THE INVISIBLE BLOCKADE: How Media Made Economic Warfare Disappear

The Vanishing Act

In February 2019, millions watched in horror as Venezuelan security forces appeared to torch trucks carrying humanitarian aid on the Colombian border. CNN’s cameras were on hand to capture the flames. For The New York Times, it was proof of Maduro’s “cruelty.” Politicians from Marco Rubio to Nancy Pelosi cited the incident as proof that intervention was needed. Video analysis later contradicted that narrative.

The story just was not true. But the lie was given a long run. Weeks later, the New York Times quietly admitted the fire was started by an opposition protester’s Molotov cocktail; a single paragraph buried deep in a longer piece. The original story, complete with inflammatory images, had already done its work: manufacturing consent for economic strangulation that would kill tens of thousands.

Mainstream reporting of Venezuela is the story of how consent gets manufactured in 2025. Forget naff Soviet style propaganda. Instead, train your eyes on a bee dance of selective coverage, ideological framing and strategic amnesia.

Venezuela wins a golden globe for best propaganda show of the 21st century: convincing most of us that United States economic warfare does not exist.

The Crime That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Ask any Aussie what is happening in Venezuela. Chances are you will get a rehearsed answer: socialist dictatorship, economic collapse, humanitarian crisis. Raise the role of United States sanctions and you will often get silence.

In Caracas, you could not miss it. From 2017 to 2020, Washington imposed more than 350 unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela. The Trump administration bragged about a “maximum pressure” campaign, as if it were running a fracking operation and not ruining the lives of millions of innocent bystanders. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States was targeting Venezuela’s oil sector “to prevent further diverting of Venezuela’s assets by Maduro.”

The message to Caracas was clear: “We are going to starve your people until they revolt and overthrow the government.” Trump’s crew echoes a Latin dictatorship with its junta of elite billionaires, corporate and military figures such as John Kelly and James Mattis. Trumpism is populist braggadocio and bluff.

The same men must know that they have blood on their hands. A 2019 study by economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that United States sanctions caused around 40,000 deaths between 2017 and 2018 alone. The authors described the measures as collective punishment. Former United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy called such sanctions “crimes against humanity.”

United Nations expert Alfred de Zayas, who visited Venezuela, called the sanctions “economic warfare” and recommended that the International Criminal Court investigate United States officials for possible crimes against humanity. He likened modern sanctions to medieval sieges.

You did not read much of that in the Sydney Morning Herald, did you?

The Propaganda Model in Action

Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent outlines filters through which media coverage passes: ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak and ideology. Venezuela’s coverage demonstrates every single one.

Ownership filter: corporate media outlets have material interests in maintaining the neoliberal economic order Venezuela challenged. When Hugo Chávez increased royalties, nationalised key assets and used oil revenues for social programs rather than shareholder profits, he made powerful enemies. Coverage shifted from sceptical to openly hostile.

Sourcing filter: a 2018 FAIR study of United States media coverage found that stories on Venezuela mostly quoted United States officials and opposition figures. Government representatives were largely invisible. International observers who validated aspects of Venezuelan elections rarely appeared. Economists like Weisbrot who questioned the sanctions narrative were pushed to marginal outlets.

Instead, audiences were fed Marco Rubio, Elliott Abrams of Iran Contra fame and Juan Guaidó, a hack who declared himself Venezuela’s president with United States backing.

The flak machine: journalists who deviated from the script faced immediate pushback. When Abby Martin or Max Blumenthal reported from Venezuela and challenged mainstream narratives, they were smeared as “Maduro apologists” or “useful idiots.” The example kept most other reporters in line.

Ideological filter: the anti socialist smear was mandatory. Every story about Venezuelan food shortages led with “socialist mismanagement.” There was little mention that Saudi Arabia, a United States ally, was simultaneously creating mass starvation in Yemen through a blockade that killed hundreds of thousands.

The framing is not about humanitarian concern. It is about ideology.

The Guaidó Gambit

Nothing demonstrates consent manufacturing quite like the Juan Guaidó affair.

On 23 January 2019, this political unknown swore himself in as “interim president” on a Caracas street. Within minutes, the United States, Canada and major Latin American governments recognised him. Corporate media followed at breakneck speed, describing him as Venezuela’s interim president, without quotation marks.

Unfortunately for the narrative, the facts were less convenient. Guaidó’s party had boycotted the previous presidential election. His constitutional claim was dubious. His “interim presidency” had no control of government, no command of the armed forces, no democratic mandate. He was a US-backed figure on standby for regime change.

For two years, Guaidó staged photo opportunities while much of the media treated his fantasy regime as real. He appointed “ambassadors” to empty buildings. He fronted a “humanitarian aid” push that former senior United States officials later admitted was a regime change ploy. He even backed a failed mercenary invasion, a Bay of Pigs style debacle, that landed with a resounding thud in May 2020.

Then something amazing. Guaidó disappears off-stage. No post mortems examined how spectacularly the media was gulled. No accountability for presenting a ludicrously inept United States puppet as a democratic leader. Just sudden, collective amnesia.

By 2023, even much of the opposition had jilted Guaidó. The sanctions stayed, nevertheless, grinding millions into poverty. And seven million into exile.

The Australian Complicity

Australia has been a keen player in US myth. The Morrison government, which itself blurred fact and fiction, recognised Guaidó and joined the Lima Group, a United States orchestrated coalition promoting regime change. At the United Nations, Australia reliably lined up with Washington against Caracas.

And our media? Lockstep, lickspittle compliance.

The ABC, our “independent” public broadcaster, mostly echoed US narratives. SBS, with its multicultural mission, rarely interviewed Venezuelans who support their government, although millions do, despite everything. Murdoch outlets adored a military tattoo and beat the skins off their intervention drum kit.

When Venezuela held presidential elections in July 2024, The Australian and its claque called them fraudulent, even before votes were counted. Opposition claims of victory were reported as fact. Government claims were “disputed.” The opposition refused to present precinct level evidence to Venezuela’s electoral council, but that got scant coverage.

International observers, including the Carter Center, raised concerns about pre-election conditions but did not declare the vote fraudulent. Nuance vanishes in translation.

This matters because Australia is rehearsing for bigger targets. The propaganda model deployed against Venezuela, demonisation, economic warfare disguised as humanitarian concern, manufactured democratic pretexts for intervention, is being retrofitted for China. The patterns are identical; only the scale differs.

The Invisible Blockade

The most extraordinary achievement of this propaganda campaign is rendering economic warfare invisible.

United States sanctions do not just prohibit American companies from trading with Venezuela. They impose secondary sanctions on any company worldwide that does business with Venezuela’s oil sector, central bank or state enterprises. This blocks Venezuela from:

• Importing medicine and medical equipment
• Accessing international financial systems for humanitarian purchases
• Selling oil to finance imports
• Receiving spare parts for refineries and infrastructure
• Engaging in normal international commerce

When a Venezuelan child dies because hospitals cannot get dialysis equipment, that is not “socialist failure.” That is economic strangulation by the world’s dominant power. US officials admit that sanctions should cause enough suffering to trigger political change.

Yet media coverage presents Venezuela’s crisis as self inflicted, the inevitable result of Chavista economic policies and corruption. Sanctions are mentioned, if at all, as afterthoughts; minor irritants rather than a central driver of collapse.

This inversion of cause and effect is propaganda at its most sophisticated. It does not require outright lying, just selective emphasis. Mention sanctions late. Lead with empty supermarket shelves. Quote opposition politicians blaming socialism. Ignore United Nations experts describing collective punishment. Repeat.

The result is that we support sanctions without understanding that we are supporting collective punishment of civilians for political ends.

The Double Standard

Ideological filtering is highlighted by comparing coverage of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. There are no competitive national elections. Women gained the right to drive only in 2017. Political dissidents are imprisoned, tortured or murdered. Journalist Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered with a bone saw. The Saudi led coalition has inflicted a catastrophic war on Yemen that has killed hundreds of thousands through violence and starvation.

Yet Saudi Arabia remains a close United States ally. Australian media do not call for sanctions. The ABC does not run rolling segments on Saudi humanitarian disasters. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is often treated as a moderniser, not a dictator.

Venezuela, by contrast, holds regular elections; flawed and contested, certainly, but elections nonetheless. International observers have repeatedly validated Venezuelan electoral processes as technically sound, even while questioning campaign conditions. Venezuela has not invaded neighbours or created famines abroad.

But Venezuela challenged neoliberal orthodoxy and United States dominance over its oil. That is the unforgivable heresy.

Or take Honduras, where a United States backed government emerged from a coup, presides over extreme violence and corruption, and fuels migration through poverty. United States aid continues. Media attention is minimal. No sanctions. No serious calls for intervention.

Humanitarian concern is theatre. The metric that matters is compliance with United States interests.

What Gets Memory Holed

Propaganda does not just create false narratives. It makes inconvenient facts disappear. A short list of what Australian coverage of Venezuela tends to omit:

The achievements: between 1999 and 2012, poverty fell from 50 per cent to 25 per cent. Extreme poverty dropped from 20 per cent to 7 per cent. Infant mortality declined markedly. Malnutrition fell sharply. University enrolment went up. Literacy programs reached millions. Venezuela had one of Latin America’s lower levels of income inequality.

Those gains are now being reversed; primarily due to sanctions, oil price collapse and economic warfare, not the social programs that created them.

The coup attempts: Venezuela has endured repeated United States linked coup efforts. A 2002 coup briefly overthrew Chávez before mass mobilisation restored him. Opposition violence in 2014 and 2017 killed dozens. The 2020 mercenary incursion involved former United States special forces personnel. These are not conspiracy theories; United States officials have openly discussed regime change plans.

The oil price context: Venezuela’s economy relies on oil. When prices collapsed from more than 100 United States dollars a barrel in 2014 to under 30 dollars in 2016, the economy tanked, as any petrostate would. Norway, with stronger institutions, would struggle with that volatility. Yet media present Venezuela’s crisis as purely ideological.

The sanctions timeline: the economic crisis accelerated dramatically after comprehensive sanctions in 2017. Obama era sanctions were limited. Trump era sanctions moved into full economic warfare. The timing is hard to ignore unless you are corporate media.

The alternative: Venezuela has offered to negotiate, to hold elections with international supervision, to accept mediation. The United States repeatedly insists on Maduro’s resignation as a precondition. When Mexico and Uruguay proposed dialogue in 2019, the US and the Lima Group rejected it. The goal was never democracy; it was regime change.

The Propaganda Ecosystem

Modern consent manufacturing is more sophisticated than George Orwell imagined. It does not require central coordination or formal censorship. It emerges from institutional incentives, ideological assumptions and career pressures.

Journalists covering Venezuela face structural pressures:

• Editors favour stories that fit existing narratives
• Contradicting United States government claims invites flak from powerful sources
• Career advancement comes from staying in institutional good graces
• Departing from mainstream consensus risks being labelled “biased”
• Stories that challenge dominant frames are buried or spiked

The result is self censorship that does not require overt control. Journalists internalise the pressures and avoid stories that might cause trouble. Editors spike pieces that challenge core assumptions. The spectrum of acceptable opinion narrows to a sliver.

Social media accelerates this dynamic. Nuanced analysis of sanctions demands sustained attention and complex thinking. “Dictator starves his people” fits neatly into a post. The dopamine driven attention economy marginalises the kind of deep reading needed to understand economic warfare.

Add “fact checkers” funded by the same foundations prosecuting the information war, and dissent becomes “misinformation” in a self-reinforcing knowledge ecosystem.

Why This Matters for Australia

You might think Venezuela is distant and irrelevant to Australian concerns. You would be wrong on both counts.

First, Australia is practising. The propaganda model deployed against Venezuela, demonising leadership, emphasising enemy crimes while ignoring allied atrocities, masking economic warfare as humanitarian concern, is being prepared for larger targets.

Coverage of China already shows the same patterns. Replace “Maduro” with “Xi” and “socialism” with “authoritarianism” and you have the same playbook. The difference is that Venezuela cannot fight back. China can. The stakes are far higher.

Second, Australia is complicit. Our government joined the regime change coalition. Our media helped manufacture consent for economic warfare against civilians. Our citizens were persuaded to support policies that have killed thousands of Venezuelans, often without realising those policies exist.

That moral corrosion matters. If we can be convinced to support collective punishment in Venezuela, what will we not support? Where does it end?

Third, this reveals our media’s subordination to United States interests. The speed with which Australian outlets adopted Washington’s framing, the uniformity of coverage, the lack of critical distance, all suggest a serious sovereignty problem. Not sovereignty over resources or territory, but over the information ecosystem that shapes public understanding.

When Australian media cannot or will not challenge United States propaganda, we are not really independent. We are a province of empire, feeding our citizens pre digested narratives manufactured offshore.

The Resistance to Knowing

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of propaganda is how resistant people become to counter evidence. Present Australians with facts about sanctions causing Venezuelan deaths and watch the mental gymnastics.

“Maduro could end the sanctions by stepping down.” So collective punishment of civilians is acceptable if the goal is regime change?

“The economy was already failing.” True, and then sanctions made it catastrophically worse. That is the point.

“Venezuelans are fleeing.” Largely due to economic collapse driven in part by sanctions. Also, why is there no matching call for regime change in Honduras, which generates far more refugees per capita?

“It is about democracy.” Then why do we support Saudi Arabia, Egypt and dozens of other autocracies?

The resistance is not about evidence; it is about identity. Accepting that United States and Australian policy deliberately starves civilians requires confronting uncomfortable truths about our democracies, our media and ourselves. It is easier to cling to stories about dictators and failed socialism.

This is how propaganda succeeds. Not mainly by convincing people of lies, but by making the truth psychologically unbearable.

The Path Forward

So what is to be done?

For journalists: break the pack. The Guaidó debacle showed that challenging official narratives does not just serve truth; it protects professional credibility. Reporters who questioned the regime change fantasy now look prescient. Those who amplified it look like stenographers.

Demand evidence for government claims. Apply consistent standards across countries. Interview diverse sources, including people who challenge Western narratives. Remember that the job is to afflict the comfortable, not manufacture consent for economic warfare.

For media consumers: develop propaganda literacy. When every outlet says the same thing using the same framing, that is not validation; it is synchronisation. Seek alternative sources. Read United Nations reports. Follow independent journalists who have actually visited Venezuela, not desk bound opinion writers recycling State Department talking points.

Ask the questions media outlets avoid. Who benefits from this narrative? What is being omitted? Are we applying consistent standards? What would coverage look like if ideological positions were reversed?

For citizens: demand accountability. Australia joined a regime change coalition that killed thousands through economic warfare. That happened in our name. Our government recognised a “president” who never won the presidency. Our media cheered it on. None of this has been reckoned with.

Write to politicians. Challenge media outlets. Support independent journalism. Refuse the memory hole. Because Venezuela is practice. The same model will be deployed against larger targets, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Conclusion: The Test We Are Failing

Venezuela represents a test of democratic societies’ capacity for independent thought in the face of sophisticated propaganda. We are failing spectacularly.

A superpower has spent years waging economic warfare against a smaller country that dared to challenge neoliberal orthodoxy. That warfare has killed tens of thousands of civilians, displaced millions more and caused immense suffering. It violates international law and basic morality.

Yet most Australians do not even know it is happening. They have been told that Venezuela’s crisis is self inflicted, the inevitable result of socialist economics. They have been trained to support collective punishment without recognising it as such.

That is the triumph of manufactured consent. Not crude lies, but sophisticated narrative construction that makes economic warfare invisible, transforms victims into villains and converts citizens into unwitting accomplices.

Herman and Chomsky wrote Manufacturing Consent in 1988, documenting how media serve power. Decades later, the model is more sophisticated, more effective and more dangerous. The digital information ecosystem has not liberated us. It has created new mechanisms for propaganda.

Venezuela is the laboratory. The techniques perfected there, demonisation, selective omission, ideological framing, strategic amnesia, are being scaled up for larger targets: China, Russia, Iran, any country that challenges United States dominance.

The question is whether we will recognise the pattern before it is too late. Will we demand independent journalism and honest accounting of our governments’ actions? Or will we continue sleepwalking into support for economic warfare, regime change and potentially catastrophic conflicts, never quite realising we have been played?

The invisible blockade around Venezuela is not just physical. It is cognitive. And the most dangerous walls are the ones we cannot see.

---