The Guardian is lying to us about Venezuela. This so called ‘independent’ media outlet which professes ‘fearless investigative journalism – giving a voice to the powerless and holding power to account’ has once again proved it does nothing of the sort. It repeats the same lies that have legitimised the US bombing of Caracas and kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, National Assembly deputy, Cilia Flores.
Lie 1: Maduro is a dictator
Julian Borger, a Guardian ‘senior analyst’ penned on 3 January ‘Maduro is a dictator who has run an authoritarian state since 2013’, rejecting the results of all three (2013, 2018 and 2024) Presidential elections that Maduro has stood in. The US has notoriously refused to recognise election results from Venezuela since 2013, Borger is simply parroting US claims.
In each election Maduro won over 6 million votes and over 50% of the vote share. (2013 – 51%, 7.5 million votes. 2018 – 67%, 6.2 million votes. 2024 – 51% 6.4, million votes). Each election has been observed by hundreds of electoral observers. 2024’s election was targeted by a cyber-attack which delayed the election results, bolstering claims of fraud, however the US based National Lawyers Guild refuted this in their detailed observers report. Last year, Venezuela held elections for the National Assembly, Governorships and Legislative council in which large sections of the opposition participated. Maduro’s Great Patriotic Pole coalition won 82% of the votes for National Assembly deputies and 23 out of 24 governorships, again illustrating widespread electoral support. In contrast, the prominent opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado is thoroughly discredited within Venezuela, a poll last month showed 89% disapproved of her and even Trump admits she does not have enough popular support to run the country.
Moreover, Venezuela has a system of direct participatory democracy that is never reported on. There are over 5,300 communes, each made up of thousands of residents. In 2025 there were four nationwide consultations where communes proposed and voted on community projects, each commune receiving $10,000 to execute the winning project. 20,000 local projects were completed in this manner; direct participatory management of state funds for community use – hardly the hallmark of a dictator. Meanwhile, 8 million volunteers have joined the people’s ‘Bolivarian’ militias, armed and drilled in preparation for a US invasion. If the majority of Venezuelans had wanted to overthrow Maduro, they would have done it themselves!
Lie 2: Maduro is a drug kingpin
In its news feed on 5 January, the Guardian repeated US prosecution allegations against Maduro, without presenting any facts. Trump has alleged that Maduro is the head of the ‘Cartel de los soles’. Even US intelligence admitted the group does not exist. Moreover, the United Nations office on drugs and crime’s 2025 report declared Venezuela as a territory free of coca leaf cultivation, marijuana and cocaine processing, reporting that less than 5% of the region’s cocaine is transited through Venezuela. The same report ranks Venezuela 11th in the world for drug seizures, highlighting its robust anti-narcotics programme.
Lie 3: Venezuela is a failed state
The ‘Guardian view’ on 4 January claimed that ‘Venezuelans have endured a repressive, kleptocratic and incompetent regime’. It’s no secret that Venezuela has lived through hyperinflation and scarcity, however the Guardian completely fails to mention the US oil blockade and 1000 unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) that by 2021 had decimated export revenue to less than 1% of its pre-sanctions level, resulted in the deaths of 40,000 Venezuelan’s in 2018 according to a Centre for Economic and Policy Research report .
Nor did the Guardian mention that despite this, Venezuela under Maduro built 5 million units of social housing, increased domestic food production to cover over 90% of basic food needs and distributed free and subsidised food bags providing a lifeline to millions of working class Venezuelans.
Meanwhile in food bank Britain, one of the richest nations in the world, the Guardian itself reported that 9 million people are vulnerable to dependence on food banks run, not by the state, but by charity in 2024.
Lie 4: Venezuelans are celebrating the kidnapping of Maduro
In several articles, the Guardian reports that Venezuelans in Britain, the US and Europe are celebrating. Yet huge protests have erupted in New York, in Washington, in London, featuring Venezuelans who have spoken out against the illegal US bombing, demanding the release of President Maduro. The Guardian has completely ignored these voices, only quoting and giving airspace to opposition aligned Venezuelans who back Trump’s regime change narrative.
Reporting from Bogotá and Caracas, Guardian correspondents Tom Phillips and Patricia Torres have refused to report on the mass protests taking place in Venezuela. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in all regional capitals demanding the return of Maduro and rejecting US war on Venezuela. 50,000 filled Caracas’ Avenida Urdaneta on 4 January. They have been made completely invisible by the Guardian because this does not fit with their narrative of Venezuelans celebrating the downfall of an unpopular dictatorship.
Lie 5: Acting President Delcy Rodriguez is aligned with Donald Trump
Since 5 January the Guardian has insisted that Delcy Rodriguez, former Vice President who is now acting President, has struck a ‘conciliatory tone’ with the US, insinuating that she will not defend the Bolivarian Revolution. This psy-op is aimed at dividing the solidarity movement. Contradicting such notions, on 3 January, Rodriguez called people to the streets declaring ‘we will never again be slaves, we will never again be colonies of any empire’. On 5 January, assuming the presidency she emphasised ‘I come here as executive vice president to the constitutional president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro Moros, to take the oath of office. I come with sorrow for the suffering inflicted upon the Venezuelan people following an illegitimate military aggression against our homeland…but I also come with honour to swear, in the name of all Venezuelans, by our liberator father Simon Bolivar…whose liberating blood runs through the veins of Venezuelans.’
In offering dialogue with the US, Rodriguez is simply following in the footsteps of Maduro who repeatedly called for dialogue against the US escalation of war. Rodriguez has been part of Venezuela’s government since 2003, first in the administration of Hugo Chavez, then in Maduro’s administration. She is the child of Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, a leftist guerrilla tortured and killed by US linked intelligence services in 1976. She is not about to roll over and hand Venezuela to Trump and neither will the millions of Venezuelans committed to the Bolivarian revolution.
The Guardian is a mouthpiece for imperialist interests in Venezuela. As Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! has consistently exposed, it has long manufactured consent for destabilisation, coup attempts, sanctions and now war against Venezuela. The Guardian attacks any national struggle that takes an explicitly anti imperialist stance, from Cuba to Nicaragua, Burkina Faso to Yemen. Whilst balking at Trump’s threats to Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, the Guardian enables the US war on self-determination in Latin America; a thoroughly racist, chauvinist stance that must be protested for what it is – propaganda for war.
