempted a coup d’etat
scarcely three weeks before, and that top opposition
figures were permitted to lead sizeable anti-government
street rallies literally the day after.</p>
<p>Likewise writing in <b>Jacobin </b>(<a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/09/bernie-sanders-venezuela-intervention-latin-america">9/30/19</a>),
just weeks after the Trump administration escalated its
sanctions regime to a sweeping embargo, Michael Brooks
and Ben Burgis rightly blamed imperial violence for
blocking the sovereign development of global South
countries like Venezuela. But the authors also felt
compelled to echo Washington in “acknowledg[ing] the
reality of the Venezuelan government’s
authoritarianism.” They went on to state that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the premise that [presidential candidate Sen. Bernie
Sanders’] brand of democratic socialism would involve
anything like the kind of repressive crackdowns that
have happened recently in Venezuela is absurd.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s hard to know whether to judge such an incredible
statement as condescendingly Eurocentric or just plain
naive, given that a Sanders administration would likely
face some kind of establishment coup effort if it tried
to implement its radical agenda, and its legitimate
attempts to defend itself would inevitably be deemed
“repressive” by elites.</p>
<h3><b>The 2017 Insurrection </b></h3>
<p>This pattern of progressive “critiques” of Chavismo and
the Maduro government just at the moment when the
country is under heightened imperial onslaught is not
new.</p>
<p>From April through late July 2017, Venezuela’s
right-wing opposition launched a violent street
insurrection aimed at ousting the president, similar to
the leadup to Bolivia’s November 2019 coup d’etat. Over
125 people were killed, including protesters, bystanders
and government supporters.</p>
<div id="attachment_9012087" class="wp-caption">
<p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9012087"
src="https://fair.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/NACLA-Venezuela-Spiral.png"
alt="NACLA: Why is Venezuela Spiraling Out of
Control?" width="351" height="484"></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-9012087"
class="wp-caption-text"><em><strong>NACLA</strong> (<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/18/why-venezuela-spiraling-out-control">4/28/17</a>)
faults both its own government for trying to
overthrow Venezuela’s, but also blames Venezuela’s
government for the way it responds to attempts to
overthrow it.</em></p>
</div>
<p><b>NACLA </b>(<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/18/why-venezuela-spiraling-out-control">4/28/17</a>)
and <b>Jacobin </b>(republished <a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/venezuela-crisis-maduro-opposition-violence-elections-economy">5/14/17</a>)
fired the opening shots on that occasion as well,
posting yet another article by Hetland declaring that
“opposition violence and the government’s increasing
authoritarianism are both to blame” for the bloodshed.
As in his more recent <b>NACLA </b>(<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/05/venezuela-and-left">2/5/19</a>)/<b>Jacobin
</b>(<a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/venezuela-noninterventionism-self-determination-solidarity">2/5/19</a>)
piece, the academic cited a laundry list of
“authoritarian” abuses riddled with <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13136">factual
errors and outright misrepresentations</a>. Hetland
urged leftists to “reject any and all calls for
imperialist interventions,” yet declined to acknowledge
his own government’s illegal sanctions targeting
Venezuela, which, according to economist Mark Weisbrot (<b>The
New York Times</b>, <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/06/28/how-to-save-venezuela/the-us-bears-blame-for-the-crisis-in-venezuela-and-it-should-stop-intervening-there">6/30/16</a>),
“helped convince major financial institutions not to
make otherwise low-risk loans, collateralized by gold,
to the Venezuelan government.”</p>
<p>As the deadly anti-government protests continued to
escalate, <b>Jacobin </b>(<a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/the-south-is-our-north">5/19/17</a>)
went after Caracas-based Latin American television
network <b>teleSUR</b>. The author, Patrick Iber,
quoted several academics describing the state channel as
“a totally useless source of information” and a “lapdog”
for the government. Readers may find it painfully
obvious that <b>teleSUR</b>, like every other state
outlet on the planet, has an editorial line largely
shaped by its state’s geopolitical interests.
Nevertheless, Iber and his editors decided to
prejudicially exceptionalize <b>teleSUR</b> in this
regard, while amazingly ignoring the fact that Venezuela
was under assault by their own imperial state at that
very moment.</p>
<p>With the danger of civil war looming larger and larger,
<b>Jacobin</b> (<a
href="https://jacobinmag.com/2017/07/venezuela-maduro-helicopter-attack-psuv-extractivism-oil">7/8/17</a>)
went on to publish a particularly unhinged “think” piece
by Mike Gonzalez, which went as far as to suggest that a
helicopter terrorist attack against government
installations perpetrated by a rogue police officer was
a false flag operation. The article was so scandalous
that the editors allowed the publication of a
contrasting perspective by George Ciccariello-Maher (<b>Jacobin</b>,
<a
href="https://jacobinmag.com/2017/07/venezuela-elections-chavez-maduro-bolivarianism/">7/29/19</a>)
debunking Gonzalez’s falsehoods.</p>
<p>The deck was, however, already stacked in favor of
those voices assailing the Venezuelan government as
“authoritarian” or “anti-democratic,” which one might
resonably conclude to be the editorial line of the
magazine. It would appear that dissent from this
orthodoxy is the exception, not the rule, for <b>Jacobin</b>’s
editors, who have all but refused to publish contrarian
opinions, including this author’s critiques of Gabriel
Hetland (<b>Venezuelanalysis.com</b>, <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13136">5/19/17</a>;
<b>Mint Press News</b>, <a
href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/global-left-danger-dirty-war-venezuela/255501/">2/25/19</a>)
submitted to the leftist journal.</p>
<p>This editorial line also appears to be well-entrenched
at <b>Dissent </b>and the <b>New Internationalist</b>,
which have both declined to provide their readers with
dissenting viewpoints.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting that <b>NACLA</b> has displayed more
balance in its Venezuela coverage, publishing a broader
spectrum of perspectives on both the Maduro government
and the position of the international left (e.g., <a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2017/05/11/critiquing-maduro-left">5/11/17</a>,
<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2017/10/04/state-left-latin-america-disillusioned-revolution-venezuela">7/21/17</a>,
<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2017/07/27/what%E2%80%99s-left-bolivarian-revolution">7/26/17</a>,
<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2017/10/14/socialism-not-statism-lessons-bolivarian-venezuela">10/4/17</a>,
<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/21/high-stakes-venezuela%E2%80%99s-presidential-elections">5/18/18</a>,
<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/29/after-elections-intransigence-venezuela">5/25/18</a>).
In 2019, the journal likewise published alternative
viewpoints critiquing US regime change and the
right-wing Venezuelan opposition (<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/10/regime-change-%E2%80%9Cmade-usa%E2%80%9D">2/8/19</a>,
<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/05/28/spectacle-internationalization-and-elephant-room-venezuela%E2%80%99s-crisis">5/23/19;
</a><a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/06/01/washington-doubles-down-its-military-intervention-script-venezuela">5/31/19</a>,
<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/08/15/washington-intensifies-its-collective-punishment-venezuelans">8/14/19</a>),
though none addressed the controversial issue of
international left solidarity with the Maduro
government. Nevertheless, the number of articles
repeating US imperial discourse portraying the
Venezuelan government as “authoritarian,” “corrupt,”
“repressive” or otherwise illegitimate (e.g., <a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/05/venezuela-and-left">2/5/19</a>,
<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/26/venezuela%E2%80%99s-popular-sectors-and-future-country">2/13/19</a>,
<a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2019/04/04/untangling-gordian-knot-negotiating-shared-power-venezuela">3/26/19</a>)
notably increased relative to 2017. For its part, <b>The
Nation</b> has been more consistent in publishing a
more expansive range of perspectives on Venezuela (e.g.,
<a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/what-is-to-be-done-in-venezuela/">5/1/17</a>,
<a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/burning-man-venezuela/">5/26/17</a>,
<a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/venezuela-coup-guaido-maduro/">1/25/19</a>,
<a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/venezuela-coup-media-guaido/">5/2/19</a>).</p>
<h3><b>Uncritical criticism </b></h3>
<p>As I explained in my previous article on Bolivia (<b>FAIR.org</b>,
<a
href="https://fair.org/home/how-the-global-norths-left-media-helped-pave-the-way-for-bolivias-right-wing-coup/">12/10/19</a>),
the purpose is not to censor leftist debate on Venezuela
and the Bolivarian process. The problem is that the
progressive media overage we have reviewed above largely
amounts to what Lenin termed “uncritical criticism.”</p>
<p>Despite rightly repudiating US sanctions and threats of
military intervention, Western leftist critics accept
the very imperial ideological premises justifying the
murderous onslaught.</p>
<p>By employing the thoroughly Orientalist discourse of
“authoritarianism” and “human rights,” these critics
wittingly or unwittingly delegitimize a government which
is arguably <a
href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/when-is-a-democracy-not-a-democracy-when-its-venezuela-and-the-us-is-pushing-regime-change/254321/">more
legitimate</a> than any number of regional governments
that face no credible external threat at all.</p>
<div id="attachment_9012088" class="wp-caption">
<p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9012088"
src="https://fair.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Angel-Prado.jpg"
alt="Angel Prado (photo: Saber y Poder)" width="351"
height="184"></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-9012088"
class="wp-caption-text"><em>Angel Prado: “We take a
firm position supporting our government as long as
it maintains an unwavering stance against
imperialism.” (photo: Saber y Poder)</em></p>
</div>
<p>In critiquing the Maduro administration, Northern
leftists would be wise to heed the words of real
revolutionaries on the ground in Venezuela, such as El
Maizal Socialist Commune spokesperson Angel Prado, who
told this author:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have indeed been very critical of some policies of
our government. Honestly we don’t support some of the
pacts made with reformist sectors, with certain
economic sectors. But we take a firm position
supporting our government as long as it maintains an
unwavering stance against imperialism….</p>
<p>We are working very hard in our popular movement—the
political base for this process—and one day we are
going to have enough strength not only to combat US
imperialism, but also those [internal] sectors that
have been unfortunately harming our process, enriching
themselves in a context of war….</p>
<p>But above all, we as a people have preserved our
unity, despite the difficult situation of the last six
years, and we have refused to allow US imperialism to
put its boots here. I think it’s a very important
victory on the part of the Venezuelan people, and the
world should know it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With total clarity, Prado identifies the national
confrontation with US imperialism as primary, while
recognizing that final victory depends on defeating
bureaucratic elites intent on using the crisis to
entrench their class power.</p>
<p>If revolutionaries like the El Maizal communards are
unequivocal in backing their government against
imperialism—despite being on the receiving end of state
<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13584">repression</a>—then
Western progressives ought to show similar integrity in
uncompromisingly opposing their own states’ rapacious
violence abroad.</p>
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