In an illegal act of war, the U.S. kidnapped the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro early Saturday morning, along with his wife. American troops dragged them to New York, and the government is proceeding to charge them Monday morning. U.S. troops killed 80 Venezuelans in the raid to kidnap Maduro.

Trump insisted in his Saturday press conference that the U.S. “would run Venezuela” and “take back the oil that frankly we should have taken back a long time ago.” (In fact, according to international law, this oil is Venezuela’s, and we have made clear on this site how the U.S. illegitimately plundered that oil in the first place.) On Sunday, Rubio said that the U.S. would actually work through elements in the current government, though he maintained the gangster claim on the oil. In this same period, Trump has threatened Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Iran and Greenland with aggressive action of one kind and another—he even threatened the vice-president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, whom he had put forward the day before as someone he planned to work with. To say the situation is uncertain and potentially explosive would be an understatement. There is much that is unknown right now… and much that is very dangerous.

What we do know is that the illegitimate Trump fascist regime has continued its utterly lawless aggression against Venezuela. This began in the fall when they began murdering people in boats, killing at least 120 people at sea so far. It went on as they illegally stonewalled Congress about these murders (preventing Congress from gaining information that they had a legal right and responsibility to). It has now continued with the murder of 80 more people in the raid to get Maduro. It comes on top of the murder of tens of thousands since 2017 through U.S. “economic sanctions” against Venezuela—that is, embargos on crucial goods, etc.

What we also know is that once you say that you will run another country… once you land troops there… once you do that in a place that just a month earlier you said was key to your strategy to maintain world domination (Latin America)¹… it is not so easy to pull yourself out of it. This is a lesson of the war against Iraq launched by the George W. Bush administration. Over a million people died regionwide as a result of that war,² and many suffered terribly and needlessly for the sake of U.S. imperial interests. And the fact is that today—with the nuclear rivalry between the superpowers much more intense than it was 20 years ago and with Trump, an even more fanatical fascist than Bush, now in the White House—the situation is exponentially more dangerous. 

As revolutionary leader Bob Avakian has said, “We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way.”

We also know that masses of people in this country do not understand what they need to understand about this country and what it does all over the world and why it does it. This must be transformed into a teachable moment in which people are led to see the huge stakes for the masses of people in Venezuela, in the other threatened countries, in the U.S. itself and everywhere in the world… in which people come to see the source of the problem is the system of capitalism-imperialism that runs this country… and in which they are led to see the real chance for a way out—an actual, liberating revolution based on the new communism developed by Bob Avakian, and the need to mount powerful struggle now against the outrages of this system, including the need to unite all who can be united to defeat Trump MAGA fascism.

We will be covering this aggression in the next period—including as this week goes on—with the aim of providing materials to enable people to begin to see that. To those hundreds who came out in a few dozen U.S. cities this past weekend, good—but you must multiply, and you will need to wage struggle with others to do so. The speech from Rafael Kadaris provides a good model for arguments that you can make, and other materials on this site provide you with facts and understanding to help make the case. In addition, you can sign up for our Zoom on Thursday night, which will focus on Venezuela.