We did not see anything new with the cowboy action of arresting Venezuelan President Maduro. Ultimately, the matter is certainly less brutal and, at least for now, less disastrous than it was with the liquidation of Allende and the introduction of Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile. All with the neoliberal economic model that was then experimentally introduced, and from the eighties, through Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, it spread to the USA and Great Britain, and then with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the whole of Europe. Moreover, it would not be an exaggeration to say that what was carried out by force in Chile, in fact, led to the demise of the welfare state in the West, and therefore to a deep crisis of social democracy that is still ongoing. And which led to the migration of left-wing voters from the working class to the extreme right. Didier Eribon wrote about this precisely in his book "Return to Reims", presenting to the wider public the image of French workers from the provinces who had voted for the communists for years, only to vote for Le Pen today.
So, essentially, we didn't see anything new with the kidnapping of Maduro, except that the practiced diplomatic speech that served to wrap the obvious in pretty cellophane was finally abolished.
It is also true that this is not the first time we have seen a violation of international law, nor violence by a more powerful state against a smaller and more powerless one. However, what is new is that with this act, after Russia violated international law and shamelessly attacked Ukraine, and after Israel violated all possible international laws, including basic humanity by turning Gaza into a death camp, the US has now given all of this practical legitimacy. This will be especially evident if they attack Greenland.
In other words, this is both the definitive end of the world established after the victory over fascism in 1945 and certainly a signal of the final insignificance of the United Nations, which is no longer any different from its predecessor, the League of Nations, which silently accompanied the world's slide into World War II. From this perspective and with due regard for the regularity of historical processes, we can only hope that the worst-case scenario will be avoided. But it is difficult to be too optimistic about this.
From all of the above, two important things emerge. The first is the hypocrisy of more or less the majority of the general public, from the far left to the far right. Few people have remained principled in all of this. That is, there are very few people who will equally condemn Russia's aggression against Ukraine, Israel's abuse of Gaza, and the US military's incursion into Venezuela. The largest percentage of people cynically find justifications in one thing that they do not accept in another or third case. So the same people who resented the cancellation of Russian artists are demanding the unconditional cancellation of Israeli ones. The same people who are on the defense of democracy and Ukraine's right to its own path are now seeking justifications in Maduro's election theft, so that they do not have to condemn the US, and we can draw many more parallels like this.
What I'm saying is that we have become extremely hypocritical and insensitive, and that this is the perfect cocktail for a new global conflict. After all, it's also evident that it's only a matter of time before China attacks Taiwan.
And in all this, despite all the hypocrisy of the European Union, only within this European Union is the idea of essential democracy still alive. The fact is that within it it hangs by a thread and by the hypocrisy of the EU's political leadership, and even by the very possible election of extreme right-wingers in nation states who would destroy the idea of the EU as such and the Enlightenment heritage as such. But it is truly the only space in which there is some kind of right to dissenting opinion, which does not lead to prison, exile or death.
Therefore, it is absolutely incredible that people who respect and cherish the right to free thought and free speech above all else, are just as passionately waging war against the European idea as all the dictators and autocrats in the world. If they all succeed together in this endeavor, we are truly facing a repeat of 1941, in some new form.
Bonus video:
