The article is titled "Venezuela, Authoritarian Like No Other." It's written by José Natanson, journalist and director of Le Monde Diplomatique, Southern Cone Edition. It opens with this:
On Jan. 10, in a tightly guarded ceremony at the Legislative Assembly in Caracas, Nicolás Maduro was sworn in for a third term as president of Venezuela. There were no major international figures in attendance, except for his allies from Cuba and Nicaragua, and there were no large rallies in the streets....
Supporters of the ruling party closed ranks behind their leader. By the time Maduro was sworn into office earlier this year, he was more alone but no less determined to do anything to stay in power—including political persecution, repression and illegal detentions. And he was no less given to grandiose displays.
Venezuelans have an excuse: "the most blatant fraud in the electoral history of Latin America" reinstalled Maduro. Americans don't.
Trump's inauguration came 10 days after Maduro's. I'd like to say that this national obscenity was possible only because of the most blatant fraud in the electoral history of the United States. That would be fixable, especially given blatancy. Trump's intimidation regime now cowering the press and Big Tech (-X) would wilt like the foul, poisonous organism that it is.
Exploding in its place would be mass public assemblages of authentic Stolen Election! cris de coeur. (Though many — to use a lazy Trumpism — would disagree; this is how I see it.) Reams of irrefutable election corruption would send the pissant dictator's congressional toadies fleeing for cover, and the stäble genius would be alone as Maduro, no less determined — but busted, soon impeached and evicted.
That's fantasy. Unless Trump & Minions pulled off the slickest voter-fraud operation since Mayor Daley stuffed or dispatched whole crates of ballots, no such election theft took place — nor could it have, seeing that said T&M are the biggest bunch of bumbling incompetents ever to search and destroy American politics.
But back to ugly reality. The article introducing this post is published by The Ideas Letter, a first-rate site of commentary which I in turn introduced in this post. From it I cite and quote Natanson's thoughtful writing for rather obvious reasons.
Trump's swearing in was also a scene of "no major international figures in attendance" and only "supporters of the ruling party closed ranks behind their leader." Thus our blustering generalissimo was also a picture of aloneness but "determined to do anything to stay in power" —including persecution of his political opponents, assorted means of repression, and guaranteed illegal detentions.
The overriding reason I feature this work by José Natanson is that it contains a perfectly brilliant term, the author's invention: chaotic authoritarianism. It struck me as the second person ever to see a wheel must have been struck: Why didn't I think of that? I searched the phrase. Time magazine has written that "chaos enables authoritarian leaders"; The Guardian, "authoritarian leaders are very often the architects of chaos." Yet to no one did it occur to simply put the two operable words together. Until Natanson.
Do you sense a but coming? You do indeed. He suggests that "chaotic authoritarianism" is "unique" to Maduro — unique because his country "is Latin America’s only petrostate," its GDP nosedived "between 2014 and 2021," roughly eight million Venezuelans "left the country between 2014 and 2024," and "it, alone in the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall, has declared itself to be socialist."
Granted, Maduro's state of miserable affairs is unique within those boundaries. Consider, however, the way in which Natanson characterizes the leader's “chaotic authoritarianism.” He writes that it's "a system that results not from meticulous planning but from a series of improvised decisions and in which control is exercised not down a pyramid of power, but via disorganized processes and internal groups that clash with one another."
With more respect due than you might imagine, Mr. Natason, you err in casting uniqueness onto your subject. What you describe doubles as a sorryass yet unperfectible portrait of the improvising, control-scattered, up-powered, interest groups-clashing, utterly disorganized administrative sewer of Donald Trump's stinking second term.
Chaotic authoritarianism — Trumpism's identity above all others. Much pain to follow. But take heart. In Latin and from the ancients came Ordo ab chao, meaning "Order from chaos." Also Lux in tenebris, "Light from darkness." These are universal verities, not pieties. And since by definition they can never come from Trump and Trumpism, enlightened order will someday muscle the two out of the picture.
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