Edit: jesus fucking christ, just verbal masturbation and racist bullshit for 20 minutes under the guise of a declaration of war lmao what a fucking clown car of a country.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Hey check this out, might be relevant

https://www.thestatesignal.com/us-vs-venezuela-military-power-comparison/

[–] SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Definitely an interesting read, thanks!

Though I did notice that they put the militia numbers estimate in the thousands, and stated that the militias were "founded by Hugo Chavez in 2009", and thus portrays a pretty significant lack of understanding of Venezuelan politics, I think.

I understand why they're being conservative in their estimates, and Maduro's 4.5 million number is definitely an inflation of the actual numbers.

But, these citizens militias are outgrowths of the Commune moment which long predates their codification in the late 2000s, and is the social movement base that put the PSUV into power in the first place.

They're a very common, end hegemonic, force in Venezuelan politics, and given that these communes and militias are self governing organs composed of some of the poorest people in the country, Its understandably hard to estimate their numbers. But I'd still put it as likely being higher then in the thousands.

[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

significant lack of understanding of Venezuelan politics

I suffer from the same. I watched Empire Files but that's about it. Do you have any (short) book recommendations that cover recent history in broad strokes, or would news and wikipedia be appropriate? There's so much to learn about I hate coming up on 850 page books outlining every single detail of the past 400 years and then finding out it's written by Lt. Col. Nato McColdwar III.

[–] SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela by George Ciccarello-mahr and Commune or Nothing by Chris Gilbert, are good places to start. They're both short, and focus on modern Venezuelan politics and history, focusing on the Socialist movement

[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 2 points 2 days ago

Thanks!