In particular, we warn that the connections of the Trump administration to frankly fascist tendencies, sometimes called the “alt right”, and the increase in the influence of the military on U.S. foreign policy, represent a serious new danger to regional and world peace. |
CPUSA statement on the Venezuela situation
On Sunday July 30, Venezuela will carry out elections to a Constituent Assembly. The elections will be direct, open to all the people, and based on a secret ballot. This Assembly, with 545 delegates from all over the country, will be empowered to make changes in the nation’s laws, including the constitution, so as to help deal with the current economic and political crisis in Venezuela.
The right wing opposition in Venezuela has been organizing sometimes violent protests against the legally elected president, Nicolas Maduro. These protests are now focused on stopping the Sunday elections or discrediting their results. On the same day (July 16) that Venezuelan electoral authorities carried out a successful dry run for the Sunday Constituent Assembly elections, the opposition organized a farcically inept “plebiscite” to oppose it, in which there was no secret ballot, no effort to make sure that people did not vote multiple times, and a startling decision to burn all the ballots immediately after the vote was finished. Yet the corporate controlled press in the United States gave wide credibility to this farce, and ignored the dry run for the Constituent Assembly elections.
The Venezuelan right has been supported materially and ideologically in this effort by right wing governments and politicians in the rest of Latin America and in Europe. In the United States, attacks on Venezuela have been spearheaded by right wing politicians such as Republican Party Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Unfortunately, some Democratic Party politicians have also jumped on this bandwagon.