The Bolivarian Militia: Meet the Venezuelans on a war footing

This is a set of excellent videos describing the Venezuelan people organising themselves in militias to defend their sovereignty and the Bolivarian revolution. Note the striking lucidity and generosity of the ordinary, often very humble, people interviewed in terms of their  grasp of national and international politics. How many regular Americans—even Europeans—could come close to that level of political maturity?

The footage of these videos also shows that the affluent neighborhoods, where the "opposition" lives and almost uniformly denounce the Maduro government in the most insulting and mendacious terms, routinely take the camera crew and correspondent interviewing them as "friendly" and favoring virulently anti-Maduro side, the imperialist side. It's clear they operate on completely bogus assumptions about reality dictated by the class privilege they wish to preserve at all costs, their deeply ingrained anti-communist prejudices, and the arrogant ignorance of the bourgeois mind, not to mention the racism that still pervades Venezuela. In passing, their trust in and cheerfulness in front of the cameras and crew (which they take of course to be from Europe or the US) says volumes about what the regular capitalist media do in Venezuela. And it's hardly the first time. The American media, and to a large extent the capitalist press of Europe and other nations, have always denigrated revolutionary processes.  The billionaires' viewpoint—their bosses viewpoint—informs the way they see (and misreport) the world.  After all, between a choice of career and truth, careers always come first.

Take the time to watch these videos, and you'll get a much clearer picture of the Venezuelan crisis and the parties involved This is a fascinating document.—PG