I am again finding myself reading something written by someone way more experienced and knowledgeable than me that is pretty much laying out the same analysis I was just saying here days prior. Using the same analytical tools, you too could learn to understand things as a Marxist instead of just rolling over for imperialist narratives and uncritically repeating them without evidence.

Borrowing from the language of this excellent piece, anyone pushing imperialist narratives about Venezuela from the left right or center is doing the pedagogical work of imperialism. You are a putting in work to enforce the imperialist ideological narratives which are blatantly anti-Marxist. You are erasing the ongoing movement which millions are actively engaged with over decades in an attempt to make people think you are smart by distancing yourself from actual revolutionaries in case they lose. You care more about “I told you so” than anything even vaguely resembling integrity as an actual leftist, which yes, does require a spine to be more than a role playing exercise. You have to actually stand up to difficult things with courage and not just fold constantly and run away from conflict.

Unfortunately, some Left sectors end up reproducing a similar framework, albeit in a different language. When they suggest—explicitly or implicitly—that what has occurred in Venezuela after January 3 amounts to treason or capitulation, they not only misrepresent the process; they also erase the agency of the Venezuelan people. In doing so, they reproduce a logic that reduces Chavistas to spectators, rather than recognizing them as protagonists of a process they have actively built and sustained.

This is doing exactly what imperialists and colonizers want you to do, because it is what they are doing. You are doing what they are doing. You are on the same team. You too have erased millions of humans and reduced them down to fit into your colonial image of them as a subjugated people deprived of all agency. You too have plucked out a handful of scenarios from the vast and ongoing movement of time and used them to construct a thin attempt at analysis which falls apart immediately if you take even a cursory glance at the information available and use it to form your analysis instead of bourgeois news headlines. I’m not in Venezuela and yet with the information I have available, I can come to the same conclusions as someone actively on the ground there. Anyone can do that, and many people have. If you haven’t, you could choose to just not speak on things you don’t know about, but if you are actively perpetuating the imperialist line you are a counter revolutionary, plain and simple. You are actively fighting in the disinformation campaign against Venezuela on the side of the US.

When Mao said combat liberalism, this is one of the the types of shit he was talking about, and some people here not only let it slide, they embrace it. Why? Why would you embrace liberalism to such an extreme and overt degree? Could it be that you are also a liberal that has never struggled for anything? The millions of Chavistas who have been actively struggling for their revolution for almost three decades certainly can’t give up on their movement, but it is very easy for some liberal on the internet to wear the skin of leftism and shamble around proclaiming that a revolution has died because the imperialist news has declared it so, and to even go further to claim that such a fetid and rotting perspective is not only correct but the correct Marxist position. It has been appalling to see a lot of people who I assume identify with the left since they are here, but can’t identify with Marxist analysis, can’t identify with revolutionaries engaged in struggle, and can’t help themselves but doom because of imperialist headlines written with the sole purpose of convincing people that Bolivarianism is dead despite the millions of active participants and decades of struggle. Again, you don’t have to attempt to engage with things you don’t know about. It is fine to just lurk or ask questions without declaring yourself to be someone who is (hopefully) volunteering to help imperialists out by spreading and agreeing with their perspectives.

This does not imply that support for the government must be uncritical. The relationship between popular power and the state has been contested at times since the early days of the revolution. There have been moments when the government distanced itself from the communal project, only to return to it later under pressure from organized sectors.

I have always welcomed valid critiques and commentary on the failures of any leftist or left movement. There are plenty of tactical defeats to look at with Venezuela this year, and doing so honestly is essential. But wreckers pretending to “critique from the left” while just repeating bourgeois news outlets and providing no real evidence to support their claims, refusing to engage with counter arguments, constantly strawmanning or changing the subject are not engaging in valid discussion on the topic and only work to sell the lines of the state department. It ceases to be leftist discourse and needs to be fought against or else it is just inoculating a bunch of well meaning baby leftists with doomer brain worms