The US amassed an arsenal of propaganda narratives in its decades-long hybrid war against Venezuela, leading up to its horrific massacre of over 100 people during the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro on 3 January. Tren de Aragua, Cartel de los Soles, “narco-terrorism,” “stolen oil,” even bizarrely “stolen land”…

But before all these recent inventions came the big lie that birthed them all: the claim that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is a dictatorship. That its electoral process is a transparent sham. That its people are denied any meaningful say in their future.

Sovereign Media’s Charles Xu witnessed firsthand the transparent falsehood of this narrative as an observer to the communal National Popular Consultation of 23 November 2025. This massive exercise in collective participatory democracy took place across an astounding 5336 socialist communes, choosing which of the 36,574 projects nominated by local popular assemblies would receive state funding.

At the Socialist Commune “Ciudad Bendita, Gran Poder de Dios” in the state of Lara, we had the privilege of observing the vote count in progress. Communal spokesperson (and fashion icon) Carolina Carrasco explained each proposal with a passion and attention to detail that could only come about through profoundly democratic deliberation on the needs of the community. The team then walked us step-by-step through the remarkably transparent voting, tabulation, and verification procedures.

Venezuela’s grand communal experiment is advancing a vision of democratic self-governance far more substantive than anything in the Global North. Therein lies the Bolivarian Revolution’s ultimate power and its ultimate threat to US hegemony. And as the Venezuelan masses’ own heroic creation, they will stop at nothing to defend it.