Venezuela does have an autocratic government, and Maduro is an autocrat. That autocracy is due to socialism.
The New York Times has an article about some of the Americans who were freed from prison in Venezuela in January. The details of their detention — handcuffs with spikes, stripping prisoners naked, putting bags over their heads to beat them — are horrifying.
What sort of government would do such a thing to people? What sort of leader would oversee such a country?
The deck for the piece says that the Americans “became captives of an autocratic government.” The article describes Nicolás Maduro as “Venezuela’s autocrat,” “the autocrat,” and “the Venezuelan leader.” The Americans were caught in a “political booby trap.” It said that the freed prisoners “all offered a rare inside view of Mr. Maduro’s expanding strategy to push global leaders to do what he wants: He has amassed dozens of prisoners from around the world to use as leverage in negotiations.”
“The expansion of this strategy comes as Mr. Maduro loses support at home and abroad and seeks ways to exert influence,” the article says. “His goals include the lifting of U.S. sanctions and recognition from leaders like President Trump.”
Is that all he wants? The article doesn’t say anything else about Maduro’s policies or ideals.
The words “socialist,” “Communist,” or “far-left” never appear in the article. Ask yourself: If a government that could be classified as “far-right” were taking prisoners in this way, would the New York Times fail to mention the government’s political orientation?
It seems worth at least one mention that Maduro is a socialist. He leads the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. Among his closest international allies is the Communist regime in Cuba, which is just as brutal in its treatment of prisoners. His government and that of his mentor, Hugo Chavez, have collectivized the ownership of property and nationalized industries.
Unjust imprisonment of perceived political enemies is not some kind of accidental excess from the Maduro government. It is a logically necessary part of socialism.
If property should be owned by the people, and some people don’t want to give up their property or argue against other people giving up their property — or, in this case, are visiting from a country where private property ownership is a primary national value — then the government will have to do something about that. “Something” often starts as sloganeering, then for those on whom that doesn’t work, it progresses to steadily more coercive tactics and terminates in imprisonment, banishment, and execution.
Venezuela does have an autocratic government, and Maduro is an autocrat. That autocracy is due to socialism. It is far-left extremism — not U.S. sanctions — that turned Venezuela from one of the wealthiest countries in South America to one of the poorest and made it into the type of place that imprisons tourists based on their country of origin and tortures political opponents as a matter of course. Someone should tell the New York Times.