Do the Venezuelan opposition live up to the flawless image that they project? Let's find out.
This was exhaustively researched - 70-80+ hours of work. Hope you enjoy!
Don't believe the lies about Venezuela, and don't pretend to care about the people of Venezuela just so you can make snarky reactionary talking points. Instead, watch this video and learn a thing or two!
this time there will be no tl;dr for this video, i'm sorry ... there is just no way to do a short writeup for this kind of video - it's basically a recent(ish) history of Venezuelan opposition (with a metric fucktonne of sources - all in the video description). Who, where, when and what.
(if someone comes up with a short write-up - i'll add it to the OP, but i just can't think of one, sorry ... if that's not enough then just close the thread - either way i hope at least some people will watch the video regardless)
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So I finally watched the full video and will try to give a brief summary.
It starts out with some history about Chavez and the start of his political career (two failed coups, imprisonment, and then a pardon). When Chavez came into power, the "opposition", right-wing, pro-business, pro-free-market were "cautiously optimistic" about him, and so was the US. BadEmpenada uses "opposition" a lot to refer to this entire cadre, think of them as the analogue America's "Wall Street" I guess? I'm going to use "opposition" here as shorthand as well.
Once Chavez seemed to live up to his socialist ideals, especially with nationalizing oil, the business side of things started to oppose him (with the backing of the US, who wanted Venezuela to be a more "open" oil supplier). They organized some protests, some general strikes (which worsened the recession).
There's a lot of stuff here I won't go into because it all kind of blends together. The key thesis of the video is the "opposition", rather than build an electoral rival to Chavez, kept inciting protests, strikes, referendums and coups to try to oust Chavez. They also consistently painted Chavez as a tyrant/despot (this will be key later) in the privately owned media, as well as with what made it to the international media.
Chavez dies, Maduro comes in. The 2013 election happens where Maduro beats the opposition by 1.5% which is a slim margin. The opposition asks for a recount. I think an audit was done by UNASUR, a LatAm organization. They reconfirmed Maduro's victory, the opposition (and the US) continue to reject the results.
A new central figure in the video is Leopold Lopez, who the video paints as a pro-business, power-hungry politician who does the usual song and dance about "I'm a defender of democracy" even as he tries to undermine it. Like with Chavez, Leopold allegedly instigated or had a hand in instigating protests and a coup against Maduro. Lopez has cultivated a rosy image in the international media community, where he's compared to Mandela, Ghandi and MLK.
Something surprising happens in 2014, where Maduro's (and Chavez's) party, PSUV, suffered a massive defeat in the National Assembly to the social democratic group, AD (Acción Democrática). The opposition (still the business faction) was very heartened by this and conveniently forgot about their last decade of coup attempts.
This is where, according to the video, things go south. Instead of accepting AD's legitimate victory, Maduro made a blatant power grab by attempting to create the "National Communal Assembly", supposedly a adjunct branch to the National Assembly but clearly just an attempt to cement PSUV power before they gave control of the NA to AD. He successfully does this later in 2017.
By 2018, Maduro was jailing his opponents, leading to the election most countries decry as fraudulent, especially the surrounding countries and the US.
The next topic is Guaido himself. The video says Guaido is a political nobody, and he's probably being backed by foreign interests (including the US).
There's also some stuff linking him to the aforementioned Leopold Lopez and there's some conspiracy sounding stuff that Lopez is pulling Guaido's strings from political house arrest (where Maduro put him).
After this there's more trashtalking about the US, more trashtalking about media FUD.
He ends the video preempting some questions which he could see coming (a lot of which we went over in this thread and in other threads). He you can't really trust random people on the internet (in the same way you can't do this for your own country's politics) and the biggest polling organization that reports on Venezuela, is pretty skewed.
AT THE REQUEST OF FOLLOWERS WE REMEMBER THE RESULTS OF OUR LAST SURVEY:
Unfortunately we went to another level, time is over and there is no return.
The people need an answer today.
No hesitation.
THE PEOPLE ARE WISE, I SUPPORT THEM, SAID AND WAIT FOR IT (military intervention, clarification mine).
According to MEGANALISIS 82% of Venezuelans see socialism as "the most destructive political ideology" Another poll by the same company assures that 84% of the population would like to see the United States as "Venezuela's main political and economic partner"
As for talking to actual Venezuelans, as we do here with Mugy and Machado and another poster whose name I forgot who posted in one of the original threads, BadEmpenada says he's from Buenos Aires which has tons of Venezuelan migrants and this is where he draws his anecdotal evidence from. His impression is that there's no one singular united opinion, but there is a general feeling of hopelessness and lack of faith in Venezuelan political institutions from people who live there and people who've left.
https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/26/venezuela's-popular-sectors-and-future-country
Venezuela's Popular Sectors and the Future of a Country
There's a small amount of Maduro true believers and a small amount of Guaido true believers but most people are either anti-Maduro (so they align with Guaido) or anti-Guaido (so they align with Maduro).
Also BadEmpenada agrees with most people here that "Maduro has to go" but he distrusts Guaido to a great extent.
That's all of it I think. Anyway these opinions are not my own, it's just my summary of the video which is long and full of citations so I have trouble dismissing it outright. BadEmpenada looks like a he's a relatively new lefty-tuber from Argentina in the vein of PhilosophyTube or DoNotEat01, focusing on LatAm culture and politics. For example, he has a video about "Latin American fascism and Bolsonaro", and a video about "why Pinochet apologists are wrong". He knows his audience is going to skew internet left and that there's even going to be supporters of Maduro watching his vid. He apologizes in advance to these people for not personally supporting Maduro and Chavismo Socialism, so he's self aware about what kind of person he is and who's likely to watch his video.
My impression of him is that he's a credible (though I've only watched one video so grain of salt here), lefty commentator who hates US imperialism and capitalism. He's less meme-y than the Chapo Trap House guys and more research/citation heavy like the other YouTubers I mentioned. He is not a dogmatic ideologue like some internet lefties can be, as in, he seems to draw from actual sources rather than making stuff up to push a narrative (socialism good, capitalism bad). I will continue to watch him in the future, probably. Whether anyone else does so is up to themselves.
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