The declining quality of Venezuela’s propaganda

IN WEEKS of almost daily protests, opponents of Venezuela’s authoritarian regime have found different ways to express their anger. They have held raucous banner-waving marches, a silent demonstration and a sit-in on Caracas’s main roads. At least 29 people have died since March in the worst unrest in three years. Many of these were killed by armed gangs that support the government, called colectivos. The protests persist because the government has made life intolerable: shortages of food and medicine are acute, the murder rate is probably the world’s highest and democracy has been extinguished.

But all is well in the world of Nicolás Maduro, the country’s much-loathed president. While chaos engulfs Venezuela’s cities, his social-media team has been seeking to humanise the dictator with video vignettes that emphasise his homespun origins and simple wisdom. In one video, posted on his Facebook page, he rhapsodises on the innocence of childhood as he perches awkwardly on a playground swing. In another, he admires a panorama of an apparently tranquil Caracas from the safety of a cable-car gondola. Sometimes he takes to the wheel of his car with his wife, Cilia Flores, sitting glumly beside him; this is an occasion to reminisce about his early career as a bus driver.