The Myth of Revolution: Venezuela, Russia, and the Power of Propaganda

On January 23rd, 2019, Juan Guiado shot from being an almost unknown political figure in Venezuela to proclaiming himself president of the country. Shortly after, an attempted coup was thwarted and revealed to be a CIA-backed operation including a Floridian security company and Venezuelan opposition members from Miami. Now, more than two years later, this fervour for regime change has virtually fizzled out. As to the question why: because it was completely artificial in the first place.

The US imposed sanctions on the nation in the early 2000s, due in part to its nationalisation of many industries and stifling of the efforts of US-based companies to exploit its natural resources.

Regime change is nothing new to the United States. The US was involved in at least 72 attempted regime changes between 1947 and 1989 and has been involved in at least 16 since — although recent numbers are likely an underrepresentation as documents remain classified. The most recent of these, in Venezuela, has been a long time coming. The US imposed sanctions on the nation in the early 2000s, due in part to its nationalisation of many industries and stifling of the efforts of US-based companies to exploit its natural resources. Since 2002, the US has promoted several protests in Venezuela, paid for with ~$40-50 million a year by an amalgamation of US programs which in turn received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Reagan-era CIA-sponsored group, and the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank founded by the Koch brothers and notorious for promoting violence in South America. Juan Guaido fits neatly right in the middle of this.

[Guaido] became the figurehead of the opposition overnight, a puppet whose rise to power in the Popular Will party has been marked by opportunism and ~$41.9 million in US funds

Involved in youth protests funded by the NED since 2007, Guaido was elected to the National Assembly with 26% of the vote and remained an almost unknown figure for over nine years. Once a party member with a blood-soaked history in the violent guarimba protests, he became the figurehead of the opposition overnight, a puppet whose rise to power in the Popular Will party has been marked by opportunism and ~$41.9 million in US funds more than anything. As someone with common Venezuelan mestizo features, a personality characteristic of a man of the people, and very little previous media coverage, Guiado could be built up into anything with that much money poured into propaganda. Since his sudden stardom, US and European media have lapped him up as a figurehead for democracy; however, as is now evident with the stalled coup efforts, he was merely an expendable puppet for the US to attempt a regime change, someone more popular outside Venezuela than actually in it.

But turning our attention to Russia presents a different case study for a champion revered in our media: Alexei Navalny. Now the poster child for anti-Putin protests in Russia, Navalny has been glorified both in the United States and Europe for standing up to corruption and Russia’s corporate oligarchs, a facade that very conveniently conceals his true personality: a racist and xenophobic nationalist. His history is rife with these horrendous comments leading back over a decade to when he was thrown out of the Yabloko opposition party for hyper-nationalism. He praised the violent Biryulyovo race riots on his blog for confronting “hordes of legal and illegal immigrants,” called a female Azerbaijani co-worker a “darkie” and referred to Georgians as “rodents” (a play on words: Gruziny-Georgians and gryzuny-rodents). These comments have manifested themselves in dangerous actions such as participating in the annual Russian March where nationalist and neo-Nazi groups organize under the slogan “it’s our country.”

Putin’s reign is marked by violence and suppression; Navalny is only one of many Russians leading opposition movements.

Despite all this, he is still glorified as a heroic figure facing up to Putin and authoritarianism. While this is a noble cause—Putin’s reign is marked by violence and suppression—Navalny is only one of many Russians leading opposition movements. However, all others have either been locked up as in the case of Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front, or assassinated as in the case of Boris Nemstov, a prominent liberal politician. It is only based on the fact that the right-wing Navalny does not pose a serious threat to Russian oligarchs that he is still alive and free (for the most part). Even after his attempted poisoning last year, Russian doctors kept him alive for two days before handing him over to Germany — a period during which they found no traces of the Novichok nerve agent that was reportedly responsible for his poisoning.

So what do these two characters have in common? Exactly that: they are both characters, figures whose identities have been created and bolstered by media in the US and Europe to paint a rose-tinted picture of regime struggle while hiding the dark reality of both. While struggles against authoritarianism are a crucial part of the modern world, it is ever important to recognise when it is genuine and when it is simply a Western fantasy.