The Far Right Think Tank Action Institute is celebrating this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, but why are the Democrats celebrating?

On a recent social media post, the Grand Rapids-based Far Right Think Tank, the Acton Institute, celebrated the Nobel Peace Prize going to Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan who they say, “has shown that the tools of democracy are also the tools of peace.”

Democrats were celebrating the fact that the Nobel committee gave the award to Machado and not US President Donald Trump. However, Democrats were also celebrating the fact that Machado won the award because they too have had nothing but contempt for the Venezuelan government that embraced Socialism when Hugo Chavez became President in 1999. Not only did Chavez embrace Socialism, he spent the rest of his life attempting to fulfill Simon Bolivar’s vision of an independent and autonomous Latin America. Like Bolivar, Chavez was opposed to US Imperialism in Latin America.

What is interesting about Maria Corina Machado is that last year by a number of Florida Republicans, including then-Senator Marco Rubio, who’s now President Trump’s secretary of state. In fact, Machado attempted to run for president against incumbent Nicolás Maduro in the 2024 race, but was barred from running after the government accused her of corruption and cited her support for U.S. sanctions against Venezuela.

In a recent interview on Democracy Now, Greg Grandin, the author of the America, América: A New History of the New World, said the following of Machado winning the Nobel Peace Prize:

It’s a — it’s a perplexing choice on a number of levels and, it seems, inevitably will bring about the opposite of peace. You know, Machado is not a unifier, as the committee said. She represents the most intransigent face of the opposition, and not just — as you mentioned in your introduction, not just against Maduro, but against, you know, a democratically elected Hugo Chávez. She was a supporter of the 2002 coup. She has constantly divided the opposition and handicapped the opposition, frankly, when the opposition was trying to come up with a more moderate position that could challenge the social — the socialism of — 21st-century socialism that Chávez represented. She constantly represented a more hard line in terms of economics, in terms of U.S. relations, you know, and that intransigence has led her to rely on outside powers, notably the United States.

In another recent online post, Michelle Ellner, a Venezuelan who works with the anti-war group CodePink wrote:

Machado isn’t a symbol of peace or progress. She is part of a global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism, an axis that justifies domination in the language of democracy and peace. In Venezuela, that alliance has meant coups, sanctions, and privatization. In Gaza, it means genocide and the erasure of a people. The ideology is the same: a belief that some lives are disposable, that sovereignty is negotiable, and that violence can be sold as order.

Michelle Ellner then listed some of Machado’s history:

• She helped lead the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew a democratically elected president, and signed the Carmona Decree that erased the Constitution and dissolved every public institution overnight.
• She worked hand in hand with Washington to justify regime change, using her platform to demand foreign military intervention to “liberate” Venezuela through force.
• She cheered on Donald Trump’s threats of invasion and his naval deployments in the Caribbean, a show of force that risks igniting regional war under the pretext of “combating narcotrafficking.” While Trump sent warships and froze assets, Machado stood ready to serve as his local proxy, promising to deliver Venezuela’s sovereignty on a silver platter.
• She pushed for the US sanctions that strangled the economy, knowing exactly who would pay the price: the poor, the sick, the working class.
• She helped construct the so-called “interim government,” a Washington-backed puppet show run by a self-appointed “president” who looted Venezuela’s resources abroad while children at home went hungry.
• She vows to reopen Venezuela’s embassy in Jerusalem, aligning herself openly with the same apartheid state that bombs hospitals and calls it self-defense.
• Now she wants to hand over the country’s oil, water, and infrastructure to private corporations. This is the same recipe that made Latin America the laboratory of neoliberal misery in the 1990s.

Writer Ben Norton also posted an article talking about how Machado has been a strong supporter of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians. Norton states:

In January 2025, Machado held a call with Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar. She expressed her “gratitude to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel”, adding that she “immensely values the support of the government of Israel”.

The genocidal Israeli regime has refused to recognize the government of Venezuela’s constitutional, internationally recognized President Nicolás Maduro, and has instead recognized US-backed coup leader Edmundo González, who lives in Spain and is a proxy for Machado.

In April 2024, Israel attacked Iran in an act of aggression, and Tehran hit back in self-defense. Machado immediately took to Twitter to condemn Iran. She emphasized her “solidarity with the State of Israel amid the direct aggression by the Iranian regime”.

Machado denounced the supposed “risk represented by the alliance of Iran with the Venezuelan regime”, and she vowed that, if the US can successfully put her in power in Caracas, Machado would form a close alliance with the US and Israel against Iran and the Palestinian people.

In 2023, Machado again tweeted support for Israel, expressing hope that it has a “long and happy existence”, adding that the far-right Venezuelan opposition and the genocidal Israeli regime share common “values”.

One of the clearest illustrations of Machado’s extremist politics came in 2018, when she published an open letter to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asking the genocidal leader to help her overthrow Venezuelan President Maduro.

So why has the Democratic Party so zealously been anti-Venezuelan? The Democratic Party is equally committed to US Imperialism and anti-Socialism as the Republican Party is, especially in matters of foreign policy. This is what US foreign policy critics like Noam Chomsky have been saying for years, which is that the US government, regardless of who sits in the White House, will not tolerate any independent government in Latin America, which is why the CIA engaged in a coup in Guatemalan in 1954, in Chile in 1973, funded counterinsurgency terrorism in Central American in the 1980s,  supported narco-terrorist countries like Colombia for decades, and has been punishing Cuba since the 1959 revolution. The US government has also been funneling millions to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to support pro-US groups in Venezuela since Chavez became President in 1999.

For those looking for solid, independent analysis of Venezuela, check out this link https://venezuelanalysis.com/ and the Venezuela Solidarity Network.