Venezuelans who come to the US tend to be wealthier, in order to be able to get here, and have enough issues with their country in order to leave, issues that they will usually blame on the leadership.
None of this is to say Maduro has majority support, he doesn’t by most accounts, or that they don’t represent a sizable chunk of Venezuelans who don’t like Maduro, but that his support isn’t as non-existent over there as it is here.
It’d be like if Trump took over the US and you only got your views on what Americans think from expat communities in Canada. They would probably cheer his death, even if it was by a foreign empire, but that wouldn’t be representative of average Americans who probably wouldn’t like the foreign intervention, even if they don’t like Trump.
What Venezuelans do with Venezuela is their own business.
For many Venezuelans seeing Maduro go is a good thing. At the same time kidnapping a foreign leader is just wrong and will have long term negative repercussions. Both being true doesn’t invalidate each other.
It’s amazing how many people cannot grasp that you can dislike Maduro but not support illegal US Warhawk imperialism.
In other words
If a mob boss murders a drug dealer in order to help expand their “territory”: they’re still both evil criminals and the mob boss should still be charged
It’s always interesting to watch these things unfold. I feel like unfortunately the right and MAGA always seem more informed about this stuff. The left leaning spaces had a weird lag where they didn’t realize Venezuelans didn’t like Maduro. The left seems like it just reacts whereas the right are proactive lately
You gotta be on something if your think MAGA are ‘nore informed’
I don’t know. It depends on how you classify informed. I’d bet they, on average, spend more time glued to a “news” source, so they’re being informed, 24/7, just not with truth.
Exactly this.
In my experience the left are resting on they laurels. But in my day to day, people on the right are just now obsessive with current events. People i met on the left are just way more disengaged. They’ll react to things but they’re not doing deep dives like they did in the past. People who want to argue against this should go to any public site where those lines are clear and check out the left leaning conversations vs the right. It’s almost always the right leaning places have much more details and points and opinions whereas the left leaning places are all just insults and saying how upset a commenter.
The left is exhausted. Democratic leadership is uninterested in fighting, and the electorate is angry, but has been angry for so long they’re disconnecting to stay sane.
I don’t think MAGA is more informed on this, they just have a different myopic view. They’re only listening to the Venezuelan diaspora in the US who are almost entirely happy about Maduros ousting.
The reality is Maduro is a controversial figure in Venezuela, just like trump is here. A majority don’t like him, a smaller percentage hate him and some people like him. Ignoring any of these factions and flattening all Venezuelans down to one opinion is why we got here. Trump was buying everything the diaspora was telling him about how everyone over there hates Maduro and we just need to take him out and his whole regime will fall down like a house of cards. Maduros regime wasn’t a house of cards like they were told though and it does have some base that will require a lot more than I think trump is willing to do to topple it.
Just an example of what I mean. This is now already at disseminated in multiple right leaning channels and news sources. How many reading this even had this on their radar. Sure there’s misinformation. But also think what information is here and what needs to be researched. Is this mentioned anywhere here in lemmy? Because on the right this is already locked in.
This is the cost of not wrestling with pigs. If the left wants to get anything back they need to stay ahead of this stuff instead of reacting.
So its like American Cubans?
Exactly like American Cubans
And most groups really. The dynamics are often the same. We see the folks who were wealthy and discontent enough to leave. It can’t be overstated how expensive it can be to move to the US from some places. People have to save for years just for the airfare.
You spelled Gusano wrong
At this point more like their kids.
Please, Mr. Gusano is my father. Call me class traitor
And Turkish people in Europe.
People who expatriate from their home country typically dont have nice things to say about it. Its scary to me that so many people uncritically accept their opinions as fact.
Uncritically accepting anything is always a problem. In this case, American Venezuelans are not representative of their entire home country, as OP says. But on the other hand they likely know more about Venezuela than the average American, so I wouldn’t reject what they have to say categorically either.
Its been years since I left my country (not Venezuela) and I love it.
Still, I like to joke that people that leave a country (like myself) are weird or phrased slightly differently they’re statistically not representative. I’ve noticed that I have a habit of meeting a small number of people from a country and overgeneralising and that’s particularly error prone when they’re traveler’s I’ve met somewhere or expats
In this case though, as much as I’d argue the US is violating the law and international balance in a way that I think could lead to some futures I don’t like, I still think its reasonable for a lot of individuals to want a leader that causes harm to no longer be the leader. It’s also pretty human to no longer care how that happens.
I’m ignorant on the ground but I’m not sure that focusing on the possible overgeneralisation is that productive. It kind of reminds me of early issues with ICE in the US: the right to defend yourself being removed is a problem regardless of if they’re a good or bad guy since the same logic can be applied to anyone. The good guy bad guy thing is very effective at motivating mobs though
It’s scary that so many people uncritically accept any opinions as fact
This can also be said of the Cuban diaspora. So many people that I know (including those in my family) will shit talk “communism” and praise Trump as if he was their own personal savior. They don’t even have a rudimentary understanding of Marxism let alone leftist political thought as a whole. Yes, Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism led to authoritarianism and the Castro regime wasn’t great. But do you really someone like Flugencio or (for a modern reference) Bukele serving US capitalist interests?
It doesn’t matter what style of Marxist ideology is attempted, they will all lead down to the same path of authoritarianism, mismanagement, and corruption. The ideologies and underlying framework are fundamentally flawed.
That being said, I don’t appreciate the false dichotomy. There’s clearly more, and way better options than a corrupt tyrannical leftist state or a corrupt tyrannical right wing state put in by the US. There’s no reason anyone should support either because they’re lesser of evils when there are paths to pick something that’s not evil at all.
I feel like I’m a rare breed of anti-communist that also isn’t anti-leftist.
I was born in PRC, I hate the CCP for both it’s politics and on a personal level (2nd child born under One Child Policy, which they tried to “terminate” me)
That said, I, as an immigrant to the US, I also despise the far-right. I never supported the republican party I always supported Democrats, despite me being pro-gun (cuz I’m not a single-issue voter), and more specifically, I support progressivism, like I liked Bernie the moment I heard about the Medicare 4 All and that sort of stuff (but wasn’t old enough to vote at the time). Like why the fuck would I support an ideology that wants to deport me? Lmfao. I know my history, I know of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Don’t want that shit to happen again.
I like Mamdani (I’m not a New Yorker anymore, used to live in NYC), cuz I know he ain’t a communist (as in the authoritarian stuff). A Democratic Socialist is not a communist.
I have nuance, normie don’t understand shit and instantly defaults to campism.
Average American here … Please can we get some of that Foreign Intervention you speak of?
Pretty please?
YSK Maduro was fully impeached by the Venezuelan version of Congress and he used his military power to just stay in office and further silence dissent. Your post is either ill informed at best or at worst propaganda. The US does a lot of terrible things and this likely not the way or time to do this. 20-25% of Venezuelans have left and those were the ones with the will or luck to do so. Imagine how many others want to leave. Of the 75-80% of the population maybe support has grown just using math of the opposers leaving. Those people probably want to go back to their country if it were in a state to return to.
Point to me which statement I made was ill informed or propagandistic. I never said Maduro has majority support, I said the opposite in fact, or that everyone over there loves Maduro. Just that they don’t to a person hate him like the Venezuelans do over here and warning people not to take their opinions as representative of Venezuelans as a whole.
Many news outlets are showing cheering crowds in south Florida as a sign Venezuelans are happy for this. Like I said in the original post, yes they do represent a large chunk of Venezuelans who hate Maduro and left. The opinions of Venezuelans who like Maduro and stayed are noticeably absent though and they represent another large chunk of the population.
I never said to outright dismiss there opinions, just to know that it’s biased and to be aware that there are differing opinions, how is that propaganda?
it’s also likely they know the formula: “show support not protest because protest will get you ICE’d.”
Oh yes, the 7.9 million wealthy millionaires that…walked through a deadly jungle… to get to the US.
Please, Lemmy, stop trying to talk about Venezuelans as if you know shit. You don’t know jack.
Also, this post is extremely xenophobic, racist and classicist, the fact that mods let it stand is a shame.
Never said they were all millionaires, only that they tend to be wealthier. In general immigrants from developing countries are on the higher end of income from the country they emigrate from.
Also 7.9 million Venezuelans did not cross the Darien gap, most Venezuelan migrants stayed in South America in neighboring countries like Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador. Those that could afford it did make their way to the US but not all of them crossed the Darien gap and could’ve taken alternate safer and more expensive routes, if not legal routes including hopping on a plane.
I fail to see how it’s any of those things you just mentioned, I didn’t say don’t listen to Venezuelans or even don’t listen to the Venezuelans in the US, I’m pointing out the biases that that group possess and telling people not to overgeneralize and think “all the Venezuelans here are cheering, so every Venezuelan must love this” . Saying that emigre Venezuelans are representative of Venezuelans as a whole would be racist, classist, xenophobic etc.
Still xenophobic. And your source is very open that it has selection bias and aggregation methodological issues. Essentially, it describes how migration as an aggregate, all across the world seems to function, disregarding individual peculiarities, within the people they managed to access. Migration from India to the UK doesn’t function the same as migration from Lybia to France, or Mexico to the USA and most definitely not from Venezuela to the myriad of counties the diaspora has found themselves in.
Poor immigrants do not account in this data, as they weren’t interviewed, are the most likely to be undocumented, and thus avoid attention and refuse interviews the most. It also most definitely ignores the peculiarities of Venezuelan migration. It might inform some political decision makers on a very broad and vague way. But it is an extraordinarily narrow, incomplete and impractical understanding of the issue.
It happens with almost any latin american community in the USA. It happens with almost latin american community on internet.
For example, r/Colombia or r/Bogota are huge echo chambers of daddys’s boys, neoliberals and even cardboard-colored neonazis who don’t have a grasp about the complexities of the country and seem to live in a bubble. i.e. they make fun of people who don’t have Netflix… on a Country where less than 50% of people have internet access, not everyone has a TV and there are places where you only can tune a couple of AM radio stations.
Pretty sure something similar happens with almost every latin american country community on the internet or in a so-called “first world” country.
That being said, some Venezuelans deny criminal organizations like “Tren de Aragua” are real or that venezuelans are running them, be Maduro supporters or not. But they’re real and are extorting and killing people in other countries in Latin America. This is not to say every venezuelan is a criminal, but not every venezuelan is a saint.
Our countries’ reality is way, way more complex than people in the USA realize.
isnt that an issue with social media as a whole, most people using social media are idle rich or otherwise low-skilled/desk job types with loads of free time on their hands to be on social media.
the proper working class tends to use social media minimally, generally just using it to keep in contact/up-to-date with extended family
Also a bit of hypocrisy decrying Maduro’s illegitimate government and then cheering on your own.
Dear Europe,
It seems it’s now ok to depose a criminal leader by force. Just sayin. Hint.
-Americans
I like this, since their country can’t seem to prosecute them it is up to other countries!
Can we start kidnapping every criminal leader and putting them on trial? Also, can we do previous leaders as well. There should be a cell ready for every previous POTUS.
I asked my father for his thoughts on the situation, and he talked about how the Venezuelans could go back home to visit their families and that they were very excited. I sent him the Lemmy post from the Venezuelan that we all probably saw, and explained that there is a lot that is still unclear and how the US’s actions are very similar to the ones he’s seen throughout his life, especially post 9/11.
You make a great point, I do think we can see communities as a monoculture sometimes, or that they are at least portrayed like that in the media (undocumented=illegal criminal/gang member) which is just blatantly false.
I do wonder, what % of anti-trump people would be okay witha foreign power using a military raid to arrest him while killing secret service personnel to do it. It’s a nonzero number for sure… but how high. Somone should totally do a poll.
I’m not white so if this happens while leaving the rest of the government left intact (similar to the Venezuela situation), then the next in line will invoke martial law and non-whites like me will definitely end up in a concentration camp, so no I do not approve of this. I’m also foreign-born so I’d be the top of the target list.
I dunno. I don’t think vance would feel a need to keep doung what trump was doing. Vance would want to run in 2028, so he would probably try to take the “healer” side. He can’t carry trumps base anyway.
That said, sounds like your answer is that if it benefitted you, you would be fine with it, and if it didn’t, you wouldn’t.
It’s super hard to do the math on what that’d look like honestly. I’m not even sure we’d change handlers. The guys at the apparent top aren’t masterminds; they’re just faces and voices, perhaps scapegoats for more capable people pulling strings.
The problem with your take is that you’re still applying liberal values to foreign policy that the USA has ignored for decades - they have been fascists in regards to other shithole countries, even Obama. So what do you think would be wrong with this? Why would anyone with half a brain object to this?
Imagine it was Hitler in 1940 Germany. How many countries are defacto at war with the US, as the US defines war, e.g. sanctions are an act of war. Is Trump and his regime not a fascist regime that should be removed from power? Same with Netanjaho of course.
A malicious tumor should be excised. I do not have the money to buy the laws for this, but it’s still the morally correct answer, no matter if you’re in favor of a utilitarian, principles or kantian ethics.
My take? I legit asked a question to get other people answers. Somehow you wrote up that whole thing about an opinion I didn’t give, and didn’t even answer the question.
Your question is an infohazard
Well I guess you you are anti-data. I really just wanted to hear opinions.
Even if it’s Trump, it’s still wrong.
But what percent do you think would say it was right because it was trump?
In political science, we determine the opinion of a populace using something called elections, and well, you can see how that went…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Venezuelan_presidential_election
So poly sci says that all russians love putin? And kim jung un (or whatever his name is) is the most popular leader in the world?
There’s a big difference between winning a rigged election, and losing an election but staying in power anyway.
So then how does poly sci determine the will of the people when an election is rigged?
That’s the funny thing about Venezuela. The U.S. criticized Chavez’s election victories. So Chavez put in some of the best election infrastructure in the world. And because of that, it was abundantly clear that Maduro rigged his election.
That is the best part, it doesn’t.
The will of the people, lol
AKA what propaganda they have been spoon fed their whole life you mean…
Probably more legit than US elections
This is true for almost every expat/immigrant community I’ve interacted with, including my own. It’s pretty obvious in voting pattern differences between the expat community and the native country. The far right gets 30-40% among Bulgarians in Canada compared to 10-20% back home. The left gets 1-2% here compared to 7-10% back home.
The Dutch immigrant groups I’ve been part of have also been scarily right wing. I don’t bother anymore.
The biggest far right group in Germany are the Turkish grey wolves.
YSK that 20% of the population left under Chavez and Maduro. But those were of course all filthy counter-revolutionaries who just weren’t ready for the socialist paradise they built.
Most Venezuelan refugees cite crime, access to food and healthcare as reasons for leaving. Guess what US sanctions were causing. If you guessed lack of food and supplies for healthcare which caused an increase in crime, you’d be correct.
If socialism doesn’t work, why do they spend so many resources making sure it fails?
What sanctions do you mean, specifically? The US had barely any sanctions against Venezuela. Most sanctions were against members of the regime, not the country. The US remained the biggest customer for Venezuelan oil long after Chavez gained power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_during_the_Venezuelan_crisis
Early sanctions came in response to repression during the 2014 and the 2017 Venezuelan protests, and activities both during the 2017 Constituent Assembly election and the 2018 presidential election. Sanctions were placed on current and former government officials, including members of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice(TSJ) and the 2017 Constituent National Assembly (ANC), members of the military and security forces, and private individuals accused of being involved in human rights abuses, degradation in the rule of law, repression of democracy, and corruption. Canada and the E.U. began applying sanctions in 2017.
Chavez took power in 1999. More than a decade before these sanctions started.
The utter mismanagement by the Chavistas in power are the main reason Venezuela has been doing badly for years leading to a fucked economy, rising crime, lacking healthcare and food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chávez
The high oil profits coinciding with the start of Chavez’s presidency[15]resulted in temporary improvements in areas such as poverty, literacy, income equality and quality of life between primarily 2003 and 2007,[16][15][17] though extensive changes in structural inequalities did not occur.[18] On 2 June 2010, Chávez declared an “economic war” on Venezuela’s upper classes due to shortages, arguably beginning the crisis in Venezuela.[19] By Chávez’s death in 2013, economic actions performed by his government during the preceding decade, such as deficit spending[20][21][22] and price controls,[23][24] proved to be unsustainable, with Venezuela’s economy faltering. At the same time, poverty,[15][25] inflation[26] and shortages increased.
From your source: ‘Beginning in January 2019, during the Venezuelan presidential crisis, the U.S. applied additional economic sanctions to individuals or companies in the petroleum, gold, mining, and banking industries’
If you check the GDP per capita of Venezuela it was increasing at positive rate immediately after Chavez took power.
Life expectancy was also increasing after Chavez had taken over. https://data.who.int/countries/862
Of course, of course. Nothing to do with corruption and incompetence of an authoritarian regime.
Would have been nice if you’d engaged.
