The US has no moral authority to attack Venezuela, regardless of Maduroās authoritarian nature. Both can be true: Maduro is a dictator who caused immense harm to his people, and US military intervention is an illegal act of aggression that will not resolve the crisis of democracy in Venezuela.
The regionās future must be determined by people themselves, free from the shadow of empire
In 2013, Maduro was incredibly popular. Hell, in 2019 he was incredibly popular. So despite the fact that he felt it was critical to prevent the American-aligned party, who was actively calling for a US invasion, from taking power, he was still their by the will of the people for at least 8 of those 12 years.
The claims that Maduro was a dictator are primarily biased readings of a conflict between the US and the anti-imperialists in Venezuela. The US first started organizing regime change in Venezuela 25 years ago. The first attempt was staffed by Venezuelans, but funded, organized, trained, and facilitated by the US. The sanctions have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans and driven poverty and hunger to levels of desperation. This is why thereās been millions of emigres.
For 25 years the US has been sending covert operations staff to Venezuela, training people who would like to overturn the government against the will of the people, and when Maduro stepped into office he became part of that battle. His choice was to hunt the subversive elements in the country and purge them, with or without murder. Even at the worst estimates of his body count, which are based entirely on speculative evidence and just sort of guessing based on satellite imagery and interviews with poor hungry people (who will say anything for safe passage and food for their kids), he has some far less violence than the US has to Venezuela in the same time frame.
This is not a choice between a dictator and a US intervention. These are interrelated processes. The crack down on dissent is a result of the president of Venezuela securing the country against US subversion. If the US wasnāt subverting, the president wouldnāt be cracking down. We know this because it happens in the run up to nearly all historical regime changes run by the US. Iran under Mossadegh also nationalized the oil fields, just like Chavez, and he was also popular, just like Chavez, but when the US and UK started building the operations for the coup, Mossadegh had to find them and stop them. If he didnāt, they would harm the Iranian people. He spent a couple years getting more and more draconian on his attempts to find the spies and subversives and purge them. And he lost in the end.
Maduro was not wrong that there were literally US spies and special ops all over the country. He was not wrong that the opposition party was working with them. He was not wrong that they were trying to harm the Venezuelan people for money and power. But he failed to stop them.
So now weāre left with the question - should he have purged harder, or should have done it differently? And the only way you can answer that question is if you understand what the government of Venezuela was doing for the last 25 years since Chavez first took office. You need to know how they were working to prevent this sort of outcome, what things they did implement, and then you need to study what other governments have implemented and whether Maduro could have done it differently.
And at that point youāll hopefully be humble enough to realize that youāre Monday-morning-quarterbacking running a fucking country when youāre up against a US regime change operation and that you really have no ground to stand on to critique Maduro as a dictator who needed to be stopped for the good of his people.
This is some top-tier tankie fan fiction that completely ignores how things actually work on the ground. Calling Maduro popular in 2019 is a total joke. His approval ratings were in the teens and he only stayed in power because of a 2018 election so rigged that even the voting machine company admitted the numbers were manipulated.
You are blaming the US for every single problem, but the Venezuelan economy was already in a death spiral by 2014 due to massive corruption and oil mismanagement, which happened years before the heavy 2017 sanctions ever existed.
Framing actual crimes against humanity documented by the UN as just āhunting subversivesā is an insane way to hand-wave away torture and extrajudicial killings. It is not āMonday-morning quarterbackingā to point out that when a leader destroys the judiciary, jails anyone who polls better than him, and starves his own people, he is not a defensive hero. He is just another autocrat holding a sinking ship together by force.
The US sanctions regime for nVenezuela back in 2006 restricted its access to credit markets, they werenāt āformal sanctionsā but they were government actions to economically harm Venezuela. That caused a debt trap for the country which weighed the economy down and it never recovered.
The voting machine company that made those claims has a British Lord as a Chairman, and the CEO of the company is a capitalist in Venezuela. Hardly an unbiased source.
And the UN republished reports that are specious pretty often. Instead of arguing from authority about the UN says this or that, read the actual report. They donāt have proof of the numbers dead that they claim. They have speculation based on research methods including interviewing emigres and looking at satellite images. They donāt have researchers on the ground figuring it out, they are publishing numbers with plenty of room for interpretation.
Donāt believe everything you read.
The UN has always characterized anti-subversive activities as human rights abuses. Theyāve done it in a dozen countries. And again, they donāt actually have documentation of crimes against humanity. Read their own report.
Venezuelaās debt actually tripled during the biggest oil boom in history between 2006 and 2012. The country didnāt collapse because of US meddling. It collapsed because the government blew every cent of the oil windfall on corruption and imports while gutting local production. By the time the oil price crashed in 2014, they had zero savings and zero industry left to fall back on.
Dismissing the chairman of Smartmatic for being a capitalist is cope and ignores the fact that they were the regimeās hand picked tech partner for over a decade. When the people who literally built and ran the voting system for years tell the world they added a million fake votes to the 2017 count, that isnāt a conspiracy. It is a confession from the only people who actually knew how the software worked.
And if you actually read the UN reports instead of just calling them specious, you would see they are backed by verified video and direct forensic evidence. They have documented systematic torture at the Helicoide including electric shocks and sexual violence. Calling state sanctioned murder anti-subversive activity is just a way to hand wave away crimes against humanity. You can call it speculation all you want, but thousands of victims arenāt all making up the same story for fun. Donāt believe everything you watch on TankieTube
I wonder why Venezuelaās debt tripled starting the year that the US tanked their ability to access debt at non-usury rates. So curious! Blowing oil revenues on imports? You donāt say? You mean they bought things with their only source of revenue. Shockingly corrupt!
Oh I donāt dismiss the chairman of the holding company that owns smartmatic as a capitalist. I dismiss him as an imperialist. The British upper class has a lot to do with oil imperialism. Just ask Iran what happened when they nationalized their oil.
I dismissed the founder and CEO of smartmatic as a capitalist because he is. Heās clearly not a Bolivarian or he wouldnāt be in bed with a British Lord building out digital voting infrastructure in the periphery. He stands to gain a lot from the capitalists coming back into power, and the chairman does as well.
As for the report, the UN claims that the Maduro regime killed 5k people but they make that claim by extrapolating from interviews, news articles, and satellite footage. There has been no corroborating evidence on the ground. Itās totally specious.
As for torture, I donāt think anyone in Venezuela is losing sleep over American spies and their collaborators getting the āenhanced interrogationā techniques that those same American spies unleashed on the world.
Look, Iām not saying the Venezuelan government is run by saints. Theyāve done things that are harmful to people, theyāve killed people, and they have most definitely killed innocent people.
But the US kills almost 6k annually through prison deaths alone, and another 1000 in police custody/police homicides. Every country has black ops, every country does spy hunting, every country under attack by the US has to take calculated risks understanding that they are going to be catching innocents in the net.
And again, Maduro wasnāt wrong! Machado was literally asking US oil companies to convince the US to invade in exchange for wealthy contracts. We know for a fact that Machado and her cohort were working directly with US covert ops running money, arms, training, organizing, and facilitation. Itās not like there wasnāt a covert subversive international threat inside Venezuela. There was one and the Bolivarian Armed Forces is responsible for finding these people, disrupting their networks, and stopping their operations.
You canāt use moral logic here unless you apply it evenly, and the result of you applying it evenly would be that nearly every country would need regime change because their leaders are bloodthirsty dictators who indiscriminately commit human rights violations.
The reality is that Maduro is unpopular because 1) the economy is shambles from economic sanctions, 2) thereās still a large contingent of capitalist roaders who would rather be a junior vassal of the US and make their millions as compradors and 3) he is uncharismatic as fuck.
The masses are suffering economically and have been for years. Under Maduro, food production for major domestic food crops more than doubled and national food availability more than quadrupled. Thatās astounding given their situation. The masses still want the Bolivarian revolution to proceed. They do not want to become a neocolony again. But they want the suffering to end. And all the US has to do is stop the crime against humanity that is collective punishment.
The idea that we need to focus on the unconfirmed 5k people killed by the government instead of the multiple thousands killed by the sanctions and the 20 years of violent subversion that the US has been enacting is a clear sign that you donāt have your priorities straight. Or rather, you do, but they are aligned with the empire.
Trying to blame 2006 restrictions for a debt trap is historically illiterate. Venezuelaās debt tripled because the government issued billions in bonds on the open market while oil was at an all-time high of over 100 dollars a barrel. They were not blocked from credit. They were the darlings of Wall Street until they spent the entire 1 trillion dollar oil windfall and had nothing left when the price crashed. Buying imports with your only revenue is exactly the problem when you use that money to destroy your own domestic farms and factories.
Calling Smartmaticās whistleblowing imperialist is a convenient way to ignore that they were the regimeās closest partners for 13 years. If you spend over a decade letting capitalists run your unhackable democracy, you do not get to act shocked when they reveal how the sausages are made.
As for the UN reports, youāre ignoring the fact that the Fact-Finding Mission has verified forensic evidence and internal chain of command documents. Comparing US prison deaths (which are mostly natural causes and illness) to state security forces firing live ammunition into protesters or torturing people in the Helicoide is a massive false equivalence. One is a failure of a healthcare system. The other is a deliberate policy of state terror; and 5k is just the deaths from one year. Youād be better off comparing it to Iraq or something. But idk why youāre even making the argument, Iām not an authoritarian. Dismantle the US too.
The 90 percent food self-sufficiency claim is pure state propaganda. Independent data from 2024 and 2025 shows agricultural imports actually grew by 9 percent, with the US remaining one of the top suppliers. The only reason availability looks higher is because 8 million people fled the country and those left behind often cannot afford to eat, so the shelves stay full. Maduro is not a victim of a covert threat. He is a leader who broke his country and is using the CIA agent trope to justify a body count that even he admits exists.
It certainly does when youāre a total market economy. Chavez nationalized a bunch of food production and collectivized the farms.
Because it was a petrostate when Chavez was elected and it was literally the only and best source of economic wealth the country had after decades of deliberate underdevelopment by compradors working with the imperialists to keep the country dependent. This is standard IMF/Word Bank shit. Venezuela didnāt become a petrostate in 1999 as part of its economic strategy. It started a revolutionary movement in 1999 on the basis of an impoverished petrostate riddled with corruption and neocolonial economics. You canāt time the markets. Chavez made the best decisions he could with limited experience, limited foresight, and the limited amount of embedded skill and experience in the community to run a country under a collectivized and nationalized model. The 2008 oil price crash was, in essence, an economic natural disaster that occurred at an incredibly fragile time for Venezuela.
You can absolutely say that they did bad a job of nationalizing and collectivizing. And of course they did, they were at the beginning of their revolutionary process. Russiaās collectivization and Chinaās collectivization processes went terribly before they actually solved their cycles of famines. It takes time to build these things. Venezuelaās only chance was the price of oil remaining high. They lost their bet with the market. They didnāt have many other choices. And again, if you want to present what they are, I refer you to the Monday-morning quarterbacking critique.
Being a revolutionary state that is collectivizing and nationalizing land, industry, and natural resources is not a way to get help from the international community with financial problems. The US was already engaged in covert operations by 2002, on the ground in Venezuela. By the 2008 crash, covert operations were maturing and intelligence networks were established. Venezuela was going to have to figure it out on their own. It took 9 years to go from electing Chavez to the crash. It took another 9 years before the economy showed signs of recovery, particularly through allowing USD into the economy. And then the US sanctioned Venezuela, determined that it should not recover.
Iām sure you would have done better if you were in charge.
Such editorial restraint you have. Not mincing words are we. The regimes closest partners. Really?! Not Morales? Not Castro? Not PDVSA? Not Sidor? No, of course it was Smartmatic. I mean, who could say otherwise right?
And apparently you donāt get to question the veracity of their statements even though that have plenty of financial incentives to lie. Itās such a weird thing for you to claim is unassailable. A private company? Lie?! How could they!? They had a contract with the government that lasted 13 years!!! How could they lie!!!
You people are far too credulous.
As for the report from 2019, letās see how unbiased and fact based it is:
By this point the sanctions were well established. No mention? Just that the Bolivarian government is committing violations of the rights to food and health? US covert ops on the ground since 2002 (also well established by the time the report came out). No mention? Just that the Bolivarian government is overseeing conditions of violence and insecurity? And after all that, insufficient mechanisms for protection from violence and persecution on political grounds? My brother in Christ - this year there were literally Venezuelans openly asking for a full scale invasion in exchange for oil money. I know the UN categorizes that as āpolitical opinionā and āfreedom of expressionā but give me a fucking break.
Oh man. Can you imagine? A Bolivarian revolution with pro-government civilian armed groups actually choosing to fight fellow Venezuelans? Man, I wonder what could ever cause them to do that? It couldnāt be brainwashing, do you think? Maybe thereās legitimate security concerns with subversive and counter-revolutionary action on the ground in a country that the US has been targeting for 20 years and has fully function covert operations on the ground? Maybe? No. It must be condemned as āpolitical violenceā that truncates āthe fundamental human rightā to choose to be a junior partner to a psychopathic genocidal empire.
Can you imagine releasing Machadoā¦ oh wait. Sheās not in prison. In fact, she was detained briefly and then released. Real murderous dictator vibes there. How is she still alive? Is it A) Venezuela isnāt just murdering the opposition or B) sheās well protected by US covert ops operating in Venezuela?
This report is from September 2019. That report LAUNCHED the fact finding mission. Meaning the 6K number was arrived at before fact finding began.
If you actually read each of the fact finding reports, the first doesnāt actually use āinternal chain of command documentsā in its methodology and only reviewed about 274 cases and only investigated 223. The methods they used were: āconfidential interviews, both in-person and via secure telephone or video connections; (2) confidential documents obtained from individuals and organizations, including legal case files; (3) a call for submissions; and (4) review of open source informationā. Not exactly confidence inducing.
I just went through all 5 years of fact finding reports. There is nowhere near deaths totally 5k/year. I encourage you to go through the documents yourself and find evidence for the claim of 5k/year. There is ONE claim of 5k deaths in 2018 that they claim is provided directly by the Venezuelan government. The footnote says āProvided by the Venezuelan governmentā. I havenāt found the actual source. The Venezuelan government denies that the number, which appears to mean that it denies having provided documented evidence for the number. Thatās all Iām able to find right now, so Iām considering it hearsay until I see whatever document the UN thinks the government provided them.
I disagree with the great Satan, but I believe all of his lies
Anyway, this has been fun. Keep simping for the empire while also claiming you hate it. They love when you do that.