By Geraldina Colotti, on August 2, 2024 from Caracas
Demonstrators light a fire during a protest against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas on April 20, 2014. photo: Juan Barreto, AFP.
“We have seen the face of fascism, which wants to provoke a bloodbath. We had too much patience with Guaidó in the first part. Now we say to the United States: take your nose out of Venezuela, here the people decide. fascism will not pass!”.
This is how Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro responded to the statement of the United States, who “recognized without a doubt” the candidate of the extreme right, Edmundo Gonzalez, second in the presidential elections of July 28 with 80% of the votes calculated, which gave the victory to Maduro with almost 8 percentage points of advantage. The other ballots are being verified after a cyber-attack to the electoral institute (CNE), which in any case by law has up to 30 days to publish the results, and whose page has not yet been restored. But Chinese and Russian technicians are also working, because the attack came from outside, from the United States.
The extreme right, as usual, immediately shouted fraud, provoking violence in the country, in a coup attempt so far defeated.
And, meanwhile, it publishes contradictory and unconnected figures on a “self-proclaimed” page, which nevertheless the super-democracies take at face value. Didn’t they do the same in 2019 by “recognizing” an obscure figure that nobody had elected but who had “self-proclaimed” himself “interim” president of Venezuela in a symbolic square for the extreme right?
For 25 years (so many are the years of existence of Bolivarian socialism), imperialism has been trying to apply all the new types of coup frequency modulations, without disdaining the “traditional” ones, widely experimented in the last century. The pattern is always the same: shouting against fraud or “dictatorship” to provoke violence in the country, try to overthrow the government and call for U.S. intervention.
They devastate and kill, while presenting themselves as “victims”, supported by powerful international propaganda. The fact that they do not present even the slightest proof of their inflammatory statements matters little, as democratic terrain is not exactly what they prefer.
This time too, the usual international mechanism was immediately set in motion, driven by US imperialism, encouraged by the usual right-wing former presidents and major international institutions. The news is that Silicon Valley is also heavily involved, represented by web tycoon Elon Musk.
Musk is a key player in creating the climate of hate spread on social networks to guide mass psychology with a semantic and semiotic bombardment, which makes spectators (or actors) of terror also people even traditionally “decent”, able to distinguish between “good and evil”. We have seen this with the many imperialist wars, with the atrocious lynching of Gaddafi and with the genocide in Palestine. To get us accustomed to horror, that is the purpose.
From the confessions of the more than 1,200 people arrested for this new wave of fascist violence We know that the order received, came from the “comanditos”, the electoral committees of Edmundo Gonzalez (the current front man of the coup leader Maria Corina Machado), was to film the attacks of the squads, their shouts and threats, to sow terror and paralyze the popular reaction.
For this reason, all over the country, collectives of community psychologists have been working for years and, above all, there are centers of analysis, training and organization that analyze the “cognitive war”, the strategy of chaos and the concrete and symbolic countermeasures to be adopted. The most titled center is located at the International University of Communication (Lauicom), directed by the congresswoman and journalist, Tania Diaz.
It is not necessary to be a Chavista to condemn actions such as the one against Radio Venceremos, a historic community radio station in the state of Lara. The “peaceful demonstrators” – about 300 people shouting, armed and drugged, according to the testimony of the survivors and the videos broadcast – attacked, trying to burn people alive inside: about twenty women, children, men, elderly, some of whom are still in intensive care.
Hospitals and public transport were destroyed, as happened in many parts of the country. Community radio stations are especially attacked, because they have been and are the main instrument of direct information, sometimes even very critical, but very sure of which side of the barricade to be on.
Radio Venceremos is located in a municipality governed by the radical opposition. According to survivors’ testimonies, the local authorities did not respond to requests for help. Many communiqués of solidarity have been issued, starting with the National and International Council of Popular Communication (Conaicop).
Sowing chaos and doubt is already half the way. It is not by chance that long before the elections, Machado declared: “We have already won because the people believe it”. A “conviction” that we have been able to observe widely in diverse middle class sectors but, this time, also in some sectors where organized crime operates, enraged against Chavismo that has taken away their land, giving work and culture to the less favored youth.
There, people who did not participate in any political activity or listen to news, but only fed on some social networks, were convinced that they “were in the majority”, despite the numbers and the prevailing sentiment even among the traditional right wing (4 % of votes, added together), which does not want to get into trouble, but simply to do its own business. And which instead is openly attacked.
This is what happened to Congressman Jose Brito, whose wife, an opposition mayor, was threatened and whose children (one of whom is a special needs child) were besieged for four hours. This is what happened to a former hawker, an informal worker in the state of La Guaira. A young woman in her twenties to whom the government had given a small store, but who had transformed herself into an extreme right-wing opponent, very active on social networks. Her desperate cries when her own cronies, with whom she participated in the punitive raids of the chavistas, ransacked her store and, as usual, filmed the criminal act,that went around the country.
President Maduro immediately took countermeasures, not only for the physical protection of the communities, activating also the militias and popular collectives, but establishing an important compensation fund for the “victims of fascism”.
In order to adequately respond to speculations about “the missing results” even from countries that do not even know what this electoral verification mechanism is, nor do they have bodies in charge of adequately verifying disputes of this type, Maduro wants to dispel any doubts, turning to the highest national institutions.
For this reason, he first resorted to the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), the highest body in charge of keeping the five powers of the Bolivarian Republic in balance. An institution to which, according to Article 297 of the Constitution, any political force that believes it has suffered damage during a vote may resort to the TSJ. Why did the extreme right not do so, being so convinced of having evidence of “fraud”?
The Supreme Court upheld the appeal. At the time of writing this article, it has already set the deadline for all representatives of the 38 political parties, right and left, that participated in the presidential elections. All must present proof of the number of ballots cast, indicating the votes obtained, which is delivered, signed by all the witnesses at the voting table, to each voter, and collected by the political forces.
The PSUV (governing party), and the group of allied parties (the Great Patriotic Pole), have already declared that they have all the ballots in their possession. What will Machado’s extreme right wing do? Will it show the proof of the alleged fraud, as it declares to the four winds?
Difficult, because democracy for fascism is only a pretext. On the other hand, anyone can see here that the electoral campaign of the unknown Gonzalez was almost non-existent. The old man, in very poor health, has neither traveled all over Venezuela to hold rallies nor has he presented any plan for the country other than a document written in English on behalf of Washington, and which follows the Milei and Netanyahu model.
In addition, there is the denunciation by a Colombian priest, who has publicly accused Gonzalez of having been responsible for playing a role in the assassination of 7 religious of Liberation Theology, when he was a diplomat in El Salvador and according to the priest was a CIA agent during the time of Monsignor Romero. All these connections are having a great impact.
“Fascism will not pass in Venezuela”. President Maduro has repeated it three times, accompanied by a crowd of demonstrators who concluded the march in Miraflores. An impressive street response occurs every day here: demonstrations for peace and against fascism that wants to regain power in Venezuela. A peace with social justice, not that of the tomb for the popular sectors and with which imperialism fills its mouth, while exporting its “democracy” with bombs.
After the last huge demonstration of the working class, was the march of the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP). Popular organizations, created in early 2016 to confront the economic war, that is involved with communities in production, distribution and organization (and political awareness) projects, aimed at feeding the country. A non-“partisan” distribution, which was also used by that part of the population that supported the “sanctions” to blockade the country, impose suffering on the people and push them to get rid of the socialist government.
Meanwhile, after having summoned the Council of State, an emergency mechanism involving all institutions and the Venezuelan people’s power, the Bolivarian government continues to manage the country. The outbreaks of internal violence are dying down, the confessions of those arrested, all in great detail or found after the videos they disseminated in the social networks, that lead to the coup d’état of the extreme right wing of Machado and her North American godfathers.
Meanwhile, to contradict those who denied one of the attacks and the invasion attempt organized by the Venezuelan extreme right in the United States, a former US soldier, the merchant Jordan Goudreau, paid by Guaidó and his cronies to stage a coup, was convicted as an arms dealer in the U.S. A plan described as “alleged” by the international media.
Almost none of those arrested for the post-election violence voted. Everyone confirms that this plan has been prepared for more than a year with its main audience being the international scenario in which the extreme right wing calls for the invasion of the country.
This is the main danger now. The rest, including the widespread scaremongering about alleged attacks on international guests, have not been confirmed by any trusted source.
As a precaution, the accompanying delegations of international observers, some 900 people, are gradually returning home. Soon this writer, together with a delegate from an Italian communist organization, will also return. In the meantime, we continue to share days and reflections with experienced representatives of the Cuban delegation, who know well the face of fascism. Let’s think about what it will take to restart an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-patriarchal social bloc also within the framework of this electoral change.