The kidnapping of the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, by the United States this last week has created a divide in anarchist perspectives; particularly those living in the United States. It has made clear that there is a concerning lack of consensus around the implications of this action by the revolutionary left. To get on the same page and ascertain an anarchist perspective on this matter, it is necessary to understand international dynamics, the tradition of anarchist viewpoints, the dynamics of global class struggle and critical role of anarchists residing in the heart of the Empire.
On January 3, 2025, the US conducted a kidnapping operation, firing missiles at military installations and using operatives in helicopters to descend on the presidential palace, kill the security detail of Maduro, and take him and his wife hostage to New York to face fraudulent federal charges.
This comes at a very poignant moment in the US trajectory. As the US economy continues its downward trend, an explicitly far right administration has taken power. At the same time other countries have been rising to global prominence and influence, such as China and Russia. The US response to the situation directly follows historical precedent of the US: increase pressure on people of color and leftists domestically (ICE raids and the Antifa witch hunt), try to dominate globally through proxies, take down governments that follow an ani-colonial path, such as Burkina Faso, install governments in other countries that are subservient to US interests, fund and rally detractors in other countries, and militarily reinforce colonial proxies, such as ‘Israel’. The only difference now is that the far right administration is very explicit about it’s intent for world domination. Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, stated on the issue of taking Maduro that essentially might makes right. In a similarly hubristic vein, Donald Trump listed several places the US planned to affect a similar policy, including Cuba, Colombia and Greenland.
The history of US domination and exploitation in Central and South America has left a long and deep scar on the people there. Like now, the motivation for the US was to disrupt the entrenchment of the left in Latin America which would interfere with ability of US companies to extract wealth and resources from the South. The US-based United Fruit company brutalized Colombians for almost one hundred years, funding right wing paramilitaries to keep workers in check. The 1928 Banana Massacre took place in response to worker demands for better conditions, which was disavowed by US officials as, “communist.” It became Chiquita Brands, well known for financing the right wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) to exact killings and torture to keep workers in check. Salvador Allende was the first socialist president of Chile. Before his election the CIA spent $3 million on anti-Allende propaganda and once Allende was elected, the US led a right wing coup on September 11th, 1973 to depose him and install a brutal military dictatorship in his place. The U.S. was heavily involved in El Salvador during its civil war from 1979 to 1992, providing over $1 billion in military and economic aid to the Salvadoran government to combat leftist guerrillas. The list is seemingly endless. Clearly following this extractive trajectory, Donald Trump stated both before and after the kidnapping of Maduro that the oil in Venezuela belongs to the US.
Anarchism has long stood by its principles of internationalism and a borderless perspective, treating state-imposed borders as illegitimate. Buenaventura Durruti didn’t just go into hiding in France, he connected with and worked alongside comrades throughout South America. After the Spanish Civil War, Abraham Guillen made a similar voyage, working with and advising armed struggle groups in South America. The anarchist Shinmin perfecture in Manchuria functioned as a launch pad for actions against imperial Japan in Korea. Now, as then, revolutionary struggle by the oppressed in the Global South should have a seamless connection with revolutionaries in the imperial core. This is an important principle reflecting the statement by Subcomandante Marcos: “Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristóbal…” reflecting how a partisan in the movement must be on the side of the oppressed wherever they are. This international solidarity is an important practice of principle and also a practical consideration that a struggle abroad cannot succeed without a struggle at home and vice versa.
This logic is even more poignant considering the role the US has played geopolitically. Its tyranny extends beyond the borders of Central and South America, cultivating colonial and right wing trajectories around the world. The US has, for example, trained Ukrainian fascist paramilitaries and continuously armed the Zionist regime in its genocide against Palestinians.
There have been arguments made in recent days by those who consider themselves revolutionary leftists and anarchists that we as a movement should not care about the US kidnapping of Maduro because he is authoritarian, as is perhaps the Chavista project altogether. Equating a leader in the global south with leadership in the US on the basis of hierarchic control of a territory is a misinterpretation I once naively shared as an anarchist based in the US. Many years ago as part of an anarchist social center, we shared a post on social media by an ostensibly anarchist collective based in Venezuela, critical of the state. A Brazilian anarchist group of comrades we were connected with, comrades with a proven record of combatting racism and taking an important stance against US imperialism, gently informed us that we were sharing US State Department propaganda. We researched the journal we had shared and found that it, indeed, had questionable origins. The Brazilian anarchists explained that while the social project in Venezuela was not ideal, it was still on the left and that their position, particularly in conjunction with comrades in that country, was to work within the structures that existed which were materially bettering people’s lives and push them further towards the left. This was a new perspective for us because we were living in a country that was so far to the right, we had to work to understand what this meant.
On further reflection and conversation with our comrades in the global south, we made the important distinction that all forms of power over others are not necessarily the same. When an anarchist soldier in the Spanish Civil War captures a fascist and imprisons them, it is to stop a certain political reality. When a fascist does the same to an anarchist, it is that far right political position that becomes more likely. Force is used on either side to propagate or prevent specific social policies from being enacted. With the unbalanced distribution of power that exists between the US and Central and South America, the force necessary to overturn the fascist political reality becomes even greater. This is compounded by the constant low grade warfare launched by the US against, in this case, Venezuela. From aiding right wing coup attempts to an economic sanction to funding the opposition to propagating studies and media pieces about transgressions of Venezuelan leadership, there is a need for Venezuela to tighten its borders and increase security internally to prevent being overrun by the US. The threats by the US actually increase the need for activities that are then denounced by US-based anarchists as authoritarian.
This thought exercise was an invaluable lesson for an anarchist living in the heart of the Empire. There is no doubt that we are tainted by our right wing society, by our global position by birth and our alienated, hyper-capitalist daily lives. In the US, our war against the colonial, capitalist state is inherently just, but due to the complexities of imperialism and history, the same might not be true for every other state at every historical juncture. This doesn’t mean that we give up our ideals or our vision for a truly liberated society and stop fighting for a borderless world, but that we learn how to work with those have been oppressed, specifically in the global south, and that we make alliances and friends along the way in order to build a leftist pole against right-wing domination, neocolonialism and empire. We don’t rise alone, but we rise together, in struggle. And we create the situation for more leftist projects to thrive and move further to the left if we can thwart the power of the globally powerful right, and the colonial intentions of the US.
Anarchist societies don’t arise out of a vacuum. The Anarchists in Spain the 1930’s would not have risen to prominence without a global leftist trajectory. The same is true of Makhno’s Ukraine. If more of the world were to further fall under the diabolical influence of the US, clearly a purveyor of right-wing policies, colonialism, and exploitation for capitalist purposes, we would see a further rise in right wing politics globally. It is no coincidence that so many anti-colonial struggles took a left wing character when they were funded by the Soviet Union. And it is no coincidence that such struggles have currently lost that left wing characteristic. This is not to say that what the global actions of the Soviet Union perfectly created a revolutionary situation, but rather that when there are more left wing countries and projects around the world, there is a greater chance of their proliferation, and a greater chance at creating societies that are even further to the left. Using a smaller example, there likely would not currently be so many anarchists in Greece if their parents had not been communists.
Anarchists with the unique position of living in the US have a responsibility to the rest of the world. Anarchism is a social pursuit, not about creating an isolated bubble where radicals in the heart of the Empire enjoy themselves at the expense of those in the global south. It’s borderless and international principles are about aligning with those who have been historically and globally oppressed and fighting the purveyor of their distress. Accordingly, the Zapatistas have called on US based radicals to struggle against the government. In light of the horrors the US is perpetuating, and the political position it is proliferating, for anyone residing in the US, it should be our primary enemy. The benefit of people of color and the oppressed here and abroad should be a barometer for our actions.
From our position of both privilege and opportunity, when we analyze a situation like the kidnapping of Maduro, our first question should not be, Is the social and economic system in Venezuela a project worthy of my support?, but instead, What does it mean geopolitically for the US to be able to interfere in the politics of a country in the global south? Even if the Chavista project does not represent an ideal society, the alternative of an empowered fascist US deciding policy beyond its borders is vastly more dire. There is no situation where the US should be allowed to operate as a global policeman, garnering it further resources and power and bringing abject misery to the most vulnerable.
Secondly, we must not make the mistake of parroting State Department propaganda that pushes a US agenda. It is important to analyze the sources of information on international subjects, and understand the agenda of the bodies and people the information comes from. When people from Venezuela in the US speak about their dislike of the politics there, are they speaking from a left or right wing perspective? It is essential to be entirely critical of all mainstream US press, especially on geopolitical issues. Both liberal and conservative media outlets share information that furthers the US economic agenda. This was evident, for example, in the months leading up to the war in Iraq when mainstream press consistently and uncritically shared the assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. After the war, the same press later shared evidence to the contrary but the damage was already done.
The rift in anarchist perspectives around the kidnapping of Maduro has exposed a crucial, yet fundamental gap, exposing an absence of anarchist anti-colonialism. This is an opportunity to revisit the essential tenets of anarchism and realign with them. As such, it is an opportunity for all anarchists in the US to deeply inspect their own innate prejudices and dispositions that come from that position and figure out how to best shed pernicious Western supremacy that has been embedded their consciousness. Most of all, it is an opportunity to align with the global south, with global leftism and analyze how best to use the benefits of our birth certificates, passports and visas to destroy a powerful and seemingly interminable source of right wing politics around the world. In these critical times we must be clear who our primary enemy is, become united in our fight against it, and thereby create a situation where far more open leftist projects can flourish.