There has been a complete continuity in Venezuelan leadership and in most ways in their policies. Many of the policies delcy has been criticized for are policies that maduro was already trying to do, but most of these people have never followed Venezuela until this year and have literally no background on the topic.

As a long time follower of the situation in DPR and LPR it feels very similar to how Ukraine was discussed after the SMO began. People have a small snapshot of several months but make really definitive statements about a country of 20 million people that has been under siege by the US since it became a Bolivarian Revolutionary project.

They have been trying to diplomatically get out of this siege the whole time under maduro and were openly willing to give similar concessions.

If it was a coup, it was only against maduro specifically, and they must have literally turned the entire PSUV party and grass roots communes against him, because so far it’s been over 6 months since maduro has been kidnapped and Venezuela has remained unified.

Knowing trump, it was clear the entire strategy was a “decapitation strike” which would serve as a headline for braindead people to latch on to and potentially allow for opposition to take over. They did the same thing in Iran, but Iran actually has armed opposition forces who were willing to try it, even though they failed.

For Venezuela after the decapitation strike, the elected vice president stepped up and everything continued as normal except the blockade on their biggest export was lifted. they sold a bunch of oil which they got paid for and immediately used for social programs and state operations, and we are witnessesing Venezuela be normalized as a state in the global stage again after years of being a pariah. No one rose up, no more shots were fired than the day of the kidnapping, no one was arrested.

This is all without having to have a regime change, change of rhetoric or ideological commitment, or restrictions on the grass roots organizing that already democratically and directly controls entire communities including means of production. If you know the whole context of Venezuela’s struggle and analyze it dialectically, they actually turned the kidnapping of maduro around on the US and came out in a stronger position than they were in before.

Trump admitted Venezuela has no real opposition to PSUV, and he has to work with them to get oil. If there is a split in PSUV, some accusations or information from chavistas in Venezuela, or mobilizations of communes against the PSUV/Delcy/the state, we will have the first evidence that there is actually a political crisis. Until then, they are trying to act like China in their statements and dealings with imperialists. Outwardly cordial and diplomatic while inwardly committed to their movement. Let trump have his PR wins, let people who gave up on thinking believe whatever Trump says, and let’s get the economy and infrastructure back on track to provide for our citizens after decades of seige.

Trying to initiate a hot conflict with the US clearly has never been an option, so what else are they going to do, hand the state over to the far right and step down? Declare their movement dead and tell everyone the communes are getting privatized? Stay in power and tell the US to go fuck itself and then have nothing to back up that position, get bombed to shit, and then have the far right take power anyway? One time I asked a resident ultra this and I was told they would have probably been killed, like okay I get that y’all have some kind of weird martyrdom complex where only dead people are revolutionary and everything living is too flawed to be supported, but actually if all you can come up with as a resistance strategy is dying about it, please fuck off and stop wishing for the death of actual people in Venezuela while imagining that it is you bearing the cross and for some reason getting off on that