Imagine that years after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, a group of Democrats conspired to overthrow him in an unconstitutional coup d’état after being unable to check his authoritarianism through constitutional means. Imagine that they had succeeded in getting a faction of the military to depose and imprison him in a military base and, upon taking power unelected, proceeded to dissolve both branches of Congress, the Supreme Court and the Constitution — only to see the coup reversed in a popular uprising that brought Trump back to the White House. Would anybody in the United States call those who participated in this failed coup attempt a “democratic opposition” genuinely fighting autocracy? And would this group still have any credibility if they led another failed attempt against Trump’s successor years later?
In the U.S. context, such questions are rhetorical: Of course, an opposition that uses undemocratic and unconstitutional means to overthrow an elected government, no matter its authoritarianism, cannot be considered democratic. Yet, in Venezuela’s case, neither the Freeman Spogli Institute nor The Stanford Daily bothered to ask these questions about or to right-wing politician Maria Corina Machado, the leading opposition politician in Venezuela today, when she spoke via Zoom at a Stanford event on Wednesday. Instead, they unquestioningly presented her as the leader of the “democratic” opposition despite her participation or leadership in several undemocratic coup attempts, including in 2002 and 2019. They took her words at face value without acknowledging alternative perspectives about her record and credentials.
But there’s more. The United States has long funded and supported Machado’s opposition, in addition to imposing severe economic sanctions against Venezuela, exacerbating its longstanding economic and humanitarian crisis. Again, imagine if China had financed and supported the hypothetical coup attempts against Trump, which are a violation of international law because they intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign country. There is little question that the FSI would ever invite them to speak as representatives of a “democratic” opposition in the United States or that The Daily would uncritically cover such an event. I hope that in the future, both will do more research about politicians of any country they invite to speak and challenge their unfounded claims.
Mikael Wolfe is an associate professor in the department of history.
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