I think it comes from a place of people being genuinely devastated by the idea that the US can just threaten a socialist country and force them to roll back progress. Or possibly people who see that willingness to work with the US instead of getting their country destroyed as a "betrayal" itself. But this isn't proper analysis, so it leads back into liberalisms like Great Man Theory. I've seen quite a few users strut around declaring victory because the "coping" stopped. I personally have stopped trying to argue with them for the most part since they've obviously not interested in listening or understanding, just declaring the villain of the week and blaming her for all the problems instead of focusing on the US pressuring Venezuela and looking at the Venezuelan people's attitudes towards all this.

In a weird way, I also think it's cope for having supported Maduro. I still can't come up with any good analysis that implicates Rodriguez but not Maduro. So much of "Rodriguez betrayed Chavismo" analysis ends with "this actually started under Maduro" if you dig deep enough, and if they were more intellectually honest, they would go, "Maduro betrayed Chavismo."

I think we can have serious discussions of what constraints Chavez had to deal with that neither Maduro nor Rodriguez could overcome or how Venezuela's proximity to the US mean that any Venezuelan socialist project will always be compromised. But someone who's blaming Rodriguez while ignoring Maduro isn't doing serious analysis. It's like someone who thinks the new houseowner who has only owned the house for a week before it collapsed should be blamed for the house collapsing and not the previous owner who has owned the house for more than two decades. They want the W for predicting a Rodriguez betrayal but not the L of having supported Maduro for the past 7+ years.

[–] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 9 points 4 days ago

I've noticed a lot of lionizing of Maduro, glazing of him since he was kidnapped. Before this happened discussions about Venezuela tended to be about his limited reach and struggles and even inability to fix Venezuela's problems, but that has completely fallen by the wayside and Venezuela has ceased to be a "place" with actual material conditions to these people and is an abstract "idea" which is constantly being destroyed over and over so they can rage at the injustice of it all, if only the noble Good King Maduro remained instead of the evil usurper Delcy, then all would be right in the world. But at least we can be Right about it, and get the sense of satisfaction from being Right about things.

I do think they will eventually have to admit either Maduro was just as flawed as the rest of his government, and the problems Venezuela faces didn't start in January and history didn't start on January 3rd. We might've spoken about this before, but if they do end up going down that route, I predict a declaration that Venezuela was either "never really socialist" or was betrayed after Chavez.

Though I think their current idea that Delcy is an evil usurper of the Venezuelan throne is comfortable enough and they'll stick with it for quite a while, especially if Chavismo collapses in the short term. It fulfills uncomfortable holes in their feelings towards the situation, because what is happening in Venezuela is awful, and we can't do anything to directly stop the US interfering with them, but it's easy to paper over that with "that comprador regime deserves it." when bad things happen.

[–] Jabril@hexbear.net 5 points 3 days ago

1000%

Chavismo has always been a weak cause, a social democratic movement born primarily out of the ballot box, although they did have to fight in the streets for it on many occasions they never had a full revolution.

I have been saying this all year, if you think Rodriguez is a new element suddenly changing course then you haven't ever looked into the subject and probably don't have any right to speak on it.

Maduro was already trying to do most of what Rodriguez is doing, he already was inviting foreign capital in from the US, he already did an amnesty law for opposition forces and even began the process of making the new one before the abduction, and most importantly neither he nor chavez sufficiently drove their economic diversification to be more self sufficient and less reliant on oil exports.

These are legacy problems that Rodriguez inherited, not new things she just decided to do a few months ago. They aren't even trying to have a material analysis and have consistently made up evidence so I guess wreckers gonna wreck.

Maduro did realize after years of sanctions to start empowering the commune movement, to his credit, and we see that vein being supported more each year. I personally want to see that continue and won't disparage the people doing it against all odds while being under siege.