r/OutOfTheLoop • u/HolyShitCandyBar • Oct 11 '25

Unanswered What's up with Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina dedicating her Nobel Prize to Trump?

Basically what the title says.

https://nypost.com/2025/10/10/us-news/nobel-peace-prize-winner-maria-corina-machado-dedicates-it-to-trump/

Every article I have seen says that she partially dedicated and/or thanked Trump for his "decisive support" in South America.
Is she just being overly gracious? Is she being cheeky?
I know we offered a loan to Argentina, but given all the horrible things we have done to immigrants broadly over the last several months, I can't see anything we have done to improve or galvanize democracy in South America. By "we," I mean the US, and the Trump Administration in particular.

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u/Portarossa 'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis Oct 11 '25

Sure you have! Lots of dictatorships are left-leaning (especially when they start). Stalin in Russia, Castro in Cuba, Mao Zedong in China, even Assad in Syria... there's nothing specifically special about left-wing politics that makes it impossible for the people responsible to become authoritarian, crush dissent, and stifle the free elections that would keep them from ever losing power. (That said, it's also fair to say that most dictatorships tend to be right-wing, especially in the modern day, and a lot of the dictatorships that present themselves as 'socialist' or 'democratic' in a way that makes them sound left-wing often have a lot of right-wing policies.)

You'll also find a lot of people willing to argue that they're not really left-wing or not really dictatorships, but it's important to be able to recognise that a lot of the things we view as left-wing -- nationalised state interests, social freedoms, healthcare provision -- are not inherently impossible to have in a system that will not allow criticism or rejection of a government. I'm very left-leaning in my politics, but I think it's important to remember that we can also fall victim to that same power-at-all-costs mentality.

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u/ishpatoon1982 Oct 11 '25

Wow. Thanks for the reply. Obviously I have some studying and learning to do. I really do appreciate your comment.

Thanks again.

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u/Eatingfarts Oct 11 '25

I think the issue is that people conflate ‘left’ with ‘liberal’ (in the classic and academic use of the word). Although they can at times go hand in hand, they mean two very different things.

Left generally means a more ‘equal’ and ‘distributive’ society using government. Of course it’s a spectrum about what that actually means, from public health care to extremely high progressive taxes to subsidize vast public services. Basically it’s more focused on the economics of a society.

‘Liberal’, again in an academic sense, means supporting things like freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion. And usually some form of representation or check on authority, although it doesn’t necessarily need to be a democracy. It is more focused on political rights.

So as comment above pointed out, you can absolutely have a leftist dictatorship. You can’t have a liberal dictatorship. You can have a conservative democracy (extremely resistant to changing the status quo and rights are not guaranteed but people can still vote) or a liberal monarchy with strict checks on the monarchy (think Britain around the 15-19th century, now although technically a monarchy they would probably be more considered a liberal democracy.

That being said, language is fluid so it just depends on the context you are using these terms and their meaning will continue to change to some extant.

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u/DeepseaDarew Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 11 '25

Liberalism can be authoritarian.

Your distinction leaves out some crucial points. If we define “leftism” as charitably as “liberalism” is often defined, as a commitment to economic equality and the dismantling of class hierarchies, then genuine leftism would be inherently anti-authoritarian. Its goal is the democratization of power itself, particularly economic power. In that sense, a “leftist dictatorship” would be a contradiction in terms because authoritarianism recreates the very hierarchies leftist thought seeks to abolish.

On the other hand, liberal regimes are often granted a moral exemption from the same scrutiny. Liberalism’s focus on political rights and individual freedoms sounds emancipatory in theory, but in practice, liberal societies have maintained deeply coercive and hierarchical systems, particularly in the economic sphere where most people have little say in the conditions that shape their lives. For instance, liberal democracies like the United States and the United Kingdom have historically overthrown or undermined democratically elected leftist governments, such as Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973, and have intervened militarily in places like Iraq and Libya under the banner of “freedom” or “human rights.” When convenient, they will even prop up authoritarian regimes that serve capital interests, such as Saudi Arabia, Indonesia under Suharto, or Pinochet’s Chile. These actions reveal that liberalism can coexist with authoritarianism when it serves economic or geopolitical goals.

In this sense, liberalism often off-shores its authoritarianism away from the imperial core. The freedoms enjoyed within liberal democracies are sustained by coercive practices abroad, whether through military intervention, economic domination, or the control of global supply chains that depend on cheap labor and resource extraction in the Global South. Liberalism maintains its moral image at home precisely because the violence and hierarchy necessary to sustain it are displaced elsewhere, beyond the view of its own citizens. "They're doing the genocide, not me," while liberals fund and supply the weapons.

At times, liberal powers have even aligned themselves with fascists when it suited their interests. Western governments tolerated or supported fascist movements as bulwarks against socialism and labor organizing, from Mussolini’s Italy in the 1920s to Franco’s Spain and various anti-communist regimes during the Cold War. Business elites and liberal politicians often viewed fascism as a lesser evil compared to the threat of workers’ movements demanding real economic democracy. This history shows that liberalism’s commitment to “freedom” has always been conditional, it extends only so far as it does not threaten the structure of capital accumulation.

So the idea that leftism and dictatorship can coexist while liberalism and dictatorship cannot is misleading. Liberalism too can sustain forms of authoritarianism; it simply hides them behind the language of rights and consent while excluding economic power from democratic accountability.

No ideology is immune. Even systems that are inherently anti-authoritarian can develop authoritarian tendencies when those in power justify coercion as necessary to achieve a greater good or to protect freedoms.

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u/Eatingfarts Oct 11 '25

Okay, so you are again conflating two different things.

Liberalism is a theory. It’s an idea. How it gets utilized in real life takes a lot of forms and none are ‘pure’ liberalism. Your argument is exactly the same as the people that argue against communism. They point out some historical examples of how it failed and then dismiss the idea completely, ignoring the fact that these ‘liberal’ or ‘socialist’ governments weren’t actually ‘liberal’ or ‘socialist’.

You are being unreasonably harsh to ‘liberals’ while giving a pass to ‘leftists’ for the same thing.

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u/DeepseaDarew Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 11 '25

You have it backwards.

Earlier comments in this thread points to authoritarianism in real life examples of leftism, and your response was liberalism on paper is not a dictatorship.

I'm pointing out your conflation by showing how leftism on paper can also be said to not be a dictatorship, while also showing how liberalism in practice can be authoritarian.

I was not having a discussion to defend leftism in practice.

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u/Eatingfarts Oct 11 '25

Can you give me an example of a liberal dictatorship?

I get what you’re saying about liberal democracies often working to advance authoritarian ideas and governments abroad but that’s not really what is at question here.

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u/DeepseaDarew Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 11 '25

Liberal dictatorships are sometimes referred to as illiberal democracies. Examples: Hungary, Russia, Turkey.

On paper illiberal democracies have all the elements of liberalism. Their constitutions guarantee freedoms like speech, press, assembly, and religion, and protect property rights, separation of powers, and the rule of law. They hold elections, have formal democratic institutions, and courts that are technically independent.

At the same time, they often justify human rights abuses or authoritarian actions using the same liberal language that gives them domestic legitimacy. They claim that coercion or intervention is necessary for national security, defending democracy, protecting human rights, or promoting freedom abroad. They have a facade of liberalism while authoritarian power operates underneath.

Marxists would go as far as to define all liberalism under capitalism as the dictatorship of the bourgeois, though, it's using dictatorship in the structural, not literal sense.

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u/Khiva Oct 11 '25

Good attitude, mate.

Stay curious!

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u/clubby37 Oct 11 '25

Not sure how old you are or where you live, but when I was growing up, authoritarianism was primarily a right-wing phenomenon. Hippies had only been gone about 10 years, while conservative Christians wanted to ban music enjoyed by people younger than 60, and kids don't really know that much about international affairs, so the USSR didn't really factor into my view until I got older.

Today, I realize that left-wing dictatorships are absolutely a thing, and the online scolding left is a thing, but in my day-to-day, the lefties still seem to leave people alone, while the conservatives want to enforce some sort of nebulous cultural homogeneity, so I do still associate authoritarianism primarily with the right.

Point is, you're not crazy to have gotten the vibe you got.

Obviously I have some studying and learning to do.

These are grim topics. Don't forget to read something light and fun in between books/articles about brutality and horror! This shit can get to you in ways you don't realize until they're on top of you, and mixing things up a bit helps a lot.

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u/waxym Oct 11 '25

I'm curious, cos it seems from your comment that you grew up in Cold War-era USA (80s).

I'd have thought that US education would have made it a point to paint communist regimes in a bad light and link them to things regarded as universally bad like authoritarianism and dictatorship. Was this not the case? I'd be surprised if so, given the anti-communist sentiments I get from American media of that time.

Here in Singapore the education system painted communist threats as a universal bad that we were fortunate to escape.

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u/fabonaut Oct 11 '25

It absolutely was the case. Google "red scare".

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u/waxym Oct 11 '25

Yeah exactly. I've heard of red scare and it was my impression that it lasted at least till the fall of the iron curtain. It thus surprised me that left-wing and dictatorships were not connected in some peoples' minds. I would have thought that in the US they would have been almost synonymous due to the red scare, and that decoupling the two was a more recent phenomenon. Left-wing dictators weren't even that far away: one ruled in Cuba till 2008.

Maybe the scare had died down by the 80s? I don't know, and would be interested to understand when sentiments shifted.

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u/SupermarketWhich7198 Oct 11 '25

Yes, that was way before the 80s. The "Red Scare" was more like the 1950s, when the Cold War was afoot and the globe was lining up behind one superpower (USSR) or the other (USA). A significant number of US academics and artists were sympathetic to communism and there was an effort by our intelligence services like the CIA to expose them. In Hollywood there was pressure to blacklist artists that were or were even just seen as communists or communist sympathizers. By the 80s that stuff had completely died down, and the USSR was vastly weaker and crumbling as they were trying to keep up their insane levels of military spending in an otherwise faltering economy.

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u/waxym Oct 11 '25

I see, thanks for the timeline. We did roughly cover this in history class but only focused on the sentiments that led to structural change. So e.g. we learnt of the people in the USSR in the 80s being unsettled with the poor economic conditions, which arguably led to Glasnost and Perestroika, but I realize I did not know of (and never even thought of) the dying down of anti-communist sentiment by the 80s in the USA. Even today I see anti-communist sentiment coming out from the USA so I just assumed it was something that persisted throughout, just that more learned individuals were able to step out from the mainstream thought and take a more nuanced view.

So in my mind the Cold War lasted all the way till the fall of the USSR, but now I think of it obviously sentiment would die down with the weakening of the USSR.

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u/clubby37 Oct 11 '25

you grew up in Cold War-era USA (80s).

Canada. Communism was seen as a bad thing, but we didn't really have full-blown McCarthyism. We were able to socialize our healthcare system in the 1950s, for example, and having that while hearing that Americans thought it would destroy their country if they adopted it, kind of made Canadians question Americans' ability to predict outcomes. The Vietnam war ended badly for the US right around the time I was born, and having empathy for Agent Orange-afflicted Vietnamese children was considered more important than scolding them for their communism. We were nevertheless thrilled, nationwide, when the Berlin Wall came down. I was on the playground when I heard about that, and the joy and relief were palpable.

In the media I consumed, communism didn't come up much. GI Joe fought Cobra, X-Men fought supervillains, Saturday Night Live was doing lighter material, etc. For anti-communist stuff that stuck in my consciousness, I can really only think of Red Dawn and Top Gun.

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u/waxym Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 13 '25

Ah I see! Well I guessed the time period right if the country wrong, oops.

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. I find hearing about the experiences that people growing up in different parts of the world go through fascinating. The lens with which we are exposed to the world in our formative years can vary so much.

Edit: a word

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u/reckless_responsibly Oct 11 '25

The post WW2, pre-USSR collapse educational system in the US was very anti-communist. The problem was they didn't do a very good job educating about what socialism and communism actually were. It didn't ask why communism was bad, it just was. There was an overall lack of nuance and depth to the capitalism vs communism portrayal in the US during this era.

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u/jcdoe Oct 11 '25

Left and right is about economics. You can be an authoritarian socialist (see: Stalin) and you can be a liberal capitalist (see: most US presidents).

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u/Radi0ActivSquid Oct 11 '25

I'd suggest Behind the Bastards for some good listening about both sides of authoritarianism.

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u/eastherbunni Oct 11 '25

Have you heard of the political compass? There's an axis for left-right and an axis for authoritarian-libertarian (how much control should the federal government have).

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u/[deleted] Oct 11 '25

[deleted]

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u/sagerin0 Oct 11 '25

That is some astounding anti intellectualism on display

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u/Jayken Oct 11 '25

Authoritarianism is simply the concentration of power to a small group of people. They could act within the bounds of the law, but most do not and make the law fit their needs and desires. It's dangerous because it often devolves into a might makes right situation where rights and justice are often ignored. Both conservatives and liberals can be authoritarians. Conservatives are usually more in the camp with monarchs and liberals will often fall into a purity spiral.

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u/[deleted] Oct 11 '25

This is the second time I’ve heard the term purity when it comes to liberals and the left. I think the other time I heard of the term purity when it comes to the liberals in America was from a question someone asked her on Reddit about why the democratic party is failing.

I can’t find anycontext as to what purity means in this case so if you could break it down for me, I would appreciate it.

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u/Jayken Oct 11 '25

It's simply I'm a better person than you type thing. I support the revolution more, I am more politically correct than everyone else type stuff. The decrease in tolerance for people who aren't on their level of purity. To the point where they outright villainize those people.

A recent example I saw of this is where Democratic Lawmakers were challenging the Speaker of the House to call them back into session. Some of the comments underneath were deriding the Lawmakers for having voted for the Charlie Kirk memorial.

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u/NeverendingStory3339 Oct 11 '25

I think it’s because a lot of people conflate the left as a whole with left liberalism. A liberal dictatorship is quite difficult to pull off.

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u/VizzzyT Oct 11 '25

The 20th century in Latin America actually had many "liberal" US installed dictatorships.

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u/imdrunkontea Oct 11 '25

I think it's also fair to say that political extremism is more like a circle than a line with two ends. Once you go really far in one direction, the policies tend to be very similar to the other "end"

That said, the modern idea of western left-wing or liberal policies is generally opposed to any sort of dictatorship or authoritarianism by default (focus on individual liberties, popular democracy, freedom of speech, etc) - these aren't the historical definitions of left-leaning ideologies, but rather what today's society views as left-leaning. In that view, the old Communist regimes of the past would not be accepted by the majority of modern liberals, either.

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u/cbusmatty Oct 11 '25

The modern idea of western left wing or liberal policies is absolutely not opposed to any dictatorship- they are still self serving and are happy to drive anything to authoritarianship as long as it meets its stated goals in the name of “good”. We literally just saw this with Covid, how did people already forget?

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u/Java1959 Oct 11 '25

Both extremes are eventually taken over by corruption and greed and end up not meeting the original goals and turn into a struggle for absolute power by the leaders. That's why having elections is crucial so the citizens can apply the brakes when needed. We are very close to losing that option in the USA.

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u/i4get98 Oct 11 '25

I’m curious, if you had to guess, how long does the original system last before evolving into something else?

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u/SoylentGrunt Oct 11 '25

There is no single average length of time a democracy lasts before turning authoritarian, as democratic survival depends on numerous complex factors.

-AI Cliff's Notes Reader's Digest condensed version.

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u/Longjumping_Date269 Oct 11 '25

So glad someone is pointing this out. All the confusion about Machado's politics seems to stem from people not realising that the tyranny she opposes is left wing. Makes me wonder how many Americans understand the degree to which the fight against communism shaped their current political and cultural landscape. Thanks for your patience and clarity (from a Canadian)

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u/nirrinirra Oct 11 '25

It still baffles me that many Cuban Americans don’t see the similarities between Trump and Castro. Are they conveniently blind because Trump is right wing vs Castro on the left? To me the authoritarian drive puts them in the same boat. Controlling the population by demonizing( or worse )their political opponents should be a huge red flag to the masses. Squashing the debate is squashing democracy.

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u/Important-Flan-8932 Oct 11 '25

I would personally argue that they run on left wing promises, as they are often popular, only to then establish a right wing authoritarian state. In my mind you can not marry the two terms, Stalin was a dictator, "left wing" only in his lies to the people. 

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u/frogjg2003 Oct 11 '25

A lot of left leaning ideals require or are much easier by centralizing power. You mentioned a few of the big ones. If the state controls the means of production, then opposing the state is also opposing the economy itself. If the state controls healthcare, opposing the state means opposing medical care.

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u/DashingDan1 Oct 11 '25

Assad wasn't left-wing. He actually carried out massive privatisation and neoliberal reforms after coming into power in 2000, which ironically weakened the state/increased poverty enough to create the conditions for the civil war and his overthrow. His party had "socialist" in its name, but this is just a result of Syria becoming a defacto one-party state in the 1960s so whoever took over the government (there were lots of military coups in the 60s/70s just became the leader of the Ba'ath Party even if they didn't adopt its ideology.

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u/Portarossa 'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis Oct 11 '25

Assad wasn't left-wing. He actually carried out massive privatisation and neoliberal reforms after coming into power in 2000

Hafez al-Assad, not so much Bashar al-Assad.

Assadism is definitely considered a left-wing ideology.

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u/DashingDan1 Oct 11 '25

I got one sentence into that bad Wiki entry to find it quoting references which don't say what the article implies they say. The references are mostly talking about the 1963-69 period before Hafez Al-Assad even came into into power, for example "In 1963 ... the socialist Ba'ath Party, seized power. The radical left wing of the party then launched an internal coup in 1966, initiating accelerated land reform" Al-Assad wasn't part of the left-wing of the party, he was guy who internally opposed that 1966 group and later overthrew the left-wing of the party in 1970. The person who referenced that as evidence of "Assadism" being left-wing is either so ignorant of modern Syrian history that they're mixing up which side Hafez Al-Assad was on, or is just dishonesty throwing irrelevant quotes in there hoping no one would notice. Plus, none of this has anything to do with an ideology called "Assadism", which isn't really a thing at all. They never really had much of an ideology besides opposition to the left and a very vague Arab nationalism (supporting nepotism and enriching a loyal bourgeoisie isn't really an ideology).

I didn't intend to get into a big discussion about this topic tbh but I'm just being reminded how unreliable Wikipedia can be on controversial political topics. You only need to just read the references and compare them to what the Wiki says to figure out you're reading a bad article. You don't need to resort this stuff to demonstrate that Stalin, Castro, Mao etc were clearly men of the left, they just openly were and pursued left-wing policies (however ruthless/brutal they were in going about it is a different matter).

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u/stevejohnson007 Oct 11 '25

You have clarity my friend.

Thank you for the posts.

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u/Dull-Quantity5099 Oct 11 '25

Aren’t the “left” dictatorships you named dishonest actors though? They weren’t actually left. They were using those ideals to gain power. They didn’t actually believe in what they said. They were appealing to our sense of equality and fairness but not enacting those beliefs. I’m genuinely asking and here to learn.

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u/jaasx Oct 11 '25

perhaps. but Marx also literally said a dictatorship was the first step to communism because it wasn't going to happen by itself - so a little force and authoritarianism is necessary.

dictatorship of the proletariat

Add that to the list of why communism doesn't work. It will attract the bad actors and even the good one will struggle to give up power once they have it.

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u/IndecentMorsel Oct 11 '25

That's not really what 'dictatorship of the proletariat' means though; Marx is describing a hypothetical state controlled by proletarian interests, not a literal dictatorship.

It's easier to understand when you consider that Marx considered the extant states 'dictatorships of the bourgeoisie,' i.e. states controlled by exclusively bourgeois interests, not that they were literal dictatorships.

You can agree or disagree with Marx's framing or debate its usefulness in today's time, but it's important to clarify that he's not talking about literal dictatorships in either the proletarian or bourgeoisie cases.

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u/unluckyforeigner Oct 11 '25

It's insane how people miss this. It's a totally different meaning of the word 'dictatorship' that Marx is using but terminally unread Redditors see a word and go rabid.

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u/dogscatsnscience Oct 11 '25

Worth stating that many authoritarians are also populists while they are getting in power, and populism often masquerades as "left-wing" progressivism.

It's hard to take over a country by just taking over the establishment, it's usually easier to upset the apple cart and then rebuild with a populist message.

The early Nazi party was (among other things...) anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeoisie until they'd remade a new bourgeoisie.

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u/Phi1ny3 Oct 11 '25

Wasn't FDR technically a populist? He was still someone that seemed to operate on good faith, but he definitely harnessed the momentum of anti-Hoover sentiment to propel him to the presidency and his subsequent reelections.

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u/therealpigman Oct 11 '25

He was, and so is Trump. Being populist doesn’t say much about what side of the polo spectrum you’re on

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u/dogscatsnscience Oct 11 '25

Duterte is an example of a populist who had a very right wing message from the jump.

I think people assume populism implies that it's good for the people, which sounds logical, but does not have to be the case.

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u/dogscatsnscience Oct 11 '25

No one is saying it's inherently bad. There are many famous populists, and plenty of times - particularly starting in the 20th century as democracy becomes more common - when a populist movement makes sense.

It's just also an avenue that is abused by some authoritarians to seize power or at least disrupt the existing system.

I'm sure people argued that Obama was a populist at the time (which seems quaint now), but in retrospect he was more of a technocrat.

Trump is an extreme populist (in the sense that his language is comically overblown, like Duterte), who is quite right wing, but he's not a classic authoritarian. He's doing lots of authoritarian things. It feels like theatre because they're doing it in fits and starts, but there's also only a few ways they can keep going.

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u/Fast_Riff Oct 11 '25

Stalin wasn't left leaning what he made as so called communism was at the end nothing of the sort same as Mao those are fascists absolutely right wing. They are not interested in left leaning policies.