this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
1 points (54.5% liked)

Political Discussion and Commentary

1183 readers
17 users here now

A place to discuss politics and offer political commentary. Self posts are preferred, but links to current events and news are allowed. Opinion pieces are welcome on a case by case basis, and discussion of and disagreement about issues is encouraged!

The intent is for this community to be an area for open & respectful discussion on current political issues, news & events, and that means we all have a responsibility to be open, honest, and sincere. We place as much emphasis on good content as good behavior, but the latter is more important if we want to ensure this community remains healthy and vibrant.

Content Rules:

  1. Self posts preferred.
  2. Opinion pieces and editorials are allowed on a case by case basis.
  3. No spam or self promotion.
  4. Do not post grievances about other communities or their moderators.

Commentary Rules

  1. Don’t be a jerk or do anything to prevent honest discussion.
  2. Stay on topic.
  3. Don’t criticize the person, criticize the argument.
  4. Provide credible sources whenever possible.
  5. Report bad behavior, please don’t retaliate. Reciprocal bad behavior will reflect poorly on both parties.
  6. Seek rule enforcement clarification via private message, not in comment threads.
  7. Abide by Lemmy's terms of service (attacks on other users, privacy, discrimination, etc).

Please try to up/downvote based on contribution to discussion, not on whether you agree or disagree with the commenter.

Partnered Communities:

• Politics

• Science

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
laverabe@lemmy.world
laverabe@lemmy.zip
1
How come most people call Maduro a dictator? (lemy.lol)
submitted 4 days ago by matcha_addict@lemy.lol to c/politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I come for a civil discussion. Sorry, my question is a bit complicated.

Note: I am not asking people to argue whether Maduro is a dictator or not. You are free to do so and I will engage, but that's not my main question.

What I'm asking is, how come most people, especially uninformed people or those who know very little about Venezuela, call Maduro a dictator? Even well-meaning critics of the abduction?

I'm not looking for "well they're uninformed" answer. I am, sincerely curious how such an opinion is so, widespread?

I would expect uninformed people to take a simplistic, reductive approach of "well there were elections so I guess he can't be a dictator". That is assuming they speak on the matter at all.

A simplistic, surface level investigation reveals: there were elections. They were internationally monitored. Highly automated voting system. Etc. It would also reveal they're challenged by international community, but I imagined most people would be skeptical of that.

I am not denying the presence of arguments against the validity of the elections, but none those arguments are the result of surface level investigation.

What are your thoughts?

top 18 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Just reading though the Wikipedia page, he ruled by decree for a while, then ran elections that had results very different from the results of polls prior to the election.

You are right that elections were watched internationally but the conclusion was that the 2024 result was almost certainly won by the opposition. Manduro's government announced he had won without even providing any tallys.

Academics, news outlets and the opposition provided strong evidence showing that González won the election by a wide margin[391][392][393] with the opposition releasing copies of official tally sheets collected by poll watchers from a majority of polling centers showing a landslide victory for González.[387][394][395] The government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) announced[396] possibly falsified[397][398] results claiming a narrow Maduro victory on 29 July; vote tallies were not provided.[399] The Carter Center was unable to verify the CNE's results, asserting the election failed to meet international democratic election standards.[400] The CNE's results were rejected by the OAS,[387] and the United Nations declared that there was "no precedent in contemporary democratic elections" for announcing a winner without providing tabulated results.[401] Analyses by media sources found the CNE results statistically improbable and lacking in credibility.[402][403][397] Parallel vote tabulation confirmed the win by González.[404][405][406] Political scientist Steven Levitsky called the official results "one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history".[407]

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

A point on ruling by decree: Maduro was already democratically elected when he requested approval to rule by decree, and extended it or re-requested many times to combat Venezuela's deepest crisis in history. The rule by decree doesn't negate the election he won.

On your second point: that's the conclusion from sources with a clear bias and partisan funding. The tallies were released. You're probably talking about tallies from the individual polling stations, which were released with a short delay, citing technical issues. And by the way, the US elections, for example, do not publish such tallies at all. So it is strange to call Maduro a dictator without saying the same of every US president, and every other world leader whose elections do not make polling station tallies available at all (let alone before announcement).

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I want to be clear here, I am simply answering your question about why people think Maduro was a dictator. I'm sure there are counterpoints. Though ruling by decree is a notable feature of dictatorships, and knowing no more about it, it seems odd that a decree was needed if he was already ruling.

On a side note as my comments may come across as supportive of the actions of the US, if we were going to have a world police there is no way I'd want the US involved.

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 points 3 days ago

Yes you're right, I think the fact that the Wikipedia article emphasizes the rule by decree without explaining further can explain why many people arrive to they conclusion, you're right. I appreciate your answer there!

To add a bit more detail about why the rule by decree was needed, it wasn't about a need to stay in power. Venezuela's government system has limited presidential powers. The decree granted him more powers in order to be able to respond to the economic crisis.

The decrees that he requested often times would last 30 days, 60 days, etc. Although the longest one exceeded a year iirc. I'm adding that as a clarifying detail on the role of the decree.

[–] balderdash9@lemmy.zip 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

then ran elections that had results very different from the results of polls prior to the election

I'm not an expert on Venezuela, but I do want to note that the exact same thing happened for Trump's first presidency. All the polls said Hillary Clinton would win.

[–] Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 3 days ago

Not an expert either, just the first numbers i found: the us polls had a 2-5% lead for clinton. And they were (basically) correct. Clinton won the popular vote by a 2% margin. Thats on the lower end of the estimate, but i dont see a reason to assume some (widespread) fraud from this.

From this guardian article, it seems in venezuela, the numbers were wildly different

About four hours after voting ended, the government-controlled national electoral council declared victory for Maduro, eventually saying that the strongman leader had won nearly 52% of the vote to González’s 43%.

But thousands of opposition volunteers had managed to collect about 80% of the voting tallies from polling stations, which showed a clear victory for González, with 67% over Maduro’s 30%. Two different independent analyses, from the AP and the Washington Post, reached similar conclusions.

Note that they arent speaking of polls, but the actual voting tallies of the election. If these are indeed the real tallies, there couldnt be such a wide margin of difference

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah but even in the US, polls had Trump getting more than 16% of the vote.

And there were watchers polling people about who they voted for as they left voting booths, and the results showed the main opposition candidate winning by a landslide. Plus the whole thing where the Manduro government said he won by a close margin but didn't release tabulated results so it was just "trust me, I won".

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 points 3 days ago

Results were released. Not sure what you mean by tabulated, but I assume you're repeating the talking point about the tallies, which are the tallies from the individual polling stations. Those were also released. But the criticism was that the government announced the results before releasing those individual polling station tallies, citing technical problems.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Because he's a dictator. Venezeula democracy has been a shame for decades. Chavez was before him and he was the one that made all the dictatorial changes to the country. Maduro was basically just his sequel.

He's only not one if you think Putin/Xi etc are not. And yeah, a lot of Tankies delusional believe they aren't.

[–] Gullable@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I also dont get the vibe, from a relatively uninformed perspective, that Meduro is a dictatorial type. I still think he is a dictator tho. Basically every dictator has elections. This is very normal and not surprising at all.

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

What makes one a dictator then, if it's not being unelected?

[–] Gullable@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

Wow thats a deep question! Fortunately I have a deep answer for you ;)

It‘s is called selectorat theory: Dictatorships or democracies are defined by the size of their selectorat (the group of people deciding who stays in power).

In dictatorships very few people can decide to depose the ruler. Like a some high generals for example. Usually dictatorships have a couple of thousand people in the selectorat.

Democracies have millions of people in there seletorat. Depending on the system it can range from maybe 10-20% to 100% of voters that actually can determine the outcome of an election.

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 1 points 3 days ago

You did not answer the question. You merely repeated the claim in question, which is not useful to the discussion.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Western news agencies consider the 2024 election stolen and defer to the Comando Con Venezuela estimate which asserts the PUD won by 4.1M votes rather than losing by 1.1M votes.

This assumption of massive national voter fraud has become the backbone of criticisms of the Venezuelan national government and legitimized the subsequent protest wave that swept Venezuela later that year. It's been repeated - both explicitly and implicitly - on a variety of national news channels. Maduro has been labeled a "dictator" in western right-wing press repeatedly. He's openly denounced even in the progressive-liberal circles that still have a hard-on for regime change as a US foreign policy. That's what the audiences for these groups hear over and over and over again.

This, combined with the historically weak economy, the endless assertions by conservative activists that Venezuela is operating as a drug cartel, the numerous clashes along the border with Guyana in disputed territory that are reported as Venezuelan aggression, and the outspoken collection of Venezuelan dissidents that are given an international media platform result in a heavily negative opinion of Maduro.

With this accumulated bad press, it is easier to believe he is holding the nation at gunpoint than to accept the Venezuelan opposition parties are even more unpopular than PSUV.

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Your points in first two paragraphs are valid. Your 3rd paragraph is also valid for someone who is familiar with Venezuela and has kept up with it in the news over the years. But it is not something someone with surface level knowledge and investigation would have come up with, especially for the many people who couldn't point the country on a map. Which is why I find it puzzling.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 1 points 3 days ago

You may want to check out a book by Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality.

[–] Delta_V@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

I've literally never heard any real person say that. AFAIK, that noise is 100% coming from propaganda organs.

[–] brian@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago

I do not have good input on this topic, as I would be in the woefully uninformed camp. if you had asked me who the president of Venezuela is, I wouldn't even be confident in saying they have a president, as opposed to a prime minister or something else entirely.

I too am interested in where the dictatorship claims stem from, and I'm frankly worried to search for anything, as I know that politically biased articles are going to be all over