Millions of Venezuelans are now under arms and, with the slogan ‘Loyal always, traitors never!’ on their lips, stand ready to defend themselves and their country, whether or not their rightful president is returned to them. For all the savage threats and theatrical proclamations of the Trump regime, this is a fact that cannot be brushed aside by Hollywood narratives or gangster-style bravado.
CPGB-ML Party statement
Sunday 4 January 2026
On Saturday 3 January 2026, US forces followed up several months of war manoeuvres, piracy and naval blockades by launching an entirely unprovoked bombing campaign against the peace-loving people and sovereign government of Venezuela.
Military and logistical sites were hit, including the large military base at Fuerte Tiuna in Caracas, the port in La Guaira, an airbase in Higuerote (Miranda state) and a radar facility in El Hatillo (eastern Caracas). As yet, we have no information regarding the extent of the damage caused by these strikes or their impact on Venezuela’s defence capability.
Equally shockingly, US special forces staged a successful nighttime raid on the president’s residence. They imposed a blackout on Caracas and managed to kidnap both President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. The presidential couple are said to be on a ship bound for New York, where the US gangsters plan to bring the abducted president before a kangaroo court on trumped-up ‘narco-terrorism’ charges.
This ludicrous ‘justification’ for the most barbaric and naked aggression is convincing nobody. Even those who are hopeful of benefiting from a longed-for looting bonanza of Venezuela’s oil and mineral wealth have a hard time keeping a straight face when putting forward this scenario at press briefings.
And even members of the western presstitute fraternity have been heard asking awkward questions about legality and jurisdiction as US President Donald Trump and his henchmen try to browbeat the world into repeating their cover story of a “law enforcement operation” – first in relation to the murder of fishermen in small boats in the Caribbean and now in relation to the brazen kidnapping of an elected head of state.
As in the case of his government’s recent failed regime-change operation against Iran, President Trump was shameless in making clear the real motivations for the attack, somewhat prematurely announcing that his country would be installing a new government and was aiming to run the country’s oil industry for the benefit of US corporations.
Rumours are swirling about a significant sell-out from within the administration and army, yet the Venezuelan government acted decisively in denouncing the kidnapping and calling a state of emergency. Its statement calling on the people to mobilise is reproduced below. Masses of citizens took to the streets in Caracas in a show of support for the Bolivarian Revolution and the Chavista government.
Indeed, it is noticeable that those media outlets that want to show ‘support’ for the supposed success of the USA’s regime-change plans seem to be relying on pictures of small groups of Venezuelans living outside the country. There is little evidence of such scenes taking place within the country, despite the existence of a considerable anti-Maduro comprador opposition.
Around the world, very few people are any longer surprised to find the imperialist-in-chief launching illegal aggressive wars in violation of the international law it claims to uphold. Quite the reverse. More and more people are coming to understand that the imperialists understand only one language: the language of force.
Indeed, former Serbian defence minister Aleksandar Vulin has pointed out that Washington is trying to repeat what the Nato bloc did to Yugoslavia in 1999, stating that while the US-led aggression against Yugoslavia tried to kill his country, it instead “killed international law”.
He also pointed out that the bombing of a United Nations member state and the abduction of its president serves as a warning to countries without nuclear weapons: either arm yourself enough to become too costly to attack, or abandon any hope of pursuing an independent path.
The need for armed preparedness is one the Venezuelan people and their government have long understood. After all, the Bolivarian Republic has endured years of genocidal economic sanctions, political and economic sabotage, assassination attempts, failed coups and election meddling by the northern neighbour and former colonial master that has never forgiven Comandante Hugo Chávez for nationalising Venezuela’s oil wealth and spearheading the Bolivarian revolutionary process in 1999.
For this reason, the Venezuelan military has been reorganised and has been regularly purged of comprador elements. To the best of our knowledge, it remains overwhelmingly loyal to the government and to the revolution, despite the many and varied incentives and threats offered by successive US regimes over 26 years. The best indicator of this continued loyalty is the Trump regime’s inability to platform an alternative military leadership at its press briefings.
Knowing well the imperialists’ implacable hostility and the revolution’s need for mass popular support, the government in Caracas long ago made a point of supplementing its regular armed forces and police with a large people’s militia, which has in recent months mobilised to an unprecedented degree.
Millions of Venezuelans are now under arms and, with the slogan ‘Loyal always, traitors never!’ on their lips, stand ready to defend themselves and their country, whether or not their rightful president is returned to them.
For all the savage threats and theatrical proclamations of the Trump regime, this is a fact that cannot be brushed aside by Hollywood narratives or gangster-style bravado.
At this point in time, it is hard to discern truth from fiction, as the USA seeks to use its propaganda dominance to wage a psychological operation that will confuse and demoralise the Venezuelan masses and demobilise their supporters around the world.
What we do know is that this action is not a sign of strength but of desperation. The global capitalist economy is teetering on the brink of a massive meltdown. The over-inflated AI bubble could burst at any moment, and western corporations and banks are mired in unprecedented levels of debt.
In a bid to save their fortunes and their system, the Nato imperialists launched a military and economic war against Russia that they hoped and believed would lead to a domino-like collapse of first the Russian and then a series of other anti-imperialist governments, allowing a huge looting bonanza that they trusted would enable a ‘reset’ big enough to stave off their looming economic disaster.
But Nato is losing the military and economic wars against Russia and China. It has failed to destroy the resistance in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen. It has failed to topple the Iranian, Cuban and DPRK governments. It has failed to bring down the revolutionary states in the Sahel.
While it has given up on none of these projects, it is becoming increasingly desperate in its quest for a profit-boosting event large enough to shore up its balance sheets and restore its waning reputation as the world’s only superpower whose military power is invincible and economic power is unassailable.
Only this explains the rampant insanity now on display by this outsized megabully. The descent into naked and open criminality by an imperialist nation that previously gained much of its ‘soft power’ reputation in the world by pretending to be different from the colonial powers of old Europe is bringing into sharp relief the utter degeneration of the imperialist rulers of the world, who are left with only the most barefaced robbery and piracy to bring sustenance to their decaying and dying system.
Their reckless actions are bringing the world ever closer to an all-out third world war that will see massive destruction not only in the defenceless countries imperialism usually chooses as its targets, but inevitably also in the imperialist countries themselves.
These sociopaths must be stopped now. Their economic system, while it has always been fundamentally unjust, has outgrown any usefulness it once had. The continued existence of late-stage capitalism clearly poses a dire threat to the masses of humanity.
In Venezuela, the masses must learn the vital lesson that state power must be decisively captured if the path to socialist development is to be achieved. There is no long-term ‘third way’ between the dictatorship of capital and the dictatorship of the working class. The comprador big bourgeois class must be economically and politically dispossessed if the revolution is to survive.
Across the anti-imperialist world, movements, states and parties must strengthen the bonds of anti-imperialist cooperation and unity in struggle. We must recognise that while divided we may be picked off one by one, the united power of the working and oppressed masses is invincible.
Whatever happens in Venezuela over the coming weeks and months, there is no reason for communists to lose heart. Marxist science, Leninist organisation and the lessons of October and 150 years of working-class history show clearly that imperialism’s future is in the past. Humanity’s future belongs to socialism; we must redouble our efforts to bring this truth to the masses and enable them to act on it.
The imperialists must hear a roar of rage from every corner of the globe. And the working class must organise itself to stop the war machine in its tracks.
No cooperation with the criminal imperialist war machine!
Death to imperialism!
Free President Maduro!
Victory to the Venezuelan people!
El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!
Statement by the Bolivarian government of Venezuela
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela rejects, condemns and denounces before the international community the extremely grave military aggression carried out by the current government of the United States of America against Venezuelan territory and population, targeting both civilian and military locations in the city of Caracas, the capital of the republic, as well as the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira.
This act constitutes a flagrant violation of the charter of the United Nations, particularly Articles 1 and 2, which enshrine respect for sovereignty, the legal equality of states, and the prohibition of the use of force. Such aggression threatens international peace and stability, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, and places the lives of millions of people at serious risk.
The objective of this attack is none other than the seizure of Venezuela’s strategic resources, particularly its oil and mineral wealth, through an attempt to forcibly undermine the nation’s political independence.
They will not succeed. After more than 200 years of independence, the people and their legitimate government remain steadfast in the defence of sovereignty and the inalienable right to determine their own destiny. The attempt to impose a colonial war in order to destroy the republican form of government and force a so-called ‘regime change’, in alliance with the fascist oligarchy, will fail, just as all previous attempts have failed.
Since 1811, Venezuela has confronted and defeated empires. When foreign powers bombarded our coasts in 1902, President Cipriano Castro proclaimed: “The insolent foot of the foreigner has profaned the sacred soil of the Fatherland.” Today, with the moral strength of Bolívar, Miranda and our liberators, the Venezuelan people rise once again to defend their independence in the face of imperial aggression.
People to the streets
The Bolivarian government calls upon all social and political forces of the country to activate mobilisation plans and to repudiate this imperialist attack. The people of Venezuela and their Bolivarian National Armed Force, in perfect popular-military-police unity, are fully deployed to guarantee sovereignty and peace.
At the same time, the Bolivarian Diplomacy of Peace will submit the corresponding complaints before the United Nations security council, the secretary-general of the United Nations, Celac, and the Non-Aligned Movement, demanding the condemnation of and accountability from the government of the United States.
President Nicolás Maduro has ordered all national defence plans to be placed at full readiness, to be implemented at the appropriate time and under the appropriate circumstances, in strict accordance with the constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Organic Law on States of Exception, and the Organic Law on National Security.
Accordingly, President Nicolás Maduro has signed and ordered the implementation of the decree declaring a state of external emergency throughout the national territory, in order to protect the rights of the population, ensure the full functioning of republican institutions, and immediately transition to armed struggle. The entire country must be activated to defeat this imperialist aggression.
Likewise, he has ordered the immediate deployment of the command for the integral defence of the nation and the integral defence leadership bodies in all states and municipalities of the country.
In strict accordance with Article 51 of the charter of the United Nations, Venezuela reserves the right to exercise legitimate self-defence in order to protect its people, its territory and its independence. We call upon the peoples and governments of Latin America, the Caribbean and the world to mobilise in active solidarity in the face of this imperial aggression.
As stated by supreme commander Hugo Chávez Frías: “In the face of any new circumstance of difficulty, whatever its magnitude, the response of all patriots must be unity, struggle, battle and victory.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.