America Cries Hostage—While Venezuela Struggles to Breathe

Weaponized Tears, Lawfare Chains, and the Inversion of Reality in the U.S. War on Anti-Imperialist Sovereignty

By Prince Kapone | Weaponized Information

May 29, 2025

Part I – When Empire Cries “Hostage”: Deconstructing the Narrative of Innocence

This article, published by ABC News under the title “Venezuela holds more US citizens in jail than any foreign country,” functions as a weaponized narrative in service of empire. Disguised as a neutral report, it recycles the familiar script of American innocence and Third World villainy to obscure the actual structure of violence: a settler-colonial regime waging economic war, lawfare, and propaganda against a sovereign nation. The purpose is not to inform, but to discipline—to delegitimize Venezuela’s right to self-defense while sanctifying the very agents sent to destabilize it. In the paragraphs that follow, we unmask the author, dissect the propaganda, and strip this narrative down to the raw mechanics of imperialist deception.

Shannon K. Kingston writes not from Caracas or any frontline of imperial siege, but from the sanitized pressrooms of the U.S. corporate media, trained in the art of ideological obedience. Her byline, like so many before her, is less a signature than a stamp of empire—certified, credentialed, and cleared by the very institutions waging war on the Global South. ABC News, her employer, functions as a high-end node in the imperialist media apparatus: a polished conveyor belt for State Department talking points, owned by Disney—the same conglomerate that launders settler mythology to children while legitimizing regime change abroad. This is not journalism. This is cognitive warfare—psychological operations dressed in press credentials.

Richard Grenell, former Director of National Intelligence, now parades as Trump’s envoy for “hostage recovery”—a title that masks his real role as an emissary of hyper-imperialism. Adam Boehler, a venture capitalist in diplomat’s clothing, oversees the moral theater. And Joseph St. Clair, Lucas Hunter, and others are held up not for their innocence, but for their utility—as leverage, as spectacle, as weapons in the arsenal of lawfare.

The ABC piece is classic imperial ventriloquism—America’s voice, but Venezuela’s crime. It frames the U.S. detainees as helpless civilians “wrongfully imprisoned” while erasing the architecture of violence that preceded their detention. Nowhere is it mentioned that the U.S. has attempted multiple coups against the Venezuelan government. No whisper of the billions of dollars in reserves stolen by Western banks. No mention of the sanctions architecture that’s choked medicine, sabotaged infrastructure, and plunged millions into crisis. To read this article without history is to accept captivity as freedom and self-defense as aggression.

The story deploys emotional manipulation like a scalpel: “a man on a windsurfing trip,” “visiting loved ones,” “unjustly imprisoned.” What goes unspoken is the long history of U.S. operatives entering Venezuela under cover of NGOs, journalists, and tourists—part of a broader pattern of counterinsurgency by soft power. These are not innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time. These are emissaries of empire caught in the act of normalizing domination.

The language is surgical in its deceit: Venezuela is an “authoritarian regime”; the U.S. is simply “trying to help.” There is no reference to anti-imperialist sovereignty, no hint of legitimacy in Venezuela’s right to defend itself from foreign infiltration. Inverting victim and perpetrator, the article performs an ideological sleight of hand—criminalizing resistance while sanctifying the agents of repression. What we are witnessing is not reporting, but weaponized propaganda, designed to manufacture moral authority for the same empire that holds an entire nation hostage through blockade, extortion, and sabotage.

Part II – The Empire’s Mirror: Extracting the Truth from a Manufactured Crisis

To truly understand what is happening in Venezuela, we must begin by stripping the imperial narrative to its bare material bones. The ABC article offers us a few objective facts, albeit drowned in a deluge of framing and omission. We are told that Venezuela currently holds at least eight U.S. nationals in custody—more than any other country, according to the U.S. State Department. We are told that Trump’s hostage recovery envoy Adam Boehler and former DNI Richard Grenell have facilitated the release of several detainees without “concessions.” And we are told that the U.S. government warns its citizens against traveling to Venezuela, painting it as a danger zone for Americans.

These are the kernels of fact. But without context, they are reduced to propaganda fodder—raw material twisted into a weapon. What goes unsaid is far more revealing than what is admitted. No mention is made of the fact that these detentions are occurring in a country that has been under open siege by the United States for over a decade. No reference is made to the U.S.’s own documented use of covert operatives, contractors, and NGO-backed assets embedded within Venezuelan civil society and territory. No acknowledgment of the imperial playbook at work: sanctions, subversion, demonization, isolation.

Let’s lay the groundwork clearly. Since 2015, when President Obama declared Venezuela a “national security threat,” the U.S. has unleashed a barrage of unilateral sanctions that have devastated the Venezuelan economy. This is the sanctions architecture in action—a multi-tiered regime of economic strangulation targeting Venezuela’s oil exports, financial institutions, and sovereign reserves. The Trump administration intensified these measures under the rubric of “maximum pressure,” seizing billions in assets and even attempting to install a puppet president, Juan Guaidó, in 2019. The Biden clique sustained the siege, adjusting its tempo but not its trajectory. And now, the Trump Regime 2.0 promises to reassert American dominion over its self-annointed “backyard.”

This is not a dispute between nations. It is a war of attrition. It is lawfare—imperialism with a judge’s robe instead of a soldier’s uniform. The U.S. has used international courts, asset freezes, and extraterritorial enforcement to wage war on Venezuela without deploying a single troop. Citgo, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, was seized and auctioned off under the guise of “creditor repayment.” Venezuelan gold reserves in the Bank of England were locked away, even as children in Caracas died from medicine shortages. These are not unfortunate byproducts of policy—they are its intent. This is financial piracy, dressed up as law and diplomacy.

So when the Venezuelan state detains foreign nationals—particularly U.S. nationals—it must be read within this terrain of systemic aggression. This is not about random arrests. This is about national defense under siege. The detainees are not backpackers who took a wrong turn—they are part of an unfolding counterinsurgency theater in which even “civilian” presence can serve as cover for surveillance, coordination, and influence operations. That may sound conspiratorial to those trained in liberal civics. But for a nation like Venezuela, which has survived coup attempts in 2002, 2019, and 2020 (including the failed mercenary invasion known as Operation Gideon), this is not a theory. It is historical reality.

The ABC article names Lucas Hunter, a dual U.S.–French citizen detained after allegedly being “coerced” across the border from Colombia. This one detail, if taken seriously, opens a window into the broader hybrid warfare against Venezuela. Colombia has long served as a forward base for U.S. operations in the region. It houses U.S. military assets, hosts DEA and CIA personnel, and shares intelligence with Washington. If Hunter was anywhere near the Venezuelan border, the questions that need answering are not about Venezuela’s actions—but about why he was there, under what affiliations, and with what intentions.

The broader context here is the imperialist strategy of using civilian actors—NGOs, journalists, tourists, aid workers—as dual-purpose instruments of soft power. It is not a new tactic. It has been deployed in Nicaragua, in Iran, in Cuba, and across the African continent. The goal is infiltration, normalization of foreign influence, and data collection. In many cases, these actors are witting participants. In others, they are useful idiots. In all cases, their role is to serve imperial power.

Thus, Venezuela’s detentions are not violations of international norms—they are expressions of anti-imperialist sovereignty. They represent a state asserting its right to control its borders, defend its revolution, and resist recolonization. And this resistance must be situated within the broader global terrain of rising multipolarity. Venezuela is not alone. It is part of an emerging axis of defiance: Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Iran, Yemen, Burkina Faso—nations that, despite different ideologies and systems, share a common refusal to kneel before Washington and Brussels.

It is no accident that these same nations are smeared with the same language: “authoritarian,” “terrorist,” “failed state.” These are not analytical terms. They are ideological weapons. They allow for the deployment of sanctions, drone strikes, indictments, and regime change operations under the banner of humanitarianism. And they allow the imperialist media to portray the aggressor as the savior and the victim as the criminal.

This is the heart of the contradiction. The U.S. wants to make its aggression invisible, its hostages symbolic, and its enemies inhuman. But we must flip the lens. The U.S. is not the victim. It is the captor. Venezuela is not the kidnapper. It is the prisoner breaking its chains. The “hostages” are not individuals in prison cells—they are the entire Venezuelan people, locked into a colonial economic system enforced by bullets, courts, and press releases.

In short: what the U.S. calls “hostage diplomacy” is not a threat to international order. It is a revolutionary assertion of the right to exist—on one’s own terms, under one’s own sky, free from the strangler’s grip.

Part III – Reframing the Narrative: From “Hostage Diplomacy” to Revolutionary Self-Defense

Let us be crystal clear: the only “hostage” situation playing out in Venezuela is the one in which an entire sovereign nation is being strangled by an empire in decline. The narrative spun by ABC News and its imperial sponsors isn’t just misleading—it is a calculated inversion of reality. It is the ruling class of a collapsing hyper-imperialist order projecting its own crimes onto the very people resisting them. In this theater of illusions, imperial enforcers pose as victims, and sovereign acts of self-defense are cast as terrorism.

But our task, as guerrilla intellectuals, is to rip the mask off this spectacle and expose the decaying machinery beneath it. What the United States calls “hostage diplomacy” is, in fact, the sober and necessary exercise of anti-imperialist sovereignty. Venezuela is not jailing tourists. It is detaining operatives—witting or unwitting—linked to a decades-long war of destabilization. And that war is not metaphorical. It is structural, legal, economic, and digital. It is fought with sanctions, with stolen reserves, with NGO infiltration, with coup plots, and with psychological warfare disguised as journalism.

In this reframed narrative, the Venezuelan state is not a rogue actor—it is a fortress under siege. It is a frontline in the global struggle against the dying order of unipolarity, where U.S. dominance once reigned unchecked through the barrel of a gun and the balance sheet of a bank. But that era is decaying. And as it decays, it lashes out in desperation—relying not on legitimacy, but on coercion, blackmail, and the weaponization of “human rights” language to reassert dominance over the Global South.

The truth is that every arrested U.S. national held in Venezuela must be seen not as an isolated legal case, but as a flashpoint in an ongoing geopolitical battle. Their presence is not neutral. Their citizenship is not incidental. They are representatives—whether knowingly or not—of a settler-colonial empire that has declared Venezuela its enemy simply because it dared to govern itself. And when Venezuela enforces its laws in the face of this aggression, that is not “hostage diplomacy.” It is revolutionary self-defense.

This reframing also demands that we examine the deeper ideological stakes. The empire’s propaganda only works if its audience accepts the assumption that the United States has a natural right to move freely across borders, dictate legal norms, and punish disobedience. This is the theology of empire—its divine mandate to rule. But when a nation like Venezuela refuses to genuflect—when it asserts its own laws, its own vision, its own destiny—then it is branded as illegitimate. This is not a question of international law. This is the logic of empire punishing disobedience to the global color line.

So we say: let the empire cry. Let it wail about “hostages” and “dangerous regimes.” Because behind its crocodile tears lies the trembling of a ruling class that knows its grip is slipping. What we are witnessing is not a diplomatic spat. It is a symptom of imperialist decay. The empire is losing control—not just of Venezuela, but of the very narrative it once monopolized. That is why it must scream so loudly when its agents are detained. Because their imprisonment signals a deeper crisis: the erosion of impunity.

And in this crisis lies an opportunity. For the colonized, the working class, and the anti-imperialist forces across the world, Venezuela’s defiance must be understood not as an anomaly, but as a blueprint. It is a reminder that the empire is not omnipotent. That sovereignty is not a relic. That revolutionary rupture is still possible. And that the only path to liberation runs through the very terrain the empire wants us to fear: confrontation, refusal, and the building of dual and contending power.

We must reject the logic of innocence that the empire weaponizes. No U.S. citizen enters Venezuela—or any colonized nation—without being structurally implicated in the system that bleeds it. That does not mean we dehumanize them. But it does mean we de-romanticize them. The goal is not to individualize justice but to collectivize responsibility. And the responsibility of revolutionary forces is not to protect the comfort of imperial agents—but to defend the dignity, safety, and sovereignty of the oppressed.

We must also reclaim the concept of legality itself. The empire does not get to define what counts as “just” or “fair” while operating Guantánamo Bay, drone-bombing weddings in Yemen, and kidnapping whistleblowers like Julian Assange. Its legal apparatus is not a mirror of justice—it is a weapon of class war. And Venezuela’s legal response to imperial aggression must be judged not by the standards of empire, but by the standards of survival, sovereignty, and revolutionary necessity.

This is the lens through which the entire crisis must be viewed. Not as a diplomatic misunderstanding, but as a class confrontation. Not as a violation of norms, but as a defiance of domination. The empire’s narrative collapses the moment we stop looking at the detainees as individuals and start seeing them as functionaries of a collapsing system that is being challenged—by the poor, by the colonized, by the Global South, and by history itself.

To reframe is to reclaim. To reclaim the truth, the struggle, and the future. Venezuela is not holding hostages. It is holding the line. And for that, it deserves not condemnation—but revolutionary solidarity.

Part IV – Mobilization: From Revolutionary Clarity to Material Solidarity

To stand with Venezuela is not to stand with a government. It is to stand with the right of the colonized to exist outside the grip of imperialism. It is to recognize that every headline like this one—every “hostage crisis,” every smear, every sanction—is part of a larger war on anti-imperialist sovereignty. This war is not metaphorical. It is material, economic, legal, and psychological. And if we do not respond in kind—with clarity, with courage, and with organization—then we allow empire to isolate its targets one by one.

We, the revolutionary forces of the Global South and its defectors in the North, declare our uncompromising ideological unity with Venezuela in its right to defend its revolution, secure its borders, and hold accountable those sent to destabilize it under cover of passports and propaganda. The refusal to kneel before empire is not a threat—it is a model. And it is a model that demands not admiration, but action.

There is precedent for this solidarity. In 2019, internationalists formed the Embassy Protection Collective in Washington, D.C.—a coalition of U.S.-based activists who physically defended Venezuela’s embassy from seizure by Juan Guaidó’s illegitimate forces. Theirs was an act of dual and contending power—of carving revolutionary authority from within the colonial core. More recently, the “Sanctions Kill” campaign has exposed the genocidal consequences of U.S. economic warfare, organizing delegations, producing educational tools, and building solidarity across multiple fronts.

But we must escalate. Symbolism is no longer sufficient. As Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and other nations continue to resist recolonization, the burden of solidarity falls on all of us who claim to oppose empire. It is not enough to critique. We must intervene.

5 Tactical Actions for Material Solidarity

Expose and Disrupt Cognitive Warfare: Use social media platforms, public forums, and independent media to dissect mainstream coverage of Venezuela. Turn every article into a Weaponized Propaganda Excavation. Launch targeted campaigns to debunk hostage narratives and redirect attention to the real crime: U.S. imperialism.
Organize Local Political Education: Host teach-ins, reading circles, and forums on lawfare, hyper-imperialism, and the case of Venezuela. Arm communities with historical clarity and anti-imperialist analysis rooted in class struggle and the colonial contradiction.
Interrupt Financial Piracy: Identify and protest the corporate entities profiting from Venezuela’s destabilization—Chevron, Citgo auctioneers, British banks holding Venezuelan gold. Expose their role in this siege economy and organize direct actions to disrupt their operations.
Build Digital Counterpower: Support or create encrypted, independent digital infrastructure to circulate uncensored updates from inside Venezuela. Develop networks of proletarian cyber resistance that operate beyond the reach of U.S.-EU platform monopolies.
Forge New Institutions of Solidarity: Create autonomous organizations that act as material extensions of the Venezuelan people’s struggle. This includes economic support (cryptocurrency solidarity transactions), legal assistance against sanctions, and medical aid pipelines to break the embargo.

Beyond tactics, we must internalize the political stakes. Venezuela is not a failed state. It is a fortress under siege—held hostage not by its own people, but by the very global system that has looted, bombed, and strangled every attempt at self-determination since the birth of empire. The detainees in question are not just individuals—they are embodiments of the settler-colonial state asserting its right to be above all law. And the outcry over their imprisonment is not about human rights—it is about imperial impunity.

To stand with Venezuela is to stand against that impunity. To build the scaffolding of multipolarity. To push forward the revolutionary rupture that must come—not just in Caracas, but in every occupied territory, ghetto, favela, and forgotten corner of this global plantation.

And so we say: Venezuela is not alone. From the Sahel to South Africa, from Chiapas to Chicago, the colonized are waking up. We will not be divided by the passports of our enemies. We will not be distracted by the tears of our oppressors. The age of the hostage-taker crying foul is coming to an end. And what comes next is not reform—it is rupture.

In the words of Walter Rodney: “What this means is that the struggle for political power has to be based on the economic realities of our people… there is no other road to liberation.” Venezuela walks that road. Let us walk it beside them.