Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
Zohran Mamdani is the new mayor of New York, but in his first few days in office he appeared to be spending most of his time on foreign policy, that is, he has rejected the IHRA’s broad definition of antisemitism, in particular in relation to the unhinged criticism of Israel. He has come out foursquare for narco-trafficker, Hezbollah supporter, and killer Nicolás Maduro, demanding — demanding! — that he be freed and sent back to Venezuela to continue his ruinous rule. And the Democratic Socialists, of which Mamdani is one, have made the same demand of the administration. They are, you see, “Bolivarian Revolutionaries.” It’s an exciting time to be a communist in New York. “Mayor Mamdani’s comrades in DSA demand Trump release Nicolas Maduro: ‘Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution!,’” by Carl Campanile, New York Post, January 4, 2026:
Socialists of a feather flock together.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s comrades in the Democratic Socialists of America want deposed Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro returned to power.
The Democratic Socialists of America put out a lengthy statement demanding “the return of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores to Venezuela.”
Meanwhile, the DSA is starting a “join our “Hands Off Venezuela” to get the “imperialist” United States out of the socialist, oil-rich country.
“Solidarity with the people of Venezuela! Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution!”, separate DSA International Committee policy statement says.
In its statement on the removal of Maduro, the DSA claims the Trump administration has started “an illegal war” against Venezuela….
The DSA apparently wasn’t listening when Trump explained that the Americans would be investing billions in order to resurrect Venezuela’s oil production, providing the expertise needed to deal with the problems that lifting the heavy oil that Venezuela produces present, and then the country with the largest oil reserves in the world would be put back on the path of massive production, up to 3 million more barrels a day, which would bring in hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The whole point of the post-Maduro scenario is to bring back Venezuela’s ability to create its own wealth. How would such a plan “impoverish the people of Latin America”? DSA doesn’t say, because they can’t.
The DSA has not been paying attention to the Venezuelan demonstrators in their country and around the world, who have been expressing their delight that Maduro, the longtime tormentor of Venezuelans, who has allowed drug traffickers and Hezbollah terrorists free reign in his country, has now been deposed. The DSA upper-middle-class gringos know better: though he lost the last election and held onto power anyway, they insist that Maduro must now be put back in power. The Democratic Socialists must support any man President Trump opposes, for that very reason.
The call for all American forces to leave the Caribbean overlooks the aid those troops provide when natural disasters strike. The American military provides humanitarian aid — food, and medical aid of all types, but does so especially after major disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti that caused 250,000 deaths in 2010. It provides free health checks, dental care, and surgery for particularly difficult cases.
“This is a nakedly imperialist war to install a US puppet government that will give Venezuela’s oil resources over to US corporations and to force US hegemony over Latin America — the new `Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This war is illegal both under international law and the laws governing the declaration of war within the United States,” the left-wing group’s statement says.
“Trump’s war has nothing to do with drug trafficking. There is no substantiated evidence that high-level members of the Venezuelan government are `narco-terrorists.’ Yet, the Trump administration is using this claim as the pretext for this illegal war.”
None of this is true. For years, the Americans have been complaining to Caracas about the narco-traffickers who are operating from Venezuela. They have followed their routes. They know where the drugs are manufactured. And furthermore, they know the Hezbollah operatives in Venezuela who are involved in the drug trade. The DSA is simply making things up.
DSA likened the US military’s action to the “failed” war against Iraq, claiming it will only “impoverish the people of Latin America.”
The situation in Venezuela is nothing like the war in Iraq. The Americans have no intention of remaking the entire country, as Washington naively thought it could do in Iraq, because it failed to understand Islam, or what minds on Islam are like. The Americans in Iraq moved in hundreds of thousands of troops, spend more than two trillion dollars, and remained for nine years. In. Venezuela there be a handful of troops in the country for possibly a few months. A few billions will be spent at first by the US to resurrect the country’s oil industry, after which Venezuela will be self-sustaining and able to pay back the Americans for their initial help.The Venezuelans are “impoverished” now, thanks to Chavez and Maduro. Now they will have a chance, through greatly increased oil sales, to return to the prosperity they enjoyed before Chaven took power.
Here are those DSA demands, each sillier than the next:
- A return of Maduro to Venezuela and restoration of diplomatic relations with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela — the Maduro-led regime
- An immediate end to “military violence” against Venezuela and a total withdrawal of all US forces and operations from the Caribbean
- Ending sanctions against Venezuela and suspending the failed “war on drugs”
- A US foreign policy centered on peace, multilateralism, and respect for national sovereignty and self-determination
Not one of these preposterous demands will be met. Maduro will not be returned to his role as dictator of Venezuela; his life of crime is over, and he will now be put on trial, with as much due process as anyone could want.
The call for the American military to pull out of the Caribbean would be violently opposed by the peoples of the Caribbean, who rely on the American military in times of natural disasters, to bring in food and humanitarian aid, and to build and staff field hospitals, a they did after the massive earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, killing 250,000 people. The American military also provides medical assistance — surgeries, dental treatments, inoculations — in normal times, to the people living in the Caribbean, who would be loath to lose it. The Democratic Socialists are salon Bolsheviks, who do not know what the poor need, and would rather have them do without if that would lead to their cutting ties with the “colonialist” and” imperialistic” Americans. .
When the DSA calls for “respect for national sovereignty and self-determination,” do they expect us to believe that Venezuelans were enjoying “self-determination” when election after election was stolen from them, and they had no way to throw off the Chávez-Maduro yoke on their own; it required the Americans to do it for them, and then to arrange for a very temporary caretaker government to be followed by elections in what would then have become a real democracy? If they hate imperialistic capitalistic colonialist America so much, no one’s forcing them to stay. I hear Pyongyang is beautiful at this time of year.
