Socialists across Europe reacted with outrage over the Trump administration’s successful capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on Saturday morning.
In a pre-dawn series of strikes and raids ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump and led by the elite Delta Force army unit, Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured and are set to face criminal charges in the United States over suspected narco-terrorism.
The toppling of Maduro will likely lead to the end of nearly three decades of socialist rule in Venezuela, during which time the oil-rich nation was reduced to one of the most impoverished countries in South America after previously standing as one of the most prosperous.
Despite a record of economic failure, countless alleged human rights violations, and accusations of using electoral fraud to remain in power, the regime in Caracas has long enjoyed the support of socialists in Europe, including former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who praised former socialist leader Hugo Chavéz upon his death in 2013 for having supposedly shown “that the poor matter and wealth can be shared.”
In response to the toppling of Maduro, Corbyn said: “The US has launched an unprovoked and illegal attack on Venezuela. This is a brazen attempt to secure control over Venezuelan natural resources.It is an act of war that puts the lives of millions of people at risk — and should be condemned by anyone who believes in sovereignty and international law.”
Corbyn’s far-left Your Party co-leader Zarah Sultana added: “Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves — and that’s no coincidence. This is naked U.S. imperialism: an illegal assault on Caracas aimed at overthrowing a sovereign government and plundering its resources. Starmer’s Labour government must condemn this unequivocally. Solidarity with the Venezuelan people.”
Far-left indignation was not contained to Britain. Across the Channel, former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose socialist La France Insoumise (France in Rebellion) party has been accused of aligning with radical Islamists, described the U.S. action as violating Venezuela’s “sovereignty with an archaic military intervention and the heinous kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife.”
“Drug trafficking is now the pretext of the empire and its political and media agents to destroy what remains of the international order free from the law of the strongest. With Ukraine, Gaza, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, invasion has become an operational mode once again. The peace of the entire world is at stake,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ines Schwerdtner, the co-leader of the German Die Linke (The Left) party, which is the direct descendant of the communist ruling party of the now-defunct East Germany during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, accused the Trump administration of “state terrorism”.
“Hands off Venezuela! Whoever violates international law and allows presidents to be kidnapped is engaging in brutal state terrorism. In the case of wars of aggression that violate international law, there must be no double standards. The federal government should immediately condemn the US attack,” Schwerdtner wrote on X.
In Spain, the leader of the far-left Podemos party, Ione Bellarra, demanded that Madrid cut off relations with the United States, which she accused of being a “danger to the world” and demonstrating “imperialist and terrorist aggression.”
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