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VENEZUELA, TRUMP, AND VOLUNTARY SERVITUDE  
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Marga Ferré
January 5, 2026
transform! europe
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_ We must firmly oppose the attack on Venezuela, because if we let
Trump win, the message he sends is that there is no international law,
that there is no democracy and that all we are left with is vassalage.
_

Demonstration in Brussels on 3 January 2026 in front of the
Venezuelan Embassy. , Source/Author: Jürgen Klute.

 

There is something of a_ déjà vu _about Donald Trump’s brutal
attack on Venezuela. It is a place we already know, we have been there
before. A story we have heard before: in Afghanistan, to arrest Bin
Laden and bring democracy (neither of which happened); in Iraq, to
find weapons of mass destruction, which were never found; in Libya,
the marines went in to protect civilians and ended up with 30,000 dead
and the collapse of the Libyan state. They told us stories, the excuse
for the plundering of oil, but they never fooled us. Will they do so
now?

I declare my solidarity with the Venezuelan people in defence of their
sovereignty, not only out of lack of empathy for the illegal and
criminal aggression of the Trump administration against the Caribbean
country, but also because failing to speak out against the violations
and narratives of the American far right against Venezuela will take
its toll on us, too, on this side of the Atlantic.

To argue this point, I draw on Walden Bello’s analysis of the
American far right: “It is about rebuilding what Trump and his
followers consider to be the damaged core of the empire. Trump
considers Latin America to be within his sphere of influence. His
comments on Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and the Gulf of Mexico
reflect this shift in priorities to focus on the American
continent.” What the Filipino thinker highlights is already
commonplace in the debate on geopolitics, namely that Trump and the
MAGA movement consider Latin America and the Caribbean to be their
colonies.

In the same report, Bello accurately describes Trump and the
billionaire class to which he belongs as characters with a
“Napoleonic complex”, whose mission is to repair “the damaged
core of the empire” in a supremacist, authoritarian and appallingly
egotistical manner. That is why I argue that opposing the illegal
attack, the plundering of resources, the kidnapping of a head of state
and the threats of invasion of Venezuela is an act that goes beyond
solidarity. It has to do with the defence of reason, understood as our
ability to say “no” to the status quo, as the power to imagine an
order different from the existing one. It has to do with not accepting
a return to “hard power,” which is all that remains for them in a
world that questions and dethrones them.

The world Donald Trump is leading us into is a military dystopia
without rules and without rights.

‘Hard power’ put into words is what we heard at the US
president’s press conference to justify his attack on Venezuela: it
crossed so many boundaries that a new word will be needed to define
it. What Trump did at his press conference was to show contempt for
international law; an outrage against the law in his own country; the
sublimation of violence; acting as master of the world (via the
military) by announcing that the US will intervene in any country it
wants; announcing the plundering of another country’s resources by
declaring them its own because it can; making accusations without
evidence; defending his right to kidnap people if he wants to;
threatening elected governors and mayors in his own country with
sending in the National Guard; deciding who governs a country, making
it clear that he does not care what the citizens think; threatening
other countries (up to four other countries were threatened in his
speech)…

How can this be described? Tyranny is the word used by the American
left, and yet, in my view, the most frightening thing was the speech
by his Minister of War, Pete Hegseth, who basically spoke of Donald
Trump as the Supreme Leader, that is, someone whose word is law. What
Trump did in his appearance was to legitimise a coup d’état in a
sovereign country, announce a plunder, threaten other countries and
the American people themselves, but what his Minister of War did was
simply to render democracy and the law, both international and his
own, irrelevant.

Does anyone believe that Trump bombed Caracas and kidnapped the
president of Venezuela for democracy or peace? Does anyone believe
that the Cartel de los Soles, a cartel that does not exist, was the
reason for the brutal aggression? Of course not, no one believes it,
and that is what makes it even more terrible: the proof that the
acceptance of Trump’s discourse is not due to deception but is
voluntary. Voluntary servitude, as Étienne La Boétie would say.

Even _The New York Times_ has been harsher on the attack on Venezuela
than the European foreign ministries; at least the New York newspaper
described the attack as illegal and senseless, making it clear that it
also violates the US Constitution itself. In the height of voluntary
servitude, Trump has just reiterated his desire to annex Greenland,
and European protests are so timid that they remain mere whispers.
Perhaps they do not want to cause any trouble.

What the European elites are doing is learning to play by new rules,
keeping quiet, nodding or looking the other way, as they do with the
genocide in Gaza, to see how to position themselves and seek profits.
But there are none. They are wrong. The world Donald Trump is leading
us into is a military dystopia without rules and without rights.

That is why we must firmly oppose the attack on Venezuela, because if
we let Trump win, the message he sends is that there is no
international law, that there is no democracy and that all we are left
with is vassalage. What I mean is that this is not only against
Venezuela, it is against all of us.

I DEFEND SOLIDARITY WITH VENEZUELA BECAUSE I KNOW THAT WHEN
IMPERIALISM TALKS ABOUT RIGHTS, IT IS MISUSING THE WORD.

 

_Marga Ferré is President of transform! europe and Co-President of
The Foundation for Critical Studies / Fundación de Estudios Críticos
FEC (Formerly Foundation for a Citizens’ Europe / Fundación por la
Europa de los Ciudadanos), Spain._

 

 
_transform! europe is a network of 38 European organisations from 22
countries, active in the field of political education and critical
scientific analysis, and is the recognised political foundation
corresponding to the Party of the European Left (EL)._

_This cooperative project of independent non-profit organisations,
institutes, foundations, and individuals intends to use its work in
contributing to peaceful relations among peoples and a transformation
of the present world._

 

 

 

* Venezuela
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* U.S. imperialism
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* European Union
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* Trump Administration
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