FREE MADURO! Kidnapping & Regime Change Wars Are NOT What Americans Voted For
The kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro is a completely illegal and unacceptable move by the U.S. government. Trump has yet again disappointed the millions of people who voted for him wanting an end to regime-change wars. The claims about drug trafficking have been thoroughly debunked. The idea that the Venezuelan government is responsible for the actions of criminal organizations that left the country and were given asylum in America is equally delusional.
Big Pharma’s drive for profits — which pushed doctors to overprescribe opioids and has made billions of dollars from vaccine mandates — is the real source of America’s drug problem, not Venezuela. U.S. intelligence and the British Empire have had their hands in the international drug trade for over a century.
Trump’s assertion that he has the right to “run” Venezuela after kidnapping its internationally recognized president is outrageous. If the U.S. moves its forces into the country, thousands and thousands of working-class Americans from places like Texas, Ohio, Idaho, and Louisiana will come home in body bags. The Venezuelans have the right to defend their homeland from a foreign aggressor, and they will do so, just as Americans did at Lexington and Concord.
This is NOT what Americans voted for in the 2024 election. Dissident MAGA — the layer of Trump supporters and former Trump supporters who are outraged by his foreign policy — remains one of the most important constituencies in America.
The Center for Political Innovation has consistently stood with Venezuela. We disrupted the Democrats’ “No Kings” rallies in October. We published books supporting Venezuela. A rally we organized after the kidnapping of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab was even mentioned in a speech by Maduro.
With our limited membership and resources, we have done far more to stand with Venezuela than the misleaders of anti-war activism. It is hard to find a single “Hands Off Venezuela” rally called in the last year that does not have anti-Trump liberal talking points tacked onto it. The idea of appealing to America’s anti-war majority is something the crooks running the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Communist Party USA, and the Workers World Party consider completely off-limits.
When the left and right came together in February of 2023 for the Rage Against the War rally, these organizations not only refused to participate but labeled this important anti-war gathering “white supremacist.” PSL-adjacent voices claimed a rally where Chris Hedges, Dennis Kucinich, Garland Nixon, and Cynthia McKinney took the stage alongside Judge Napolitano and Jimmy Dore was the same as lynching or cross-burning. This was not just an epithet, but a coded call for every person who attended the rally to be murdered or locked in prison. The biggest barrier to a real anti-imperialist movement in America is the phony communist groups that refuse to mobilize the anti-war majority, and defame, harass, and advocate violence against anyone who does.
It’s not enough for Brian Becker to refuse to allow his minions to have a winning, non-woke appeal. He and his cadre forcibly removed CPI members who distributed a book supporting the people of Yemen from the People’s Conference for Palestine. A campaign of defamation, harassment, and cooperation with pro-NATO entities against us has been their strategy for years. Why? Because they are thieves caught in the act. The time has come for a real anti-war movement, and their woke, anti-populist protest hustle is more and more revealing itself to be a scam.
One final point worth acknowledging when observing the ruthless kidnapping of Venezuela’s legitimate president is the importance of leaders. The murder of Qassem Soleimani, Israel’s campaign of targeted assassinations that took the life of Hassan Nasrallah among others, and now the kidnapping of Maduro point to what Caleb Maupin has been teaching us with his education about Khrushchevism.
Those special individuals who position themselves as the voice of anti-imperialism and advocates for the downtrodden — and are able to mobilize the people — are vital. History cannot march forward without them. The idea that leaders are “dictators” and following them makes you “brainwashed” is an essential part of imperialist liberal ideology. The FBI knew this in the 1960s when their COINTELPRO documents explicitly warned of the danger of a “Black Messiah” among African Americans. From the publication of books like The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, to the highlighting of Khrushchev’s defamation of Stalin as a psychological weapon to destroy the global communist movement, all the way to Netflix’s sensationalist obsession with “cults,” this liberal mindset that becomes paranoid and hostile to any strong voice that inspires heroism must be called out.
Leaders are precious. That’s why the imperialists now focus their operations on killing them. That’s why, even as Trump serves imperialism/globalism and Zionism with his disgraceful foreign policy, CNN still mobilizes obsessive hatred for him, accusing him of being too friendly to Russia — smelling in him the potential for a strong leader who could serve a different purpose. The liberal cult of the individual and opposition to mass movements — and those who would lead them — is a main barrier to building the movement we need in America.
That is why we are not ashamed to say Caleb Maupin is our leader. He has been to Venezuela, and written and spoken extensively in defense of its revolutionary process. He risked his life on a humanitarian mission to Yemen. In Cleveland, he video-recorded acts of police brutality, with his evidence resulting in young Black women not going to prison. He emerged as the most outspoken and articulate anti-imperialist figure within Occupy Wall Street. Our movement traces back to when he fumed with anger as Workers World Party refused to put up a real fight in solidarity with Libya because Obama was president. Caleb Maupin is dynamic, and the movement he is building is the only real way out of the nightmare of globalism/imperialism facing America.
We will stand by him, as the Venezuelan people are standing by their leader Nicolás Maduro. We will loudly demand alongside them that Maduro be returned home, that the sanctions and attacks on Venezuela end, and that the United States join the rising new economy of the world — leaving Wall Street and London’s dying system rooted in colonialism behind.
FREE MADURO! HANDS OFF VENEZUELA! NO NEW WARS!
WE NEED A GOVERNMENT OF ACTION TO FIGHT FOR WORKING FAMILIES!
