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The Maduro regime outlined, prior to the elections scheduled for 2024, a legal strategy to minimize the last freedoms of citizens, which has been accompanied by an increase, since the end of last year, in the level of repression against activists and politicians, ranging from the arrest of members of the Vente Venezuela party and the political disqualification of María Corina Machado, to the detention of members of civil society and human rights defenders such as Rocio San Miguel.
Last Tuesday, April 2, from the podium of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez presented, on behalf of Nicolás Maduro, a proposed Law against “fascism” that hides in its 30 articles the total legalization of censorship, repression and the curtailment of the right to protest.
The government’s communication apparatus was aligned to promote the discourse in favor of this new Law, which has already been approved in first discussion by the Venezuelan Parliament.
On Wednesday, April 3, from Diosdado Cabello’s program Con el Mazo Dando, #ElFascismoNoPasará was promoted, gathering more than 5,390 tweets, of which we were able to identify that at least 19.30% of these were made by accounts with inauthentic behavior. This actor was the first to position a hashtag as a trend on the proposed law, supporting its enactment.
The following day, on April 4, the hashtag #VenezuelaAntiFascista was also massively promoted from the Ministry of Communication and Information (MIPPCI), which gathered more than 34,600 tweets and had an inauthenticity level of 23.3%; reinforcing the support and the bill that promotes the surveillance, persecution and legal condemnation of parties, NGOs, media and civil society considered “fascist” according to their own definitions of the term.
The narrative on networks about “fascism” is dominated by chavismo
The conversation about the Law against Fascism in social networks is also promoted by Chavismo. Although this actor has historically dominated the Venezuelan digital conversation, so far in April it has been the only one to position socio-political tags as trends on X (formerly Twitter).
On this occasion, the state propaganda apparatus lined up to push narratives in favor of the legislation, mainly using MIPPCI as the leader of the labels they wanted to position, pushing hundreds of messages in an inauthentic way promoting supposed support for the enactment of this law in the country.
We conducted a complementary search on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook through keywords on the topic to study the conversation in depth. This list included: fascism in Venezuela, fascism bill, law against fascism and neo-fascism; obtaining 1,408 mentions of these words between March 09 and April 08, with a peak that was located on April 04, but the greatest activity took presence from April 02.
X was the main social network with 75.57% of the mentions, followed by Facebook (16.48%), Instagram (7.46%) and TikTok (0.5%); highlighting words such as fascism law (883 mentions), fascism neo-fascism (763 mentions), Delcy Rodríguez (220 mentions), executive vice president (132 mentions) and Nicolás Maduro (90 mentions). In turn, tags such as #JuntosPorLaPaz (34 mentions) and #VenezuelaAntifascista (24 mentions) were used accompanying the most repeated words in the conversation.
The three main accounts promoting these narratives were found in X, all of them publishing pro-government content. In first place is the account of Agencia Venezolana de Noticias which with 29 mentions on the subject generated 10,184,539 impressions on the social network; then, the controversial “Agencia Venezuela News” which with 14 mentions managed to reach 499,534 views, followed by the personal account @MieloDan which with 13 mentions generated 40,625 impressions.
These are part of the propaganda and disinformation ecosystem built by Chavismo in recent years. The Venezuelan News Agency is an openly pro-government media and directly financed by the Venezuelan State, while the Venezuela News portal is part of the media that calls itself independent but is frequently pointed out for disseminating propaganda and disinformation, having clear links with the PSUV and the Venezuelan government.
What is fascism according to chavismo?
The proposed Law against Fascism, Neo-Fascism and Similar Expressions, comprises a series of 30 articles designed to severely punish any manifestation considered as promoting fascism, including the dissemination of messages through social networks.
According to Article 4 of this law, fascism is defined as “the ideological position or expression based on motives of racial, ethnic, social or national superiority, which assumes violence as a method of political action, advocates the culture of death, denigrates democracy, its institutions and republican values and promotes the suppression of the rights and guarantees recognized in the Constitution in favor of certain sectors of society for discriminatory reasons”.
For this new law, “racism, chauvinism, classism, moral conservatism, neoliberalism, misogyny and all kinds of phobia against human beings and their right to non-discrimination” are considered fascist traits.
What really is fascism?
If we go to the definition of the Royal Spanish Academy, the term fascism refers to the “authoritarian and anti-democratic attitude”, including among its synonyms or related terms the terms “authoritarianism, totalitarianism and dictatorship”, something with which many governments around the world have labeled the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Is Chavismo then fascist? In recent months, the Maduro regime has intensified repression against politicians and human rights activists, the most recent case being the arrest of lawyer Rocío San Miguel, which triggered international repudiation and the expulsion of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Venezuela. In addition, militants of the party of María Corina Machado, opposition leader elected in the primaries to face Nicolás Maduro in the presidential elections, but finally disqualified by Chavismo, have been arrested.
In addition to this, the year 2024 began with the reactivation of threats from the government towards Venezuelan non-governmental organizations and activists. The draft Law for the Control, Regularization, Performance and Financing of Non-Governmental and Related Organizations was brought back to the forefront by Diosdado Cabello at the end of 2023 and was reinforced by Jorge Rodriguez in January, with the announcement of the beginning of the public consultation on the same from the National Assembly.
Even if we use the definition of fascism described in the proposed law, the ruling party has repeatedly engaged in acts of misogyny over the years, having most recently María Corina Machado as one of the main targets of attack.
Against the media, NGOs and political parties
This proposal also seeks to legalize censorship at all levels. Article 11 establishes that public, private and community radio, television, electronic and print media service providers, as well as social networks, must guarantee spaces free of any fascist, neo-fascist or similar nature.
Under this Law, the Maduro regime also intends to justify the political disqualifications and dissolution of social organizations and political parties that have in their constitutive act alleged fascist guidelines, according to the State’s concept.
Articles 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 are directly linked to the prohibitions of civil organizations, as well as the impediment to register or hold political office for persons linked to these organizations that are considered fascist.
Understanding that expressions such as neoliberalism are considered fascist and that neoliberalism is considered “a form of liberalism that supports economic freedom and free market”, then any organization linked to this thought can be labeled as fascist. In fact, the statutes of the political organization led by María Corina Machado (Vente Venezuela) have among its principles the market economy and private property.
Is this the end of citizen protest?
Article 12 of the proposed Law expressly prohibits public meetings and demonstrations called for the purpose of promoting fascism or neo-fascism and similar expressions. Furthermore, it adds that “the public authorities shall take preventive measures to avoid or dissolve public meetings or demonstrations”.
According to the Venezuelan Conflict Observatory, in Venezuela there were nearly 7 thousand protests in 2023, with an average of 19 protests per day, with labor rights being the main reason with 59% of the total.
The prohibition to protest or demonstrate publicly, having such an ambiguous and at the same time broad concept of fascism and neo-fascism, comes prior to the electoral campaign; having as an example how the Vente Venezuela party, led by María Corina Machado, has been persecuted and branded as terrorist by Nicolás Maduro himself.
Imprisonment and million-dollar fines
Those who decide to go against what the Law says will be punished with imprisonment and the payment of millionaire fines. Chapter IV of the law establishes sanctions for “fascist acts” and “apology to fascism”, as well as administrative sanctions for those who finance organizations or activities considered fascist or disseminate “prohibited messages”. The prison sentence contemplated ranges from six to 12 years, while fines will be up to US$100,000 for those who finance or promote messages prohibited under the law.
What does civil society say?
In social networks, civil society had a more timid participation on the issue, which was overshadowed by the massive volume of chavismo in its scheme to impose its narrative. ProBox analyzed key words identified in the civil society conversation as fascism law dictatorship, fascism law ngo, fascism law censorship, fascism law disqualification and fascism law repression.
Through this search, we identified 332 mentions in the time period from March 08 to April 08, with April 04 standing out as the peak of the record with 93 mentions. In addition, the majority of this conversation was located on X with 59.94%, followed by Facebook (32.23%), Instagram (7.23%), and TikTok (0.6%)
Within this, words such as “freedom of expression” (25 mentions), social networks (24 mentions), “avoid approval” (16 mentions), “censorship networks” (14 mentions) and “repression censorship” (11 mentions) stand out. The use of tags such as #Dictatorship, #SOSVenezuela, #Freedom and #FueraMaduro with the analyzed keywords also stood out, but with a much lower frequency than the one registered in the official conversation.
Three X accounts also stand out as the ones that made the most mentions. In first place was the Analítica account with 8 registered mentions that generated 969,616 impressions, followed by El Pitazo with 7 mentions that generated 8,160,999 impressions and in third place the user @GeorgeArtwell who through 6 mentions generated 124,776 impressions.
This new Law, which will become effective as of its publication in the Official Gazette, comes at a time when the country is preparing for presidential elections marked by repression, disqualifications of the main candidates and the lack of democratic guarantees. Venezuelan democracy is thus receiving one of the last blows against the civic space prior to the expected elections.
