The United States’ attacks on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores are illegal and unjust acts of war. They are the culmination of two decades of aggression, including economic sanctions and coup attempts, against a socialist project which has built an alternative vision for political and economic self-determination against US-led imperialist exploitation. We call on all people to resist this imperialist war: take to the streets in protest, counter US propaganda, stop the supply lines of weapons, and demand the immediate release of President Maduro.

The US government’s war against Venezuela is designed to destroy national sovereignty, dismantle the socialist project, and pave the way for de-developing Venezuela in favor of enriching Western capitalists. Control of Venezuela’s national oil resources is a key objective in US aggression—oil companies have a long history of violently appropriating the resources of sovereign nations, and recent comments by US officials and allies have pointed to oil explicitly. At a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event last December, comprador counterrevolutionary and Zionist María Corina Machado promised to “develop the energy sector, oil gas, and renewables to make Venezuela the most attractive energy partner in the Western Hemisphere.”

But oil is only part of the picture: to understand the United States’ objectives in this war, we have to recognize a broader—and escalating—pattern of imperialist attacks on national sovereignty designed to preserve US hegemony. From Cuba to Iran to Haiti, wherever people assert sovereign control over national development outside of the sphere of imperial control, US-led empire employs a hybrid strategy of economic sanctions, military incursions, and information warfare. As with the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the empire seeks to destroy not only revolutionaries themselves, but the very idea of resistance.

Despite imperial aggression, Venezuela has charted a different path. They have nationalized key industries; empowered communes to control the production, distribution, and consumption of necessary goods; and developed food sovereignty through the de-commodification of food, agricultural production by campesinos, and coordinated economic planning linking the campo and city. A new form of life is in bloom in the fields and barrios of Venezuela: a life defined by connection with community, control of the soil under people’s feet, and shaped by memories of over a century of struggle. 

The Venezuelan people are ready to defend their land and the Bolivarian Revolution. The US has not defeated the people of Venezuela or the spirit of revolutionary socialism. As socialists in the belly of the beast, we stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people against the imperialist apparatus of violence, propaganda, and extraction. ¡Viva Venezuela! ¡Viva la revolución!