By Rima Najjar
From Caracas to Gaza — The Machinery of Demonization
There is a pattern to how empire speaks. It criminalizes resistance, rewrites history, and recasts domination as defense. Whether the target is a Latin American leader, a Palestinian movement, or an Iranian militia, the language is the same: terrorism, fanaticism, chaos. The goal is not just to justify violence — it’s to make it feel inevitable.
This is the logic behind the Trump administration’s $50 million bounty on Nicolás Maduro. Framed as a crackdown on “narco-terrorism,” it’s a textbook case of regime change propaganda. The bounty is not about justice — it’s about spectacle. It tells the world who the villain is, and it sets the stage for assassination as policy.
But this logic doesn’t stop at Caracas. It echoes across the propaganda Hugo B has been spouting in our exchanges on Medium.
Who Is Hugo B?
Hugo B is a prolific commenter whose posts consistently reproduce the ideological scaffolding of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy. Over the course of our exchanges, he has:
- Reduced Palestinian resistance to “jihadist nihilism”
- Blamed Arab states for the Nakba while absolving Zionist militias
- Dismissed refugee status as a weapon to prolong war
- Denied the right of return, the right to resist, and the right to narrate
- Framed Jewish self-determination as sacred while denying Palestinian existence
- Rejected international law when it affirms Palestinian rights
His language is not original — it’s derivative of a broader imperial playbook. And it mirrors the same tactics used to justify U.S. intervention in Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, and Palestine.
Shared Tactics Across Geographies
1. Criminalization of Resistance
Maduro is labeled a narco-terrorist. Hamas is reduced to jihadist fanaticism. Iraqi militias are proxies. The goal is to strip movements of political legitimacy and recast them as threats to global order.
2. Erasure of Context
Hugo B speaks of Palestinian violence without acknowledging siege, displacement, or apartheid. U.S. officials speak of Venezuela’s collapse without referencing sanctions, economic warfare, or CIA-backed destabilization.
3. Moral Inversion
The oppressor claims the moral high ground. The U.S. presents itself as a defender of democracy while backing coups and bombing civilians. Hugo B echoes this inversion by portraying Israeli legislation as democratic while denying Palestinians basic rights.
4. Narrative Control
The bounty on Maduro is a media event. It defines the villain. Hugo B’s rhetoric operates the same way: it’s not about debate — it’s about defining who gets to be human and who gets to be erased.
The Broader Pattern
From South America to the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy follows a formula:
1. Identify resistance as extremism
2. Deploy economic, military, or legal force
3. Control the narrative through media and proxies
4. Justify intervention as humanitarian or defensive
This isn’t diplomacy. It’s imperial management.
And Hugo B, whether knowingly or not, is reproducing that logic in miniature — using the language of supremacy, erasure, and moral panic to delegitimize Palestinian life and resistance.
Toward a Just Peace
If peace is ever to be real — whether in Venezuela, Palestine, Iraq, or Iran — it must begin by dismantling the propaganda that criminalizes resistance and sanctifies domination. It must reject the logic that says sovereignty is only legitimate when it aligns with U.S. interests, and that survival is only moral when it belongs to the powerful.
A just peace means:
- Ending siege and occupation, not managing them
- Recognizing the right to resist, not pathologizing it
- Restoring the right of return, not erasing it
- Upholding international law, not selectively applying it
- Centering the voices of the oppressed, not speaking over them
It means confronting the legacy of U.S. interventionism — from coups in Latin America to invasions in the Middle East — and refusing to replicate its logic in our discourse, our media, or our diplomacy.
It means seeing Palestinians not as proxies, but as people. Venezuelans not as narco-states, but as a nation under siege. Iraqis and Iranians not as threats, but as communities with histories, futures, and the right to self-determination.
Peace will not come from bounties, bombs, or rhetorical erasure. It will come from truth, accountability, and the radical act of listening to those we’ve been taught to fear.
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.
7 September 2025
Source: globalresearch.ca