[higherpurpose]

You'd think that after 10 or so such major protests in the past few years, the dictators would learn not to repeat the same mistakes everyone else did before them. Someone should write a "10 commandments" of sort for how dictators should react in case of major protest.

Maybe do what American presidents do: promise major changes and tell them everything they want to hear, and then do cosmetic changes at best over a long period of time, until people forget about it. That strategy seems to work pretty well in US, and it seems to pacify almost everyone.

It should certainly be much better than doing drastic stuff like shooting at protesters and cutting off their communications "to make them stop". That always makes the situation worse and forces the protest to escalate and even become violent.

[pessimizer]

Maduro isn't a dictator, he's the democratically elected head of a weak government. The government had been run as a cult of personality, that personality died, and the professional class smelled blood.

These protesters are ultimately demanding that the police shoot more people, not fewer. They feel their country is spinning out of control, and needs a strongman to save it. Paging Dr. Pinochet?

[tptacek]

Maduro was Chavez's chosen successor. Elections in Venezuela aren't "democratic" by any normal definition of the term: the government controls all media outlets and suppresses campaign ads from opposition parties, nationalizes huge chunks of the economy and turns employees working in those areas into public sector employees who are required to vote for the incumbent, further buys hundreds of thousands of votes with giveaways, and withholds police protection from areas that support opponents in what has become one of the most violent countries in the western hemisphere.

Maduro is a strongman out of central casting.

Not for nothing, but the notion that the opposition is calling for violence has been reported as Maduro propaganda:

A campaign started the day after the election to accuse members of the opposition of inciting violence. The word went out that nine people had been killed by opposition members on election day, and several voting stations set on fire. (There had in fact been angry confrontations between supporters of both sides, but the government has yet to provide evidence of politically-related arson or homicides in addition to the average of nine people who are murdered every day in Caracas.)

In any event, the new epithet for Capriles and his followers is “murderers,” a serious charge and a political mistake, considering that they represent half of the electorate.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/may/08/chavismo-af...

[pessimizer]

>the government controls all media outlets and suppresses campaign ads from opposition parties, nationalizes huge chunks of the economy and turns employees working in those areas into public sector employees who are required to vote for the incumbent, further buys hundreds of thousands of votes with giveaways

Citation needed. These are the same criticisms that Romney had about Obama, and for the majority of Chavez's presidency, the Venezuelan (and American) media was entirely and hysterically anti-Chavez.

>Not for nothing, but the notion that the opposition is calling for violence has been reported as Maduro propaganda:

I'm not referring to that criticism (why is all criticism propaganda when someone that one doesn't like is delivering it?) but just the fact that these are traditional upper-middle-class "law and order" protests.

If they win, the white terror will begin.

[tptacek]

This comment is embarrassing. Venezuela nationalized the country's largest television station. The media wasn't fervently pro-Chavez; it was pro-Chavez by government mandate.

[hansjorg]

Really? Which television station was that?

[tptacek]

RCTV.

[glurgh]

https://en.rsf.org/venezuela.html

http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/venezu...

Suggesting some sort of similarity between press freedom in the US and Venezuela seems pretty absurd.

[skrebbel]

I know nothing of the issue, so please educate me, but isn't Maduro the one who currently controls all media and just shut down his people's acces to the internet? Sounds pretty dictator-y to me.

[davidw]

As far as I understand it, he is democratically elected, but the government doesn't have much in the way of checks and balances. The stuff about the protesters wanting a military strongman sounds like biased propaganda.

[pessimizer]

What exactly do the protesters want, then? Other than Lopez to be president.

As far as I can tell, they want law and order because of the rising (and terrifying) levels of violence, and they don't want their Bolivars to lose all of their value.

Pretty traditional stuff. Foreign investors can't wait for Maduro to be toppled, because that means the shop is open again. The protesters are going to have an unlimited source of monetary support and friendly foreign press.

>the government doesn't have much in the way of checks and balances

Citation needed.

[mzs]

Controlling much of the media was already the case before Maduro. The ruling party does not nor did it control all of it though. And it's not Maduro directly deciding everything. Maybe those were not ideas you had, but they are common misconceptions to many, just wanted to clear those up first.

So the things that have happened for many years now in broad strokes are that the state sponsored media was political. Besides what you expect it wanted the mind share of the older more conservative folks and would promote ideas like there was too much obscenity etc. Another thing was that independent media was also political and so attacked by the state directly and by harassing employees and owners.

[pmelendez]

Well under that definition Castro was "elected" democratically... As far as I can tell, after you control all the powers in a country, elections don't say too much.

[ron04]

You know Hitler was also democratically elected, and do you know the Elections committee in Venezuela is practically ruled by the Government?, and did you know elections in Venezuela are electronically counted? and did you know that we all asked for the votes to be recounted manually and the boxes disappeared under government custody? And anyone who takes out all news channels and communication sources can pretty much be called a dictator. So read a bit more inform yourself and then you can make an accurate statement. Nothing personal, I'm just tired of people not knowing what's really happening and creating their own opinions because they "liked" Chavez because he was against Bush, used as a propaganda while selling a big chunk of Venezuela's oil to the US.Just saying. Anyway the discussion is if you take down news channels for no reasons and start blocking internet access to information sources you are a dictator, period. Protesters are demanding freedom of speech as they killed for the same reason.

[logfromblammo]

Hitler lost the election. He used the political backing that he had to force the winner, incumbent Paul von Hindenberg, to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. Hindenberg died in office, and Hitler seized the powers of the President and fused them with the powers of the Chancellor.

Hitler was not elected democratically. Please stop being wrong on the Internet.

[PeterisP]

The difference between a dictator and democrat isn't being elected democratically - the difference is seen when someone peacefully steps down after democratic elections.

[pessimizer]

If so, there's no reason to call Maduro a dictator until he fails to do that.

[huherto]

Beyond the issues of democracy, transparency, legality, etc. The government of Venezuela has a problem of stupidity. The economic policies have created a lot of damage to the economy. They were able to do it because of the huge amounts of oil that they have. But it is becoming harder and harder to sustain it.

The big question at this point is how far are they willing to go to stay in power?

[guard-of-terra]

And additionally, when you hear from your dictator something you've heard like ten times from other dictators in the last ten years - you become like really enraged. Don't you.

"What it claims as being foreign interference online", I'm speaking to you.