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The Aesthetics of Atrocity
Lockheed Martin’s Streetwear Pivot
On December 12, The Business of Fashion published an article titled “The Unlikely Rise and Uncertain Future of Lockheed Martin Streetwear,” detailing the world’s largest arms manufacturer’s entrance into casual apparel.
Through a licensing deal with South Korea’s Doojin Yanghang Corp., Lockheed turns fighter jet graphics, corporate slogans, and its star logo into gorpcore staples. Oversized outerwear, tactical pants, and advanced synthetic fabrics sell out at Seoul pop-ups like the Hyundai department store with young Korean consumers chasing the edgy, functional vibe. Andy Koh, a Seoul-based content creator, tells BoF that while arms manufacturing is, in theory, political, he has never encountered widespread discomfort among Korean consumers. “As long as it looks cool and the product functions as expected,” he says, “they seem okay with it.”
This trend aligns with a broader South Korean fashion phenomenon: licensing logos from global non-fashion brands to create popular streetwear lines. Examples include National Geographic puffers, Yale crewnecks, Kodak retro tees, CNN hoodies, Discovery jackets, Jeep outdoor wear, and university apparel from institutions like Harvard and UCLA. These licensed collections, often featuring media, academia, sports leagues, or adventure themes, have become staples on online retailers like Musinsa and in brick-and-mortar stores, propelled by K-pop influence and a tech-savvy youth market that make these odd crossovers multimillion-dollar successes.
Lockheed, however, is categorically different. Its core business is not exploration, education, or journalism. It is industrialized death, and its arrival in fashion forces a reckoning with how far commodification can stretch.
Having spent years in the military, maybe I’m the wrong person to critique this. Or maybe I’m exactly the right one. I know what weapons are for, how they’re used, and the human cost they carry. Lockheed manufactures F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, Hellfire missiles, and precision-guided systems that human rights organizations have repeatedly linked to civilian casualties across multiple conflicts. In Yemen, U.S.-supplied weapons incorporating Lockheed technology contributed to thousands of civilian deaths since 2015, most notoriously the 2018 airstrike on a school bus in Saada that killed dozens of children. In Gaza, since October 2023, Lockheed-supplied F-35s and munitions have formed the backbone of air operations that Amnesty International and other watchdogs have flagged for potential violations of international humanitarian law, cases now under examination by the International Court of Justice.
In 2024, the company reported $71 billion in revenue, almost entirely from military contracts, with more than 1,100 F-35s already delivered worldwide and production lines running hotter than ever. That staggering scale is the reality lurking beneath a logo now casually printed on everyday apparel.
So why does the planet’s largest arms manufacturer license its brand to streetwear? The answer seems to be twofold: easy money and sophisticated image laundering. Licensing delivers low-risk royalties from Korea’s reported $35-40 billion apparel market with virtually no operational headache. Lockheed simply collects checks while a third-party manufacturer handles design, production, distribution, and deals with all the mess of retail.
The far more ambitious goal, however, is reputational refurbishment. Doojin deliberately markets the line around “future-oriented technical aesthetics” and “aerospace innovation,” leaning on cutting-edge fabrics to conjure high-tech futurism instead of battlefield carnage. By late 2025, as U.S. favorability in South Korea continued to slide amid trade tensions and regional geopolitical shifts, the brand quietly de-emphasized its American roots, according to Lockheed representatives. The strategy clearly tries to sever the logo from political controversy and plant it firmly in youth culture, where aesthetic appeal routinely outmuscles ethical concern.
Lockheed has honed this kind of rebranding for decades. Their corporate brochures overflow with talk of “driving innovation” and “advancing scientific discovery,” spotlighting STEM scholarships, veteran hiring initiatives, and rapid-response disaster aid. The clothing itself carries the same sanitized messaging. One prominent slogan reads “Ensuring those we serve always stay ahead of ready”, euphemistic corporate-speak that sounds heroic until you remember that “those we serve” includes forces deploying Hellfire missiles against civilian targets. Other pieces feature F-35 graphics paired with copy declaring the jet “strengthens national security, enhances global partnerships, and powers economic growth”. It’s textbook PR varnish. Instruments designed for lethal efficiency, now rebranded as symbols of progress and prosperity.
We’ve also seen this trick before: Fast fashion brands that slap “sustainable” labels on sweatshop products. Tech giants that fund glamorous art installations while they harvest user data. Oil companies that rebrand themselves as forward-thinking “energy” players as the Earth’s climate burns. Lockheed, though, traffics in something uniquely irreversible: export-grade death. By licensing its identity to apparel, multibillion-dollar arms contracts are reduced to mere intellectual property; civilian casualties dissolved into, simply, background static.
In other words, vibes overpower victims. And when those vibes are stamped with the logo of the planet’s preeminent death merchant, resistance feels futile.
Gorpcore has always drawn from military surplus for its rugged utility: endless cargo pockets, indestructible nylons, tactical silhouettes born in combat and repurposed for city streets. Brands like Arc’teryx, The North Face, and Supreme mine that heritage for authenticity and performance. After World War II, army fatigues became symbols of genuine rebellion, worn by anti-war protesters as an act of defiance against the establishment. Today, the dynamic threatens to invert entirely. The establishment itself, the world’s preeminent arms dealer, now supplies the “authentic” merchandise, turning subversion into subtle endorsement.
Streetwear grew out of skate culture, hip-hop, and grassroots rebellion against mainstream norms. Importing the aesthetics of atrocity risks converting that legacy into compliance, rendering militarism the newest version of mainstream cool. For a generation immersed in filtered feeds and rapid trend cycles, Lockheed’s logo can sit comfortably beside NASA patches or National Geographic emblems, conveniently severed from the charred wreckage in Saada or the devastation in Gaza. Research on “ethical fading” demonstrates how strong visual design can mute moral alarms, a phenomenon intensified in Korea’s hyper-trendy ecosystem, where mandatory military service may further desensitize young consumers to defense branding while K-pop’s global engine drives relentless consumption.
If the line proves durable, escalation feels inevitable. Palantir, another cornerstone of the defense-tech world, has already gone there, hyping limited merch drops that sell out in hours: $99 athletic shorts stamped “PLTR—TECH,” $119 nylon totes, hoodies emblazoned with CEO Alex Karp’s likeness or slogans about “dominating” threats. What’s to stop Northrop Grumman from launching its own techwear line? Or BAE Systems from dropping high-end collaborations?
Lockheed already licenses merchandise worldwide through various agencies; broader international rollouts beyond Korea seem only a matter of time. Backlash is possible, boycotts from ethically minded buyers, perhaps even regulatory scrutiny as anti-militarism sentiment swells. Gorpcore’s longstanding flirtation with military aesthetics could calcify into outright fetish, obliterating whatever daylight remained between practical function and state-sanctioned propaganda.
Yet, history suggests that in oversaturated markets, “cool” almost always trumps conscience. Lockheed’s streetwear pivot is a stark illustration of how fashion and culture launder raw power, enabling the machinery of war to conceal itself among hype, hoodies, and sold-out drops.
{
"article":
{
"title" : "The Aesthetics of Atrocity: Lockheed Martin’s Streetwear Pivot",
"author" : "Louis Pisano",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/the-aesthetics-of-atrocity",
"date" : "2025-12-20 10:30:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Lockheed_StreetWar.jpg",
"excerpt" : "On December 12, The Business of Fashion published an article titled “The Unlikely Rise and Uncertain Future of Lockheed Martin Streetwear,” detailing the world’s largest arms manufacturer’s entrance into casual apparel.",
"content" : "On December 12, The Business of Fashion published an article titled “The Unlikely Rise and Uncertain Future of Lockheed Martin Streetwear,” detailing the world’s largest arms manufacturer’s entrance into casual apparel.Through a licensing deal with South Korea’s Doojin Yanghang Corp., Lockheed turns fighter jet graphics, corporate slogans, and its star logo into gorpcore staples. Oversized outerwear, tactical pants, and advanced synthetic fabrics sell out at Seoul pop-ups like the Hyundai department store with young Korean consumers chasing the edgy, functional vibe. Andy Koh, a Seoul-based content creator, tells BoF that while arms manufacturing is, in theory, political, he has never encountered widespread discomfort among Korean consumers. “As long as it looks cool and the product functions as expected,” he says, “they seem okay with it.”This trend aligns with a broader South Korean fashion phenomenon: licensing logos from global non-fashion brands to create popular streetwear lines. Examples include National Geographic puffers, Yale crewnecks, Kodak retro tees, CNN hoodies, Discovery jackets, Jeep outdoor wear, and university apparel from institutions like Harvard and UCLA. These licensed collections, often featuring media, academia, sports leagues, or adventure themes, have become staples on online retailers like Musinsa and in brick-and-mortar stores, propelled by K-pop influence and a tech-savvy youth market that make these odd crossovers multimillion-dollar successes.Lockheed, however, is categorically different. Its core business is not exploration, education, or journalism. It is industrialized death, and its arrival in fashion forces a reckoning with how far commodification can stretch.Having spent years in the military, maybe I’m the wrong person to critique this. Or maybe I’m exactly the right one. I know what weapons are for, how they’re used, and the human cost they carry. Lockheed manufactures F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, Hellfire missiles, and precision-guided systems that human rights organizations have repeatedly linked to civilian casualties across multiple conflicts. In Yemen, U.S.-supplied weapons incorporating Lockheed technology contributed to thousands of civilian deaths since 2015, most notoriously the 2018 airstrike on a school bus in Saada that killed dozens of children. In Gaza, since October 2023, Lockheed-supplied F-35s and munitions have formed the backbone of air operations that Amnesty International and other watchdogs have flagged for potential violations of international humanitarian law, cases now under examination by the International Court of Justice.In 2024, the company reported $71 billion in revenue, almost entirely from military contracts, with more than 1,100 F-35s already delivered worldwide and production lines running hotter than ever. That staggering scale is the reality lurking beneath a logo now casually printed on everyday apparel.So why does the planet’s largest arms manufacturer license its brand to streetwear? The answer seems to be twofold: easy money and sophisticated image laundering. Licensing delivers low-risk royalties from Korea’s reported $35-40 billion apparel market with virtually no operational headache. Lockheed simply collects checks while a third-party manufacturer handles design, production, distribution, and deals with all the mess of retail.The far more ambitious goal, however, is reputational refurbishment. Doojin deliberately markets the line around “future-oriented technical aesthetics” and “aerospace innovation,” leaning on cutting-edge fabrics to conjure high-tech futurism instead of battlefield carnage. By late 2025, as U.S. favorability in South Korea continued to slide amid trade tensions and regional geopolitical shifts, the brand quietly de-emphasized its American roots, according to Lockheed representatives. The strategy clearly tries to sever the logo from political controversy and plant it firmly in youth culture, where aesthetic appeal routinely outmuscles ethical concern.Lockheed has honed this kind of rebranding for decades. Their corporate brochures overflow with talk of “driving innovation” and “advancing scientific discovery,” spotlighting STEM scholarships, veteran hiring initiatives, and rapid-response disaster aid. The clothing itself carries the same sanitized messaging. One prominent slogan reads “Ensuring those we serve always stay ahead of ready”, euphemistic corporate-speak that sounds heroic until you remember that “those we serve” includes forces deploying Hellfire missiles against civilian targets. Other pieces feature F-35 graphics paired with copy declaring the jet “strengthens national security, enhances global partnerships, and powers economic growth”. It’s textbook PR varnish. Instruments designed for lethal efficiency, now rebranded as symbols of progress and prosperity.We’ve also seen this trick before: Fast fashion brands that slap “sustainable” labels on sweatshop products. Tech giants that fund glamorous art installations while they harvest user data. Oil companies that rebrand themselves as forward-thinking “energy” players as the Earth’s climate burns. Lockheed, though, traffics in something uniquely irreversible: export-grade death. By licensing its identity to apparel, multibillion-dollar arms contracts are reduced to mere intellectual property; civilian casualties dissolved into, simply, background static.In other words, vibes overpower victims. And when those vibes are stamped with the logo of the planet’s preeminent death merchant, resistance feels futile.Gorpcore has always drawn from military surplus for its rugged utility: endless cargo pockets, indestructible nylons, tactical silhouettes born in combat and repurposed for city streets. Brands like Arc’teryx, The North Face, and Supreme mine that heritage for authenticity and performance. After World War II, army fatigues became symbols of genuine rebellion, worn by anti-war protesters as an act of defiance against the establishment. Today, the dynamic threatens to invert entirely. The establishment itself, the world’s preeminent arms dealer, now supplies the “authentic” merchandise, turning subversion into subtle endorsement.Streetwear grew out of skate culture, hip-hop, and grassroots rebellion against mainstream norms. Importing the aesthetics of atrocity risks converting that legacy into compliance, rendering militarism the newest version of mainstream cool. For a generation immersed in filtered feeds and rapid trend cycles, Lockheed’s logo can sit comfortably beside NASA patches or National Geographic emblems, conveniently severed from the charred wreckage in Saada or the devastation in Gaza. Research on “ethical fading” demonstrates how strong visual design can mute moral alarms, a phenomenon intensified in Korea’s hyper-trendy ecosystem, where mandatory military service may further desensitize young consumers to defense branding while K-pop’s global engine drives relentless consumption.If the line proves durable, escalation feels inevitable. Palantir, another cornerstone of the defense-tech world, has already gone there, hyping limited merch drops that sell out in hours: $99 athletic shorts stamped “PLTR—TECH,” $119 nylon totes, hoodies emblazoned with CEO Alex Karp’s likeness or slogans about “dominating” threats. What’s to stop Northrop Grumman from launching its own techwear line? Or BAE Systems from dropping high-end collaborations?Lockheed already licenses merchandise worldwide through various agencies; broader international rollouts beyond Korea seem only a matter of time. Backlash is possible, boycotts from ethically minded buyers, perhaps even regulatory scrutiny as anti-militarism sentiment swells. Gorpcore’s longstanding flirtation with military aesthetics could calcify into outright fetish, obliterating whatever daylight remained between practical function and state-sanctioned propaganda.Yet, history suggests that in oversaturated markets, “cool” almost always trumps conscience. Lockheed’s streetwear pivot is a stark illustration of how fashion and culture launder raw power, enabling the machinery of war to conceal itself among hype, hoodies, and sold-out drops."
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Digital Currents, Living Worlds: Ecological Resistance in a Networked Age",
"author" : "Taguhi Torosyan",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/digital-currents-living-worlds",
"date" : "2026-01-12 12:11:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/W-050-2400x1350.jpg",
"excerpt" : "I am writing this from Armenia, a place where ecological vulnerability is not abstract. It is visible in the scarred hillsides of mining towns, in rivers that run cloudy after rain, in the slow anxiety of communities living near tailings and dust. I have stood at the edges of these landscapes and felt the weight of their histories of extraction, dispossession, and the quiet persistence of people who continue to live beside damaged land.",
"content" : "I am writing this from Armenia, a place where ecological vulnerability is not abstract. It is visible in the scarred hillsides of mining towns, in rivers that run cloudy after rain, in the slow anxiety of communities living near tailings and dust. I have stood at the edges of these landscapes and felt the weight of their histories of extraction, dispossession, and the quiet persistence of people who continue to live beside damaged land.But most days, my first encounter with ecological crisis does not come from the ground beneath my feet. It arrives through a screen: a satellite image of wildfire smoke drifting across continents, a video from India showing the water level has dropped to the bottom of a well, or footage of logging in the Amazon, shared by someone I will never meet.Living between these two realities, the wounded places I know intimately and the global emergencies I witness digitally, is the tension that brought me to this piece. Because the truth is, digital culture is both a tool for ecological resistance and a force that deepens ecological harm. It has become a “master’s tool,” and reclaiming it is an imperative that doesn’t guarantee, or rather, most probably won’t dismantle the master’s house. But it is worth trying, as humanity’s evolution has gone hand in hand with the technology it has developed. We cannot choose one side. We live, work, ad fight inside the contradiction.We live in a moment when crises do not occur one after another, but all at once, overlapping and accelerating each other. Climate instability, resource depletion, and the relentless pace of digital technologies merge into a single, planetary weather system. Speaking about the environment today means speaking also about satellites, servers, lithium mines, data centres, as well as about rivers and forests. Nature has entered the circuits; the digital has dissolved into our sense of the living world. And our screens bring these worlds together.They overflow with distress signals: drone footage of disappearing forests, satellite maps of smoke, TikToks documenting water shortages in India or waste-polluted rivers in Armenia. These images shape the emotional terrain in which ecological resistance takes place. They can ignite urgency or, through sheer repetition, dull our senses. They can build solidarity or turn catastrophe into spectacle. Digital culture becomes both a witness and participant in the crisis it reveals.And yet inside these very circuits, resistance is growing. Communities have learned to use digital tools not only to consume information but to document harm, demand accountability, and gather evidence for ecological truth-telling: Indigenous forest defenders in Brazil fly drones over illegally logged territories; Kenyan organizers in the Save Lamu movement use mapping apps and citizen media to track the expansion of destructive megaprojects. In Armenia, environmental groups monitor toxic runoff, trace water contamination and use digital archives to counter official narratives. In these moments, technology becomes something else: a way to make visible what would otherwise be hidden. A terrain of ecological witnessing.Artists and researchers contribute their own counter-visions. Cannupa Hanska Luger’s We Survive You (2021) asserts Indigenous futurity in the present tense, refusing narratives of disappearance. Krista Kim’s Mars House (2021) transforms virtual space into an experiment in how we might inhabit the planet with more intention. Forensic Architecture uses open-source digital tools to track environmental violence and state neglect, proving that digital evidence can support public truth rather than state surveillance.But there is another truth: the very infrastructure enabling this resistance are themselves deeply entangled in extraction. The “cloud,” despite its name, is a physical landscape of water, minerals, and energy. The cobalt in our phones comes from mines in the Congo; the lithium in batteries is drawn from Chile’s salt flats; the rare earths enabling our screens are pulled from the soils of Mongolia and China. Data centers in Ireland, Arizona and the Netherlands draw millions of litres of water from fragile ecosystems. As Kate Crawford reminds us in Atlas of AI, every digital gesture, every upload, every click has a material footprint. Ecological resistance cannot treat the digital as immaterial.They are made of land.\They are made of harm.This is the contradiction at the heart of our moment: the digital is both weapon and wound.These works embody what Demos calls “radical futurisms”, counter-imaginaries rooted in Indigenous knowledge, Black radical traditions, abolitionist aesthetics, and multispecies solidarity. They reject the colonial timelines of “progress” and instead imagine futures braided with justice-to-come.Another tension lies in how we experience time. Ecological harm unfolds slowly: soil thins over years, aquifers drop quietly, species vanish without spectacle. These “slow violence,” in Rob Nixon terms, rarely fit the pace of digital media. Platforms reward the urgent, the dramatic, the instantly shareable. Long-term crises, the ones shaping our future, struggle for attention in a world built to forget. T. J. Demos describes this mismatch as chronopolitics: the politics of time and the unequal access to futures shaped by it.In other words, the digital world is built for speed; the ecological world is built for duration. Living inside this gap requires new forms of attention.This is where alternative media and artistic practices matter. When algorithms reward only what is new, they generate opportunities to witness processes that unfold over decades. They also offer a path to imagine ecological futures on platforms designed to erase duration.Indigenous digital cartographies like Native Land Digital disrupt colonial mappings by returning story and memory to place. Citizen-sensing projects measure air and water quality through community-built technologies. Climate archives such as Data Refuge preserve vulnerable environmental datasets at risk of political erasure. Refik Anadol’s Machine Hallucinations: Nature Dreams reimagines ecological data as a sensory landscape, allowing us to feel patterns we cannot see.These practices cultivate attention, memory, and duration, qualities that ecological survival depends on. They model what Demos describes abolitionist aesthetics: ways of seeing that dismantle extractive habits and replace them with care, kinship, and imagination.Through these entanglements, a new political subject emerges, whose ecological awareness is shaped by both lived experience and digital meditation. We feel climate change through heatwaves and disappearing rivers, but also through satellite maps and algorithmic feeds. We understand extractivism not only through local wounds but through the vast ecological webs we encounter online. This hybrid experience shapes our politics, our emotional life, and our collective imagination. And imagination is where the stakes feel most urgent to me. The future is not only a scientific or environmental problem. It is also a narrative problem, a question of what stories we allow ourselves to believe. Ecological resistance today is not one but many: unfolding across scales: rivers and servers, wetlands and websites, forest guardians and citizen sensors, Indigenous futurisms and open-source archives. These are not separate struggles, but a constellation held together by the desire to keep the world alive.The storms ahead—literal and metaphorical—will demand alliances that cross borders, disciplines, and species. To write about these entanglements now is to insist that another future is still possible, even as the present narrows. It is to claim that the contradictions of the digital age are not reasons for despair, but starting points for deeper forms of responsibility.A future where attention becomes a form of care.\Where data becomes a commons.\Where technology serves stewardship rather than extraction.\Where our stories and our ecosystems learn to breathe together once more—\In the same circuits, under the same sky, on the same fragile planet."
}
,
{
"title" : "Venezuela: Beyond False Choices",
"author" : "Caribe Lunar",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/venezuela-beyond-false-choices",
"date" : "2026-01-09 11:47:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/venezuela-caribe-lunar-000024.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "There are not enough words to explain what is going on in Venezuela.It’s years and years of history that go far beyond the current government. You cannot understand what is happening today without looking at centuries of colonization, extraction, foreign intervention, and internal power structures that existed long before Chávez and certainly before Maduro.At the same time, I do not want to see anyone suddenly engaging with the current news while completely ignoring what has been happening in Venezuela for the last 26 years. There is a reason why millions of people have been forced to leave the country. This collapse did not appear overnight, and pretending it did is incredibly dishonest and deeply disrespectful to those who have lived through it.Venezuela has experienced different forms of authoritarianism, corruption, and elite control for decades. What we are witnessing now is not “anti-imperialist resistance,” nor is it a simple story of democracy versus dictatorship. It is the result of a country that has been systematically drained from the inside and the outside for its resources and strategic value.Understanding Venezuela does require going further back than Chávez. But it also absolutely requires understanding what Chávez and Maduro actually did. Not the romanticized version consumed from Europe or academic spaces, not what sounds good on paper. If you never lived in Venezuela, you will never fully understand what that period meant in real life. U.S. sanctions do exist, and while I do not support them, their role is often used as a convenient explanation for Venezuela’s collapse. At the same time, sanctions did not prevent the government from extracting resources, diverting public funds, consolidating power, or carrying out systematic repression. These dynamics were produced from within. That being said, I am not opposed to non-Venezuelans speaking about the country. What happens in Venezuela affects the entire region, and it does not exist in isolation. The problem is not who speaks, but how — and whether Venezuelan lived experience is actually listened to.The regime has caused enormous harm. To deny that, excuse it, or aestheticize it from afar is another form of violence. You cannot claim solidarity while dismissing the lived reality of those who endured the consequences of those policies every single day.There is also a history of state violence that is rarely acknowledged in international discussions, particularly the so-called “limpieza social” operations carried out in marginalized neighborhoods. Framed as security measures against gangs, these operations resulted in the killing of many innocent people, disproportionately affecting poor and racialized communities. These lives, too, deserve recognition. Their absence from many external analyses reveals how selective global concern for Venezuelans can be.Let’s also be very clear: the so-called opposition is absolutely not the answer.Accepting and actively promoting the privatization of all Venezuelan resources oil, water, minerals, land is an open invitation to recolonization. Wrapping it in the language of “freedom,” “democracy,” or “recovery” does not change the reality: it is the same extractive logic that has always treated Venezuela as a commodity, not a country. And let’s not forget that this very same extractive logic has also been carried out by the Chávez and Maduro governments. The problem is not new; it just constantly changes masks.And this is where figures like María Corina Machado become especially dangerous. Her discourse is not neutral, and it is not centered on the people. It is openly aligned with right-wing, white-zionist elite interests and foreign powers that have historically profited from Venezuela’s destruction.The fear-based colonizer narrative she promotes is one that erases history, minimizes colonial violence, and frames foreign intervention as salvation should deeply alarm anyone who actually cares about Venezuelans. But so many people really don’t want to see that either.When international institutions reward or legitimize this kind of leadership, they are not supporting democracy. They are endorsing a project that normalizes genocide, reinforces colonial power structures, and makes the full privatization and extraction of Venezuela not only acceptable, but desirable.I grew up in Venezuela. When I was a child, I lived in Margarita, in Maracay, Las Acacias, La California, and one of my second homes was in a little town called Cua with my favorite auntie. We moved a lot. I learned my history from empty shelves, from days without water, from hours without electricity, from a city where violence was so normalized that fear became routine. I learned it watching my country slowly stop functioning while being told everything was under control.Under Maduro’s rule, Venezuela became a place where repression was systematic. Many people were detained not only for political reasons but just because, tortured, and executed extrajudicially, and hundreds were killed during protests simply for opposing the government. These are not exaggerations; they are documented realities that Venezuelans have been screaming about for years while the world looked away.These patterns of arbitrary detention, torture, and enforced disappearances have been documented by international human rights organizations.More than eight million Venezuelans have been forced to leave the country. Not because migration was fun, but because staying meant hunger, fear, and the slow erosion of dignity. Entire families separated for years. Grandparents growing old without seeing their grandchildren. Children growing up away from home because home stopped being livable.Media was silenced. Hundreds of outlets were censored or shut down. Speaking freely became dangerous. And when people protested, the response was not dialogue, it was force.People tried. Voted. We protested. We organized again and again. What we were met with was repression disguised as order and silence from the world.I was in Venezuela on July 28, 2024. What happened then was not foreign intervention. It was our own government turning against its people. Homes were entered. People were taken, ordinary citizens whose only “crime” was to protest. Fear was enforced quietly. Around 2,000 people were forcibly disappeared, some of them killed, between July 28 and August 4, 2024. Meanwhile, daily life continued to collapse in ways that had already become familiar long before this moment. Cities went without electricity for hours, sometimes days. Water was unreliable. Hospitals barely functioned. A minimum wage amounted to just a few dollars a month. Over half the population lived in poverty, many in extreme poverty. This was the Venezuela we lived in long before the world suddenly remembered we existed.And as a Venezuelan who grew up there, what also shocks me is how suddenly everyone is talking about the country, after years and years of dictatorship, suffering, and silence. If this renewed concern is about ego or validation, then we need to pause and check ourselves. Ask yourself honestly: did you really think about Venezuela this strongly before?I am completely against the Maduro government. That is not up for debate. The damage done under his rule is immense, measurable, and irreversible for many families. But two truths can exist at the same time: the current government is oppressive, corrupt, and destructive, and the alternative being aggressively pushed by the opposition and foreign interests is dangerous.My opposition to Maduro does not translate into support for MCM. Her political project is openly Zionist and pro-imperialist, structured around far-right, authoritarian logics that have consistently harmed the Global South. Replacing one form of violence with another is not liberation.Forcing Venezuela into a false choice between dictatorship and external recolonization is not justice.There is nothing liberating about waking up to bombs. Watching people celebrate, calling this “freedom,” “democracy,” or a necessary step forward, while civilians are caught in the middle, is devastating.Rejecting Maduro does not mean endorsing bombs or the United States. Opposing foreign violence does not mean defending a regime. What I refuse is the false choice we are constantly pushed into: picking which form of destruction feels more acceptable.Donald Trump is a killer. And anyone cheering for him while bombs fall on Venezuela should be deeply ashamed. Celebrating a man with blood on his hands, cheering imperial violence because it aligns with your politics, is not strength, courage, or clarity. It is cruelty. And I say this while fully understanding that the current government of Venezuela also has a lot of blood on its hands.Venezuela is not being liberated.It is being invaded.And this is not only about the country it is about Latin America and the Caribbean too.Sovereignty does not belong to a dictator. It belongs to the people. A dictatorship does not erase a nation’s sovereignty. But sovereignty also does not mean governments can do whatever they want. States have obligations to protect life and human rights, which did not happen in Venezuela. Human rights violations do not automatically justify foreign military intervention. History shows us that these interventions never lead to freedom.Believing that a genocidal, imperial state like the United States will save us or even care about us makes no sense. Thinking that an empire will liberate you is not freedom; it’s desperation shaped by racism and centuries of colonial conditioning. But let’s stop romanticizing all empires: the U.S., Europe, Russia, China. None of them are liberators. The same applies to figures like María Corina Machado, who has made it clear that she is ready to work with leaders responsible for genocidal violence.Yes, Maduro and the government destroyed Venezuela. Yes, the oil was stolen. But the crime of one does not justify the crime of another. A dictatorship does not turn an invasion into a liberation.Rejecting Maduro does not mean endorsing bombs or the United States."
}
,
{
"title" : "Venezuela Today: Between Dictatorship and US Imperialism",
"author" : "Moisés Araguaney",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/venezuela-today-between-dictatorship-and-us-imperialism",
"date" : "2026-01-07 21:56:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/venezuela.jpg",
"excerpt" : "On January 3rd, the United States government deployed 150 military aircraft, bombed several cities in Venezuela, targeting military and other infrastructure, and abducted Venezuela’s head of state Nicolás Maduro alongside his wife Cilia Flores. Homes and other residences near the military targets were impacted and destroyed. 75 military and 2 civilian deaths have been reported. Maduro and Flores were transported to New York, where they are being charged with four counts of crimes related to narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. The maximum sentence for the offenses is life imprisonment.",
"content" : "On January 3rd, the United States government deployed 150 military aircraft, bombed several cities in Venezuela, targeting military and other infrastructure, and abducted Venezuela’s head of state Nicolás Maduro alongside his wife Cilia Flores. Homes and other residences near the military targets were impacted and destroyed. 75 military and 2 civilian deaths have been reported. Maduro and Flores were transported to New York, where they are being charged with four counts of crimes related to narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. The maximum sentence for the offenses is life imprisonment.If you’ve been online or in organizing spaces since this news, you may be wondering why there is so little clarity as to what this means for Venezuelans, and how you can be in solidarity with us. Let’s break it down.Should I support the U.S. intervention?The United States intervened in Venezuela for two reasons: oil, and an expanded sphere of influence. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, but it is also a strategic country for the geopolitical struggles between the United States, Russia, and China. Had the United States only wanted Venezuela’s oil, they would have had it already.Maduro’s regime courted Trump for a long time. As recently as 2024, on episode 7 of his podcast, Maduro spoke warmly of Trump, saying “If we had met, Trump and I would have understood each other. We would have even become friends.” His co-host, then Vice-President and now interim President Delcy Rodríguez, agreed. In fact, under Rodríguez’s previous charge as Venezuela’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, CITGO, a U.S. based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned company, donated $500,000 to Trump’s first inauguration. CITGO subsequently hired Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a lobbyist. However, competing political interests in Trump’s administration, pivoted Trump away from an alliance with Maduro. Starting in 2017, the United States imposed increasingly harsh sectoral sanctions, kneecapping Venezuela’s already collapsing economy. Mismanagement and corruption accruing since the Chávez era, low oil prices, and the U.S. sanctions plunged Venezuela into a deeper humanitarian crisis that it has yet to recover from.To most external observers then, the U.S.’s intervention is a clear violation of international law and a threat to the international world order. The abduction of a foreign head of state likely violated the UN Charter, and certainly violated Venezuela’s sovereignty. This, after months of the United States carrying out extrajudicial killings of civilians in the Caribbean. All these events are, in general, bad news. They affirm that the United States can export devastation and loot the riches of the world with impunity. So, why were Venezuelans celebrating Maduro’s abduction?Should I support Maduro’s regime?Nicolás Maduro is Hugo Chávez’s chosen successor to continue the Bolivarian Revolution. Maduro is a dictator. Venezuelans in Venezuela have used all civic tools available to them to remove him from power: we have protested, marched, resisted, voted, and organized to no end. The Chavista regime controls all branches of Venezuela’s government, and the reality is that civic tools are useless under a captured state.Take Venezuela’s 2024 presidential elections, for example. Venezuela has one of the most sophisticated and secure voting systems. The process provides the National Electoral Council with a digital tally for immediate reporting of results, and a near impossible to falsify physical tally (called “actas”) to corroborate said results. The National Electoral Council, controlled by a Chavista majority, delayed announcing the digital results under the premise that the system had been subjected to a cyberattack from North Macedonia. The Council then announced Maduro won by a slim margin with 51% of the votes. The opposition contested the results and publicly posted the actas to corroborate their claim that their candidate, Edmundo González, had won by a wide margin with 67% of the votes. Maduro’s regime, instead of following electoral law, providing what he called “the real actas,” and publishing the disaggregated results within 48 hours of the election as required by article #146, instead approached the Chavista-only Supreme Court of Venezuela to rule on the dispute. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Maduro, with no option to appeal. An extensive wave of state violence and repression followed, where opposition organizers, human rights activists, teenagers protesting, and others were arbitrarily detained and at times disappeared by government forces. Maduro’s regime never pursued action against North Macedonia, nor provided evidence of the cyberattack. One year and five months later, the disaggregated results have yet to be published as required by law, and the website for the National Electoral Council remains disabled since the elections.There are currently over 800 political prisoners in Venezuela, many of whom are currently disappeared or held at El Helicoide, Latin America’s largest torture center, located in Caracas. There are no legal avenues available to Venezuelan citizens to directly address these human rights violations. A 2025 report by the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission concluded that “the independence of the Venezuelan justice system has been deeply eroded, to the extent of playing an important role in aiding state repression and perpetuating state impunity for human rights violations. […] Judges also failed to protect victims of torture by ordering that they return to the places of detention where the torture allegedly occurred, despite having heard victims – sometimes bearing visible injuries consistent with torture – make the allegation in court.” In 2012, Chávez initiated Venezuela’s withdrawal from the Organization of American States and the American Convention on Human Rights, which blocked Venezuelan citizens’ access to denounce human rights abuses to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The International Criminal Court has an open investigation against the Maduro regime for crimes against humanity committed against Venezuelans since 2017.Maduro consistently disregards Venezuela’s Bolivarian Constitution. In 2017, he violated Venezuela’s environmental law and the extensive Indigenous rights enshrined in our constitution by unilaterally approving the Orinoco Mining Arc (OMA) against widespread resistance from Indigenous activists and environmental groups. The OMA is a mega-mining project that opened over 12% of Venezuela’s total territory to mining by foreign companies. The territory is larger than the entire country of Portugal, and the project has caused an ongoing ecocide, as well a drastic increase in the displacement, exploitation, and trafficking of Indigenous people in the region. Maduro promised a gold mine to only Chavista governors in Venezuela for them to redistribute the riches illegally extracted from Indigenous land to the population in their own states, and claimed he would create a committee to manage the funds in states governed by the opposition leaders. Five years later, such committee has yet to be created. Dozens of massacres have occurred in the OMA territory, with little action from the regime. In 2022, Virgilio Trujillo, an Indigenous land defender, was killed in broad daylight. His killing was never investigated, and even after requests from the community, Maduro never made a statement on it. Illegal mining has extended well beyond the original OMA territory, impacting Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site.Notice how none of these things have anything to do with whether Maduro is a socialist. In fact, whether Maduro is a socialist or not would require a whole different essay. Let me say this though: ironically, the only thing that Chavistas, the United States, and the right-wing in Venezuela can agree on is that Maduro is a socialist -but anti-Maduro Venezuelan leftists understand that he is a kleptocrat exploiting the language of socialism for political cover.So you see, when foreigners speak positively of the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuelans experience cognitive dissonance, and often wonder if anyone abroad has read anything beyond what teleSUR posts. teleSUR, of course, being a news network founded by Hugo Chávez and funded in its majority by the Venezuelan government, it engages in media vassalage and promotes unchallenged state propaganda under the guise of a leftist editorial bent.Should I support María Corina Machado?Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado is the opposition’s de facto leader. Machado rose to prominence after publicly challenging Chávez, and garnered even more support after successfully organizing the Venezuelan opposition to provide proof of Maduro’s electoral fraud. She was revered for offering hope to Venezuelans that the dictatorship could be toppled, and is understood to be the actual power player behind Edmundo González candidacy. Machado is also a right-wing, fervently neoliberal zionist who has sought international support by promising the privatization of Venezuela’s oil industry, as well as establishing a Venezuelan embassy in Israel. She dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to the Venezuelan people, and President Trump. She is the inevitable result of Venezuela’s dictatorship and U.S. intervention.In a country where leaders across the political spectrum have been persecuted, arbitrarily detained, tortured, and exiled, Machado stood out for her resilience. This is not surprising, as without any support or solidarity from the international left, only someone aligned with and resourced by the United States can withstand the risk of publicly challenging Chávez, and later Maduro. Let me repeat this: it is simply materially impossible to be a known anti-Chavista in Venezuela without external protection and support.But, you may ask, how can Venezuelans align with a politician who celebrates Trump’s extrajudicial killings of Venezuelans, not to speak of his numerous other attacks against Venezuela and its people? How can Venezuelans align with someone deadset on selling Venezuela to the United States? First, selling Venezuela is not new to us. Seeing another political leader court international favor on the back of Venezuela’s riches has been a continuous thread in our history, including the Chavista regime. Second, call it a scarcity of choice and the tragedy of desperation. When you have spent 25 years resisting against the collapse of your country brought on by internal and multiple external actors, the chronic violations of your human rights, the grief of a fractured cultural fabric egged on by the people in power, the loss of a fifth of your community to the largest mass exodus recorded in the Americas, the defeat of every attempt to legally remove a corrupt, armed dictatorship, and the erasure of your struggle by the intellectual international left who was meant to be on your side? Yeah, after all of that, people lose the patience to wait for a politically pure option.I, alongside the vast majority of the 8 million Venezuelans now living in diaspora, couldn’t vote during the presidential elections because Maduro’s regime made it impossible for voters abroad. From this place of privilege, the diaspora, I could chastise Venezuelans in Venezuela and opine about the most morally pure electoral choice, but that would be grotesque and I know my place. Venezuelans most directly bearing the brunt of the dictatorship get to make whatever choice they need to try and find a way to get out from under it. Not that it matters anymore, given that since the U.S. intervention, Trump has sidelined Machado from the political future of Venezuela.Should I support the Venezuelan people?Yes, the point here is to support the people, not the state, any state. While international media is focused on the illegality of the United States’ actions, and dogmatic leftist Substack and Instagram accounts are working overtime to launder Maduro’s image, the Venezuelan regime has decreed a state of emergency and called for the pursuit and capture of anyone deemed sympathetic to the U.S. intervention. This has resulted in colectivos, Chávez’s paramilitary groups, flooding the streets and arbitrarily detaining civilians to search their phones and belongings for anything that can be perceived as anti-Maduro sentiment. All while Venezuelans struggle to raise funds to afford food, data plans (as internet access is unreliable at best in Venezuela), and to recover from having their homes destroyed by U.S. bombs.Supporting Venezuelan sovereignty means supporting Venezuelan people, not your preferred political party. Like it or not, Edmundo González won the presidential election in 2024. In the best case scenario, there would be a peaceful transfer of power from Delcy Rodríguez to Edmundo González. This means that a right-wing, neoliberal, zionist government would be in power in Venezuela. It doesn’t look great, but it was the only option available and the one chosen by the Venezuelan people, who are in their majority pro-Palestinian and understand our struggles are linked. The hope, however idealistic, is that this scenario would allow Venezuelans a modicum of civil liberties to organize and pursue grander political goals.The worst case scenario is that interim President Delcy Rodríguez remains in power, meaning that Venezuela continues to be a dictatorship, but it is now a U.S. controlled one. At this time, this seems like the most likely outcome, as she was the government official who facilitated the $500,000 donation to Trump’s 2017 inauguration; Trump has stated to the press he wants to work with her; and after initial resistance and explicit threats from Trump, Rodríguez has said she is open to dialogue and Venezuela is open for business with the United States. This is also the quickest, and least costly way for the United States to control Venezuela.A third option would be holding general elections in Venezuela. According to Venezuelan electoral law, elections need to be held within 30 days after the Presidential office is vacated. Because of the illegality of Maduro’s abduction, it is unclear whether this applies. Whether it applies or not, Trump and Rodríguez seem more interested in negotiating with each other, than on facilitating a new round of elections in Venezuela.Supporting Venezuela’s sovereignty then means demanding an end to U.S. aggression and that the 2024 election results are honored. After that, we can plan to resist the zionist government, and give Venezuelans in Venezuela a chance to develop a truly liberatory political movement.How can I support?Demand a stop on U.S. aggression, a peaceful transition of power in Venezuela, and a release of all Venezuelan political prisoners. Contributing to fundraisers and mutual aid collectives in Venezuela is also a great start. More immediately, elevate Venezuelan voices. Elevate Venezuelan voices with no strings to the U.S. or Venezuelan governments, and do your part to name state propaganda when you see it online or hear it person. It is exhausting work, we need your help with it.I know those actions don’t sound glamorous, and that Western culture often looks for an exceptional action, a hero, and an easy answer, but the work of liberation requires disciplined solidarity, political curiosity, and long-term commitment. Demand for a plurality of Venezuelan voices to be centered, and resist black and white thinking from non-Venezuelans. We are often drowned in the noise of right and left wing reductionist politics, both of which focus on defending the state, and not the wellbeing of Venezuelan people. You don’t need to be politically perfect, but you must become and remain politically curious. Don’t let dogmas align you with a state over the people.If you are calling for international law to be respected, hold space for the fact that the majority of Venezuelans do not actually give a single [redacted] about Maduro’s future. You can align with us in resisting U.S. intervention, but it will be a hard sell to ask us to defend Maduro’s rights after he has happily brutalized us for more than a decade. Like they say in the U.S., we have bigger fish to fry. Still, if it’s important for you to demand Maduro’s human rights to be respected (somebody has to do it, after all), stay in solidarity with us and in the same breath demand the same for the people of Venezuela.To be clear, Venezuelans don’t need saving, but we need disciplined solidarity. Your support must be clear and precise. I know the nuance of the situation can make things murky, so if you need an ideological motto that resists U.S. intervention and doesn’t abandon the struggle of Venezuelans, here’s one: the U.S. does not have the legal or moral authority to intervene in Venezuela, even though Maduro is a dictator. Venezuelan sovereignty means the people have the right to choose their own future."
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