90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, January 28, 2019

More Liberal Lies About Venezuela

The reign of Nicholas Maduro may be nearing an end as Venezuela reaches a breaking point after being ravaged by socialism. Maduro has declared that he will “defeat a coup,” and the military has his backing, but lacks the backing of nearly the entire international community.

Desperate to cling onto power, Maduro has declared his replacement Juan Guaidó a “puppet regime for the interests of the United States empire.” If we’re to take Maduro’s logic at face value, we’d have to believe that the hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators in the streets are a secret cabal of wealthy people (in a country with a 90+% poverty rate) looking to advance American “imperialist” interests. Color me skeptical.

It’s no surprise why the citizens of a country where the average person lost nearly 20 pounds in 2017 alone are fed up with the status quo, and it doesn’t require any conspiracies about American meddling to explain it. While you’ll only really see claims resembling Maduro’s in state-run socialist news outlets such as TeleSur or among basement dwelling communists on Twitter, at least one member of our House of Representatives is echoing the rhetoric.

Myth 1: Venezuela’s Regime Change is a U.S. Backed Coup

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has built herself a reputation for skills in using social media to her advantage – and fellow socialist freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is set to create the opposite reputation. Like Maduro, Omar claims that Trump is trying to install a far-right opposition that will destabilize the nation. To be honest, I’m not sure how Venezuela could possibly be destabilized any further.

Plenty of right-wingers have long joked that phrases like “far-right” are used by the modern left to describe anyone to the right of Joseph Stalin, and that appears to be the case with Maduro’s potential replacement. Juan Guaidó is a member of the centrist/social-democratic Popular Will party, which is part of the Socialist Internationale.

With the support of Congress and the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans across the country protesting, Guaidó has declared himself President until Maduro steps down and free and fair elections can take place. While Omar would like to present Maduro’s overthrow as American in origin, nearly the entire nation of Venezuela is rising up against Maduro, and virtually every country in Latin America has recognized...