Leftist mag claims Venezuelan demonstrations are a plot to seize power for...the right wing??

"The Nation" is a far-left rag staffed by socialists and revolutionaries.  Normally they enthusiastically support every revolution.

But interestingly, they don't like the protests in Venezuela.  And if you've got a high tolerance for idiocy you can check out their "logic" here.

Short answer:  They believe the demonstrations in Caracas and other cities in Vz aren't "genuine."

Seriously, that's what this pencil-neck ex-Berkeley poli-sci professional propagandist wrote.

Behind the scenes, the protests are a reflection of the weakness of the Venezuelan opposition, not its strength.

Seriously?  You're claiming the packed crowds filling block after block, street after street don't amount to genuine protest?

And you'll love the guy's "reason:"  He claims the protesters aren't authentic because he says they're all (gasp!) middle-class.

That's right, comrade:  Middle. Class.  Not the poor working folks that communist theory says are the only people who can make "real" revolutions.

Not only that, the socialist author claims the *real* purpose of the demonstrations is to take power back from the Glorious Socialist Peoples' Party and give it to the eeebil Rich Overlords.

The author roasts the leading political figures of the opposition--one for the crime of having had a "friendly 2005 sit-down with George W. Bush," another for having been "trained in the United States from prep school to Harvard’s Kennedy School, an elite scion if ever there was one."

Well there ya go, campers!  If anyone has any ties to the U.S., they're politically disqualified from taking any leadership role in another country--according to this guy, at least.

Oh, and he excuses the violence of the colectivos--groups of armed thugs, usually on motorcycles, who beat and shoot unarmed protestors.  According to the author the thugs "are in reality among the most independent sectors of the revolution, those most critical of government missteps and hesitations."

These forever victims of the state have nevertheless bet on its potential usefulness in the present, or at the very least have insisted that the alternative—handing the state machinery back over to traditional elites and voluntarily returning to a life on the defensive—is really no alternative at all. This is not a decision undertaken desperately or nostalgically, however, but instead with the most powerful optimism of the will...because to bet on the Bolivarian [i.e. socialist] government is to bet on the people, to wager on the creative capacities of the poor that always exceeds that state.

He's seriously claiming that the organized groups of armed thugs shooting and beating unarmed protesters are "victims of the state" instead of working for the government.  Interesting.

Mind-boggling bullshit.  Commenters on the piece claim businesses are deliberately holding products off the market to destabilize the government.

I wish Venezuelans the best, but have to say I'm not optimistic about their chances.  With guys like this author casting this as an attempt by "the rich" to overthrow a supposedly beneficent, legally elected government, and with China and Cuba both having huge investments in the socialist government, I suspect the Maduro regime will kill thousands more rather than yield.

Venezuela's economic disaster--the lack of most staple commodities, caused by dumb government policies and currency controls--should be a lesson for other countries on the pitfalls of socialism.  Of course it won't be.

And so it goes.