Conceptual Model of State Collapse

by Denis Rancourt / January 13th, 2026

Summary

A minimalist conceptual model of the state is presented in which the fundamental basis of state existence and continuity is the flux of produced resources between producers and the needed state apparatus, while contending with powerful domestic non-state actors and foreign challenges. External conditions that reduce per capita production threaten state continuity, and the state attempts to survive by responding. Every decision either destabilizes the state and creates vulnerabilities or stabilizes the state on a road to recovery. The model provides a general framework for making and evaluating state decisions. It also provides predictions for circumstances that lead to state failure. I conclude that long-term state survival is possible, while describing the structural and dynamic challenges that must constantly be overcome.

Basic conceptual model of the state

The state is a living hierarchical structure that manages itself and controls and extracts cooperation and resources from its subjects and from its environment. It can be healthy or sick, and heal or die. The said structure includes the subjects who produce and state agents who are leaders, administrators, lieutenants, soldiers, teachers, analysts, and so on.

A given state is typically robust enough to thrive for several generations. Typical modern period life expectancy at birth of a new state is one or more centuries before being incapacitated by chronic systemic liabilities (Fischer, 1996; Goldstone, 1991; Turchin, 2003).

The state apparatus (or “state” for short, depending on the context) derives its resources from surplus productive work of subjects (“taxation”) and via pillaging operations abroad. In other words, the energy that feeds the state apparatus (i.e., the agents, equipment and infrastructure composing its structural and leadership or managerial hierarchy) is the labour and extracted physical resources provided by its subjects and provided by its targets and holdings abroad.

The state thrives as long as the influx of labour and physical resources is greater or equal to the resources expended to maintain all of its parts. That is, the resources needed to feed and maintain all of its agents (administrators, lieutenants, soldiers, teachers, analysts, and so on), and to maintain its equipment and infrastructure.

Note that I am purposefully avoiding the language of money and loans. This is because all that matters in reality is the flow of resources. Money instruments for coercion and bribes, and that represent promises to pay back, are irrelevant in themselves. The state is able to balance the fluxes of resources or it is not. It continues to thrive and grow or it degrades and fails, irrespective of the paper concepts of “debt” and “savings”. From the state view, its “savings” are temporarily unused resources whereas interest payments on “debt” owed by the state represent sinks of resources, lost for fear of lender repercussions.

We must add that powerful non-state actors coexist with the state and compete to influence or control the state to their advantage while building and maintaining systems of parallel resource extraction. These are the elite, bankers, industrialists, landlords, organized criminals, and so on, who can eventually form coalitions and overthrow the state, or capture the state and manage it while retaining its organizational structure and facade.

As long as the state survives with its rulers in place, it will constantly address non-state actor challenges, in the same way that an organism, to the best of its ability, defends against aggressive parasites. In practice, the state will make many accommodations and reciprocal agreements with powerful non-state actors, rather than expend too much energy combating these persistent forces. In this way, the state will integrate many non-state actors into its hierarchical structure, thus keeping and securing control.

Regarding continued state stability, the state apparatus (agents), the subjects and the integrated non-state actors are embedded in a changing world. One gauge of changing overall conditions is population growth or decline, which in turn depends on many factors, including environmental capacity to provide resources and violent aggression (both intra-societal oppression and war campaigns). Population growth rate is associated with fetal, neonatal and infant mortality rates, and recently in many countries population growth rate is associated with fertility control and abortion rates. Individually experienced biological stress (Selye, 1956) undoubtedly plays a major role in fertility, as do societal norms.

However, contrary to suggestions by several authors, population growth or decline by itself does not destabilize the state. This can be demonstrated as follows.

From a theoretical perspective, let us say under constant division of labour and age structure conditions, if population grows at the same rate across social classes while each subject maintains its per capita capacity to generate resources, then there is no problem. The state simply grows accordingly and the balance of flows of resources (producers to state apparatus) per capita is maintained without friction. Likewise, if population decreases (at the same rate across social classes) while other conditions do not change, then the state only needs to downsize accordingly and the balance of flows of resources per capita is again maintained. Even population-growth-driven increased geographical distance between producer subjects and consuming state agents does not create significant transportation or distribution losses because the state apparatus can be optimally dispersed near production regions.

This is just to say that the total population quantum in itself does not affect or determine state stability.

What then can irreversibly destabilize the state?

A balanced flux of resources is the first consideration irrespective of size. Here is a general scenario under select constant conditions.

State stabilization under conditions of constant trade, technology, structure and population

For simplicity, we first keep as constant:

1. the state’s ability to extract foreign resources (e.g., no wars),
2. foreign trade,
3. technology and resource-production practices,
4. the state’s hierarchical (social) structure, and
5. the population.

In this thought experiment, we then postulate that the capacity of subjects to generate resources diminishes because of external factors not controlled by the state.

Such external factors might include:

• diminishing soil fertility
• diminishing crop yields (environmental or ecological)
• diminishing individual health (biological, evolutionary or epidemiological)
• diminishing personal ability or motivation for productive work
• increasing scarcity and cost of extraction of resources from wells, rivers, mines, forests, wildlife…

We can imagine that these factors would be caused by external circumstances such as:

• unchanging ill-conceived agricultural practices
• extended drought conditions
• solar radiative output variations
• solar constant (perpendicular solar irradiation onto the atmosphere) variations
• variations in large-scale cloud dynamics (e.g., from geomagnetic changes)
• over-exploitation without exploration or regeneration
• volcanic eruptions of toxic substances (e.g., mercury) and dimming aerosols
• invasive spread of insects or other species, including parasites and disease-carrying animals
• development of allergic intolerance and nutritional deficiencies
• inadequate waste disposal and management
• external societal influences (including propaganda, inter-state exchanges, world religions) that affect the population age structure, work ethics, morale, nuclear family structure and dynamics, religious preoccupations…

  and so on.

Note that the latter category “external societal influences” is not strictly external since it is societal. It will typically be a convolution between worldwide or multi-state changes and domestic contribution and response. Todd (2024) has explained the transformational impact of such a change on the Western world, leading to a dramatic reduction in the ability of the Western world states (vassal or not) to produce both competent agents and highly trained subjects.

If we relax the condition of keeping foreign trade constant, then another mechanism that in-effect diminishes the capacity of subjects to generate resources is for a trade deficit to result from external trading partners demanding an increased exchange advantage, which is equivalent to a state currency devaluation in economic terms. This occurs via trade intimidation or when the state’s resources produced for export become less desirable to the outside.

Overall, from all such factors, the consequences to state viability are potentially serious. The postulated reduced capacity of subjects to generate resources implies that less taxes can be leveraged from the subjects. As a result, if nothing else changes, then the flux of resources to maintain the state apparatus becomes insufficient.

The state can respond in any combination of various ways, including the following.

1. The state can increase the taxation rate, meaning that it deprives the subjects of their usual personal resources in order to extract the needed quantum of resources to feed the state apparatus. With this policy, the subjects bear the cost of the externally imposed drop in resource production. This can heighten the resistance against taxation and diminish the subjects’ fitness to produce.
2. The state can decrease resource delivery (aka salary) to its agents and expect them to continue performing the same tasks. With this policy, the state’s agents bear the cost of the externally imposed drop in resource production. This can increase internal opposition to the state hierarchy, thereby reducing service quality and dedication, and it can also reduce the agents’ fitness to perform their duties. This also thereby makes the state less able both to enforce taxation and address the constant non-state actor challenges.
3. The state can increase demands (taxation) on the powerful non-state actors that coexist within the state (the said elite, bankers, industrialists, landlords, organized criminals, and so on). This has at least two effects: It produces destabilizing tensions within the systems of resource extraction controlled by the non-state actors; and it increases non-state actor opposition to the state. This in turn creates conditions for increased competition between non-state actors, likely leading to aggressive takeovers and larger and more powerful non-state actors. (E.g., smaller players with less defences may be regulated and taxed out of existence.)
4. Taking the latter point further, the state can capture the holdings of powerful non-state actors (so-called nationalization) and dismantle non-state structures. This can provide a temporary influx of resources but it does not on its own solve the fundamental problem of resource flux imbalance caused by the externally imposed reduced capacity of subjects to generate resources.
5. The state can sell off or lease its holdings (infrastructure, land, water, intellectual property, and so on) to non-state actors in exchange for resources. This, again, on its own does not solve the fundamental problem of resource flux imbalance caused by the externally imposed reduced capacity of subjects to generate resources. It only delays the inevitable. (Unless, of course, the new influx of resources is successfully used to make game-changing structural changes, such as technological developments or war, which are explored below.) Note that this sell off of holdings is distinct from so-called “privatization”, which is usually an outright giveaway ―under non-state actor pressure and manipulation―having the effect of expending state holdings and resources to contract out the depriving of subjects (point “1”) and of state agents (point “2”) of their usual resources.

The above picture, so far, under the given assumptions of constant conditions (above points “a” through “e”), means that the externally imposed reduction in capacity of subjects to generate resources, if the said reduction is too large and too prolonged, will lead to a breakdown or dissolution of the state.

As long as the external hardship conditions persist, the positive feedback reactions contained in the presented state responses (above points “1” through “5”) are such that the state system will experience a non-linear (accelerating) spiralling down into destruction, and only the accelerating rate of this downfall can be mitigated by state reactions.

State stabilization with unconstrained trade, technology, structure and population

Longer state lifetimes can be achieved, for example, in the following creative and adaptive ways, allowed by relaxing the above-postulated constant-condition constraints (points “a” through “e”).

One oft illustrated approach in history is for the state to raise an army and practice war, slavery and imperialism. If successful, this creates a larger state, an empire. However, the law of balancing fluxes of resources from subjects to the state apparatus (which now includes a maintained occupying army) remains the same, and such an empire can spiral down towards oblivion under a strong and growing pressure of reduced capacity of subjects to generate resources. An empire will generally have a longer lifetime than a small state, but the same law of balanced resource flux applies.

In this version of our hypothetical world which allows inter-state competition, wars and empire building, each state now has a defence burden as part of its apparatus, not only police and soldiers for domestic order.

In addition, having relaxed condition “d” (above) of a constant or unchanging social structure, the state’s administrative apparatus of service agents itself will be driven to grow larger in size and more demanding of resources through careerism and social-class greed, which must also be countered by the state.

Another approach to solving the deficient resource flux problem is for states to practice pillaging, which is the iconic resource supplementation strategy of the Vikings. Similarly, a large state can use protection-racket coercion, a popular method of the USA empire practised against its so-called allies through arms sales, military bases, corporate not-so-free trade and control of the world currency (Rancourt, 2019).

The now relaxed hypothetical rules (of our thought experiment) also allow improving technology and resource-production practices (point “c” above). Our hypothetical state therefore now has many new inventive ways to solve or alleviate its deficient resource flux problem (of externally imposed diminished capacity of subjects to generate resources).

The state, its subjects, and its agents can, under the newly considered relaxed constraints, respond in any combination, for example, of the following:

1. develop improved and sustainable agricultural practices giving higher yields in both food quantity and quality (such as optimized livestock and crop rotations, improved water management methods, imported crop varieties, improved pest management methods, improved pollination strategies, and so on)
2. increase, adjust or redistribute resource allowances to subjects in order to make them more productive (this is partly achieved through taxation policy and is akin to reducing poverty and unemployment, while improving living conditions and increasing individual fitness)
3. develop improved state-run education and religious practices that increase national (state) identity and allegiance, while responding to worldwide changes in values
4. develop improved intelligence systems for rooting out and discouraging subversion and corruption (thus keeping non-state actor ambitions and out-of-state infiltration more efficiently in check)
5. adopt or adapt social and work-environment structures that strengthen state subject and state agent dedication and efficiency (such as highly stratified hierarchies with merit-based assignations) (Note that the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) in China, for example, had a robust merit-based hierarchy for its elite educated state public service agents, see Turchin, 2023.)
6. develop improved and novel state management practices to continuously optimize the mosaic of production specialization and agent duty specialization, adjusting compartment populations as needed, in ways that do not create destabilizing tensions
7. develop improved education or mentorship structures and incentives to transmit and develop technical skills and practices
8. develop improved energy use technology in both mechanization and transportation
9. develop improved and sustainable mining and energy extraction and refinement technologies
10. develop improved land use practices, including specialization based on regional climate and ecological conditions
11. develop improved waste management strategies and sanitation practices

and so on.

In all of this, the state must have breadth and depth in its own increasing and institutionalized knowledge of state management principles and response strategies and tactics. This knowledge base must be state-owned and independent. It should not rely on or be corrupted by non-state actors or foreign influence.

In this way, creative and coordinated state responses to external factors that would diminish the capacity of subjects to generate resources can ensure that the law of balanced resource flux (from subjects to the state apparatus) is dynamically maintained. Surpluses can be used to reduce poverty and increase employment in socially rewarding work, for both subjects and agents, thus strengthening the state and reducing internal frustration against the state.

As long as the state project is alive in the minds and hearts of subjects and agents, then such creative state responses to external factors that would diminish the capacity of subjects to generate resources can continue without state collapse except for the most extreme external shocks.

Regarding keeping the state project alive in minds and hearts, at the psychological level the individual is expected to largely take their identity from their place in the state-structured and maintained social hierarchy. The state is aided by a large biological impetus to belong, as is the case with all social animals, such that early and continued state education and institutions (including state religions) that promote state ideology do well in this regard. With vassal jurisdictions (states in facade only) the empire may provide globalized generic ideologies (Rancourt, 2019). Individuals (especially males) also have a natural impetus to rebel and to seek more power if promotion within the established hierarchy is not forthcoming or sufficient, especially among the elite social classes (Turchin, 2023). This biological impetus drives the growth and multiplication of non-state actors, if it is not accommodated by the state.

In all of this, population need not increase or decrease, although an increased and integrated population in-effect increases the size and power of the state in the world. Likewise, loss of population can so diminish the state’s effective size as to make it more vulnerable to external pressures and threats. Furthermore, an artificial or accelerated increase in state population, if not integrated, can cause an impetus for war, both civil and predatory.

Presently, it seems superficially that large societies that have long historic traditions of intended merit-based state management hierarchical structures (Russia, China) and experience with long-lived recent empires (Tsarist Russia, 1547-1917; Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912) are able to apply the above responses well, whereas states that have more colonizing traditions (Western world) tend to stick with the colonizing model, using both military projection and financial predation.

Can the state survive?

Finally, regarding the cycles of state breakdown that are observed historically from the late-Middle Ages through the early modern period (Fischer, 1996; Goldstone, 1991), it appears that these collapses were due to state failures to cope, in the presence of large intra-state and inter-state pressures, in which competing non-state actors played major roles. There are two main striking features of these cycles, in the particular (mostly European and northern Asian) states studied by Fischer (1996) and Goldstone (1991).

First, state stability periods did not last much more than approximately 100 years (3 generations), up to approximately 200 years; again, for these particular states studied by Fischer (1996) and Goldstone (1991). It seems one century or so was long enough for threatening non-state forces to generate and cause severing changes, while exploiting external conditions such as trade conflicts and war. Elite greed and ambition was certainly a driver, and relative inflation of cost of basic commodities was always a factor (Fischer, 1996; Goldstone, 1991; Turchin, 2023).

These events suggest that the state, like the body of a living animal, has a finite and species-specific lifetime. Once enough damage is accumulated in the process of living, then a non-linear final failure (death) precipitously occurs. Has modern technology and civilizational management experience made a new species of state having a super immune system? It is doubtful. However, as argued above, unlike with the body of a living animal, state longevity is not limited by biological laws, only by unchecked internal rot, conquest or external catastrophic shock.

From another perspective, the state is a social dominance hierarchy and all social dominance hierarchies are subject to a dynamical law of spontaneous creep away from merit-based stratification towards competing mega-players and a totalitarian end point (Hickey and Davidsen, 2019). The loss of merit-based social stratification is the death of a state. The theoretically predicted death by dominance dynamics is postponed by optimal choices of the rules of social-status competition (Hickey and Davidsen, 2019), which the state can control.

Overall, statecraft is the most challenging human endeavour. Long-lived states and empires are possible, where longevity depends more on autonomous internal management than on external factors. Every legislative, legal and policy decision of the state either stabilizes or destabilizes, in the changing environment of external factors.

Second, state stability (and instability) periods were essentially synchronous across continental-scale geographic space. This led Goldstone (1991) to conclude that there must be an overarching common external factor driving all state instabilities: Population growth pressure on natural resources. I disagree. The approximate said synchrony of state stability and state meltdown can be induced by several strong coupling forces that include:

• • • • inter-state trade
      • inter-state technology transfer (including agricultural practices)
      • war and territorial disputes
      • climatic change (e.g., Little Ice Age conditions, 1300-1850)
      • large volcanic eruptions

These coupling forces draw the states into a single dominance hierarchy which will then follow its own whole-system dynamics. Simply put, the states have synchronized cycles because they are integrated parts of one world.

This does not mean that an individual state is not self-determined. Only that its downfall is coupled to the downfalls of other states. Strong states follow their own paths. Failing states fail together.

Acknowledgement. I thank my colleague Dr. Joseph Hickey for a critical review of the paper and several suggestions regarding content and clarity.

References

Fischer (1996): David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History Oxford University Press, p. 536, ISBN 0-19-512121-X (Pbk.)

Goldstone (1991): Goldstone, Jack A., Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, University of California Press, p. 608, ISBN 0-520-08267-2

Hickey and Davidsen (2019): Hickey J, Davidsen J, “Self-organization and time-stability of social hierarchies.” PLoS ONE 2019, 14(1): e0211403. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211403

Rancourt (2019): Rancourt, Denis G., Geo-Economics and Geo-Politics Drive Successive Eras of Predatory Globalization and Social Engineering – Historical Emergence of Climate Change, Gender Equity, and Anti-Racism as State Doctrines /// (April 02, 2019) /// Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5403798 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5403798

Selye (1956): Hans Selye, The Stress of Life, McGraw-Hill, p. 515, ISBN 0-07-056212-1

Todd (2024): Emmanuel Todd, La Défaite de l’Occident, Gallimard Publ., p. 384, ISBN 978-2073041135

Turchin (2003): Peter Turchin, Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall, Princeton University Press, p. 245, ISBN 978-0-691-18077-9

Turchin (2023): Peter Turchin, End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, Penguin Press, NY, p. 352, ISBN 9780593490501 (hardcover)

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Denis G. Rancourt was a former tenured full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a researcher for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association. He has published more than 100 articles in leading scientific journals, on physics and environmental science. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. Denis can be reached at denis.rancourt@gmail.com. Read other articles by Denis, or visit Denis's website.

 

Venezuela: It’s Much More Than Oil

by Don Fitz / January 13th, 2026

As the US openly discussed schemes to add Greenland to its list of conquered territories, it became abundantly clear that “Alternative Energy” (AltE, solar, wind, hydro power) joined fossil fuels at center stage.¹ Corporations which pull the puppet strings of governments are well aware that oil production will cease long before none remains in the ground. When extraction becomes so expensive that it takes more than a barrel of oil to obtain a barrel, then it will no longer be financially viable to pump it out. They must look to AltE.

AltE requires oil for its production. Solar panels, wind turbines, and hydro-dams are heavily dependent on oil to manufacture machinery, operate equipment and dispose of used products. Thus, oil is not separate from from AltE – they are both sketches in the bigger picture of energy production. Greenland is closer to Venezuela than they appear on a map.

But there is something particularly interesting about media coverage of Greenland in January 2026 – there has been virtually no coverage of campaigns directed at the actions of the US and other rich countries to exploit AltE sources in the poor world. Nothing about the brutal working conditions for those digging cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nothing about Elon Musk’s role in the November 2019 coup for Bolivia’s lithium. Nothing said about the military, political and economic muscle used against countries across the globe whose main crime has been sitting atop rare earth minerals necessary for AltE.

It may seem strange that rich world media focuses on Greenland and ignores what has already been done so extensively to the poor world. Actually, it is not strange at all. Explanation only requires one word which the rich world is loathe to apply to itself: “Racism.” Or maybe another word or two: “Imperialism” and “Colonialism.”

No Invasion of Greenland or Africa, Asia or Latin America!

Let’s be clear: the nonchalant way the wielders of power suggest that they may march into Greenland is bad and should be opposed. It is the contrast between the outrage at threats to Greenland versus the complacency toward Africa, Asia and Latin America that reflects the unspoken assumption that plundering lands inhabited by people of color is part of “the natural order of things” – something not worthy of special attention. Wars for Energy are not separate from environmental racism, but integrally connect to it.

In order to understand what rendered Venezuela vulnerable to attack it is useful to review the intensely racist nature of its connection to colonialism. Satya Sagar wrote an article on “Why the Removal of Nicolás Maduro will not stop the Bolivarian Revolution” that lays out the essential role of cultural racism in political struggles for 500 years. This history explains why Maduro’s “removal is mourned by the marginalized while elites celebrate.”

Within a few generations of the Spanish invasion, Venezuelan social structure was rigidly divided between two groups: “Criollos (American-born Spaniards) owned the land and the enslaved. Beneath them lay the vast majority: the Pardos (mixed-race), enslaved Africans, and indigenous peoples, who formed the working class yet were systematically excluded from power.”

Criollo Simón Bolívar successfully led Venezuela’s War of Independence (1819-1825) which was fought mainly by pardos seeking emancipation. Though slavery was abolished after the victory, criollo landowners remained in power and pardos were still disenfranchised.

1989 Caracazo

Class hostility seethed for the next century and a half. Then came the 1989 Caracazo. Venezuelanalysis.com documents that for the 25 years beginning in 1977 Venezuelan income fell by a third, largely due to “liberalization” demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Venezuela was “forced to allocate 50 % of all its export earnings to the IMF.” Poverty mushroomed, leading many in Caracas slums to eat dog food. Soon after a new president took office in February 1989 he announced a new set of IMF-demanded measures. They included a wide range of price hikes, including an immediate 30% increase in public transportation. As mass demonstrations spread, the country saw “disappearances, extra-judicial killings, tortures, raids, and other police abuses throughout the week.” 

Father Matias Comuñas describes torture that was used indiscriminately “A young man was tied to a window with handcuffs by one of the Metropolitan policemen … and with a lighter the policeman began setting the young man’s arm on fire. The kid fainted in pain.”

Gidilfredo Solzano recalls that “the police went above Apartment Block 22, and shoved the bodies in plastic bags, threw them below, picked them up with a truck.”

According to Richard Gott some authorities acted differently. One officer “stopped his troops shooting at protesters, asking each person where they came from, if any were from areas where there are country clubs. When people answered ‘no,’ troops were instructed that the people protesting were their brothers and sisters from the same barrios, and they should hold fire.” Depending on the account, between 300 and 3000 died in the Caracazo. Memories of the slaughter by the rich remain burned in the minds of millions.

Less than a decade later, in 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected president with a promise to use oil revenues to improve the life quality of Venezeula’s poor. Then the unthinkable happened. Rather than leaving campaign promises on the sidelines after being elected (as has happened with so many Latin American politicians) Chávez actually did what he promised to do.

The Social Revolution Is the Core Revolution

Venezuelan elites were less than happy with what they saw. In 2002 Chávez announced that he would “replace some of the bosses who controlled the state-owned oil company.” On April 12, business leaders and dissident military officers, with the aide of right-wing media and the US government, seized the presidential palace and arrested Chávez. This was the 47-hour coup. The coup plotters announced that the head of the nation’s business association would be “president.” In “less than two days…Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans—eager to protect the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution and determined not to go back to the old ways—poured into the streets of Caracas to demand the reinstatement of Chávez.” It quickly occurred.

Changes promised by Chávez increased. Similar to Cuba, ordinary citizens had the opportunity to determine the direction of the country via participation in community councils and institutions including the military, judiciary and even the national cabinet.

Also similar to Cuba, the Chávez government increased the ability of citizens to read and write with a literacy campaign and sought to establish pride in African and indigenous heritage.

Perhaps the strongest Cuban influence was in health care. Doctors from Cuba went to the most violent urban communities and remote rural areas where Venezuelan doctors feared to tread. For the first time in their lives many Venezuelans received medical care and poor students were urged to attend medical school.

The venom of the criollos knew no bounds. The hatred of Cuba by right-wingers in the US and Venezuelans could well have contributed to 32 Cubans among the 80 murdered during the January 3 invasion. It could also contribute to the lack of medical treatment for Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, who was kidnapped with him. When in US custody she went “without medical assistance for almost three days” despite “fractures and possibly a severe rib hematoma.”

The way the Venezuelan elite viewed Maduro is indicated by their reference to him as “the bus driver,” confirming their contempt for anyone whose labor showed that he was not part of the in-group they felt should run the country.

They despised Chávez even more. His appearance was clearly that of a person of considerable African descent. So they referred to him as “the monkey.” These are the friends of Americans who engineered the January 3 kidnapping.

Not Another Caracazo in Venezuela or the World

Both the rich in the US and Venezuela have a preferred champion in the person of María Corina Machado, “the daughter of a wealthy steel baron, educated at elite private institutions.” Machado’s strongest allies include those who engineered the slaughter of the 1989 Caracazo, attempted the 2002 coup against Chávez, and sneered at him as a “monkey.” Her platform of privatizing the oil company (that Chávez nationalized) would leave poor Venezuelans without financing of programs for health care, education, sanitation and food.

Machado’s receipt of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize demonstrates the European desire for Venezuela to return to the business-friendly days of the Caracazo. Those making this award appear to believe that “peace” means that the poor world must willingly sacrifice the necessities of life so the rich do not have to seize it from them.

Would they also believe that Elon Musk promotes “peace” by helping to engineer the 2019 coup against Evo Morales so he could get lithium from Bolivia for a lower price? Or were those who machinated to remove Pedro Castillo from power in Peru? Or should those be deemed “peace” advocates who removed Jacobo Árbenz from power in Guatemala in 1954 or Salvadore Allende in Chile in 1973?

Yes, Wars for Energy (Wars for Oil and Wars for AltE) are parts of the broader wars to extract natural resources from the poor world that have gone on for at least five centuries. Cultural subjugation of people of color is not merely linked to those wars – crushing of the many is a fundamental part of increasing wealth production for the few.

Corporations abhor the environmental revolutions that threatens their profits and scorn the cultural revolutions that demand equal access to resources and civil rights for all. Their politico-military counter-revolution is what globs together their environmental and cultural counter-revolutions.

That is why the solution for the War on Venezuela is more than calling for Trump to be arrested and extradited to Caracas. A genuine solution would require fundamental economic change including (a) reducing manufacture for the war machine and other destructive, unnecessary, and luxury items in the rich world so that (b) it can help the poor world increase the necessities of life. If getting rid of what is unnecessary is sufficient, it would be what many call “degrowth.”²

ENDNOTES:

• 1
  This article is based on comments the author gave at the January 7, 2026 rally to defend Venezuela from US aggression and the kidnapping of its president Nicolás Maduro. Presentations were made by the Universal African Peoples Organization, African Peoples Socialist Party, Organization for Black Struggle and Green Party of St. Louis.
• 2
  A degrowth perspective might suggest that reparations from the US government and oil companies could provide Venezuela with enough revenue to dramatically reduce oil extraction.

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Don Fitz (fitzdon@aol.com) writes for and is on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought where this article first appeared. He has been the St. Louis Green Party candidate for County Assessor and candidate of the Missouri Green Party for State Auditor and Governor. He is author of Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution (2020). Read other articles by Don.

 

Faking It ‘Til We Break It

by Nolan Higdon / January 13th, 2026

“Video showing Maduro allegedly torturing Venezuelan dissidents is going viral, with 15 million views and 81k likes already. The only problem? It is actually a scene from a movie.” This tweet from journalist Alan Macleod captured just one droplet in a flood of disinformation following the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro. As The Guardian noted, AI-generated images of the event reaped millions of views, instantly saturating social media with fiction.

This cycle repeated days later when Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent in Minnesota. NPR reported that “AI images and internet rumors spread confusion,” fueling a rush to judgment that bypassed all evidence. Rather than awaiting verified facts, the public retreated into partisan scripts: Democrats immediately condemned the agency, while Republicans vilified the victim. This reflexive tribalism illustrates a nation that has abandoned the patience of critical analysis in favor of viral, evidence-free outrage. This reflexive rush to judgment is now weaponized by a new tool of deception: the deepfake.

The emergence of deepfakes has introduced a volatile new dimension to the challenge of disinformation. This technology preys upon systemic vulnerabilities: a widespread lack of media literacy, a ‘greed is good’ hyper-individualism, and a techno-utopian ethos that prioritizes innovation over decency, truth, and social cohesion. The result is a fractured digital landscape where ethically bankrupt creators and profit-driven platforms engineered for engagement oversee the steady demise of civil society. This marriage of cutting-edge deception and ancient tribalism has created a perfect storm where the most successful lie wins and the truth is buried under a million algorithmically-driven clicks. To survive this era of manufactured outrage, we must move beyond passive consumption and demand systemic accountability for the engines of our deception.

The Mechanics of Deception

So-called AI is just the latest tool in a Big-Tech shed that fosters and incentivizes propaganda. Studies have long shown that falsehoods spread more widely than truth on social media, not due to individual behavior, but because Big-Tech platforms are engineered to incentivize the spread of false and misleading content.

AI has complicated the problem of disinformation. Seventy years ago, AI was envisioned as the pursuit of human-like cognitive reasoning; today, that label is frequently marketed to describe technologies that bear little resemblance to those original intellectual ambitions. Modern systems of so-called AI rely primarily on massive datasets and statistical pattern recognition. As a result, they are far from intelligent, and limited in their capacity. Indeed, AI bots are prone to getting things wrong and fabricating information: One study found that AI bot summaries of news content were inaccurate 45% of the time. Other studies have found AI fabricating information from 66% to over 80% of the time.

Beyond deploying bots that circulate misinformation, Big-Tech has released AI tools that empower average users to produce highly convincing, yet entirely fabricated, content with ease. For example, more than 20 percent of videos shown to new YouTube users are “AI slop,” meaning low-quality, mass-produced, algorithmically generated content designed to maximize clicks and watch time rather than inform. These types of deepfakes shaped audience interpretations of recent conflicts such as Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine.

After Maduro’s extraordinary rendition, the internet was quickly flooded with AI-generated content designed to persuade Americans that his capture was an act of justice welcomed by the Venezuelan people. These posts showed Venezuelans supposedly “crying on their knees” to thank President Donald Trump for their liberation. One such video, flagged by Ben Norton, racked up 5 million views.

Similarly, after Good was shot and killed by ICE on January 7, 2026, deepfakes circulated online falsely claiming to reveal the face of the agent involved.

However, the image did not depict the actual agent, Jonathan Ross, an Iraq War veteran with decades of experience in immigration and border enforcement, who had been wearing a mask at the time of the incident.

Ross was not the only one falsely identified; immediately after the shooting, photos circulated online claiming to be of Renee Good. In reality, the images were a confusing mix of a former WWE wrestler and another woman who had previously participated in a poetry contest with the actual victim. The digital desecration continued as users weaponized AI to undress an old photo of Good and manipulate images of her lifeless body, generating deepfakes that placed the victim in a bikini even as she lay at the scene of the shooting.

The Shield of Immunity: Section 230 and Beyond

At a time when approximately 90% of U.S. citizens have access to smartphones and 62% use so-called AI, the U.S. government has largely allowed Big Tech platforms and devices to remain unregulated. Indeed, U.S. policy has favored the tech industry for decades, prioritizing immense corporate profits over meaningful accountability for the societal impacts of these platforms.

Thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which protects internet platforms from legal liability for content users post, and a religious devotion to the idea that “what’s good for tech is good for America,” these companies enjoy total immunity. Similarly, Trump recently signed an Executive Order shielding the industry from AI regulations at the state level. These actions stem from a shared conviction among Big-Tech and its allies in government that regulation is the fundamental enemy of progress and innovation. The few regulations that do exist typically place the burden on users rather than on platforms, such as requiring individuals to show identification, which further contributes to the surveillance mechanisms that define these tools.

Classroom Capture: Big-Tech’s Educational Influence

In the absence of a robust regulatory framework, many argue that media literacy education offers the most promise for mitigating the influence of misinformation on the public. In the U.S., media literacy is broadly defined as “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication.” Indeed, media literacy education has been associated with a reduction in users accepting disinformation. However, the lack of a central education authority to establish a national curriculum, combined with opposition from traditionalists resistant to new media in the classroom, has significantly hindered the spread of media literacy education. Most Americans lack access to a formal media literacy education, even though more than three-fourths of the population believe it is a critical skill that everyone should develop.

While efforts to integrate media literacy into the classroom are growing, they are increasingly dominated by the very companies they should be critiquing. Big Tech has leveraged the vast wealth gained from harvesting user data to exert an outsized role in shaping educational standards. By offering content and programs for classroom use, these corporations provide tools of “corporate indoctrination.” Their curricula emphasize the opportunities of technology while framing issues like “fake news” and bullying as individual moral failures, such as a lack of character or excessive screen time, rather than systemic results of the dopamine loops and profit models the industry intentionally built.

In contrast, critical media literacy scholars argue that a robust education must teach students to interrogate power dynamics, ownership, platform design, and profit motives. However, because their work challenges the industry, these scholars receive almost no corporate funding and must rely on nonprofits and volunteer labor.

Despite these concerns, educational institutions are leaning further into corporate partnerships. For example, the California State University system, the nation’s largest public university with nearly half a million students, recently announced a $17 million deal with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. This massive investment in “Big Tech” occurred even as the CSU system was simultaneously cutting faculty and staff positions across its 23 campuses.

From Social Capital to Content Creation

While Big-Tech algorithms are complicit, they are not solely to blame. In the post-Cold War era, the United States concluded that capitalism had definitively triumphed over all other systems, treating the Cold War as a final, accurate contest of ideas. This ushered in a fundamental shift in the nation’s cultural and political compass, famously epitomized by the mantra from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: “greed is good.” Researchers like Robert Putnam, in his influential work Bowling Alone, noted that this shift eroded the social capital and communal bonds essential for a functioning democracy. This hyper-individualistic context has profoundly shaped every generation since, leading to what Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell refer to as a “narcissism epidemic.” The nation has become so individualistic that even some people associated with the left, which historically has believed in collectivism, such as Matt Taibbi and Cenk Uygur, joined conservatives in outrage when New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the word “collectivism” in his inaugural speech this month.

The resulting culture of narcissistic individualism has engendered a generation of ethically hollow influencers and content creators who worship at the altar of Big-Tech, sacrificing collective integrity for personal profit. As commentator Krystal Ball noted, the incentives for these creators are so perverse that even when videos, such as those regarding Maduro, are debunked, users continue to share them for engagement.

Perhaps the most egregious example is influencer Nick Shirley, who went viral for ‘exposing’ alleged fraud at daycare centers in Minnesota. Although the New York Times had previously reported on a legitimate multimillion-dollar fraud case in Minnesota, where the state and federal governments under the Biden Administration were actively prosecuting individuals for embezzling childcare funds, Shirley fabricated his own distorted narrative. He produced videos alleging a deeper, hidden layer of corruption that the government was supposedly ignoring; however, he relied on a blend of fabricated evidence and baseless accusations to support a “cover-up” narrative that simply did not exist. Nonetheless, Shirley’s video has over 100 million views within a week across different platforms. It was reposted by Vice President J.D. Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Beyond merely inspiring copycat content, these viral fabrications were weaponized by the Trump administration to justify freezing federal funding in five Democratic-led states. Under the guise of addressing fraud and systemic misuse, the administration withheld billions of dollars earmarked for essential childcare and social services. Simultaneously, the Department of Homeland Security deployed as many as 2,000 federal agents to Minnesota in a massive law enforcement surge that resulted in Good’s death.

Shirley reflects a broader culture where viral lies are rewarded with wealth. In this environment, deception has become a viable business model because fraud no longer carries a social stigma when used for profit. Instead, it is often rewarded. Just look at Elon Musk. He is one of the richest men on Earth and was a distributor of some of the fake online content following Maduro’s capture. At the same time, Musk is expanding his wealth in the age of AI with tools that spread baseless racist conspiracies such as the myth of white genocide in South Africa, a new version of Wikipedia that refers to Adolf Hitler simply as “The Führer,” and AI tools that enable users to create deepfake images undressing women and children.

Instead of being treated like a James Bond villain, Musk is worshipped as an aspirational figure. He embodies the ultimate “fake it ’til you make it” con man: a self-brander who convinced the world he was a self-made, intelligent inventor, when in fact he relied heavily on $38 billion in government funding, investments from his father, and piggybacked on the creations of truly brilliant inventors.

The Architecture of Hypocrisy: Why One Standard is No Longer Enough

The toxicity of narcissistic content creators and hyperpartisan figures seeking to expand their brands in the attention economy goes beyond the mere production of falsehoods; it is a symptom of a culture seemingly unable or unwilling to shame even the most glaring contradictions.

For instance, many conservatives backed Trump when he labeled the law enforcement officer who shot a woman during the January 6 Capitol riot a “thug,” yet his allies staunchly defended the agents involved in the Good incident. In fact, even before an official investigation had been launched, let alone concluded, Vice President J.D. Vance argued that Ross possessed “immunity.” Furthermore, while these same circles argue that individuals must take personal responsibility for their actions, rejecting the idea that Trump’s rhetoric created the context for January 6, they paradoxically blame leftists for creating the environment that led to Ross shooting Good.

Yet, even these double standards pale in comparison to the reaction following Charlie Kirk’s death in September 2025. In the ensuing months, conservatives frequently bemoaned a lack of empathy and decorum from the left, which criticized Kirk’s legacy of divisive rhetoric while his wife and loved ones were still grieving. However, those same voices, with notable exceptions such as Tucker Carlson, refused to extend that same grace or “decorum” to the wife and loved ones of Good.

Fox News Channel’s Jesse Watters dismissed Good’s claim that she is a poet and mocked her for listing pronouns in her online bio, a relatively mild attack compared to others. Without evidence, former President Trump called Good a “professional agitator.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem labeled her actions an “act of domestic terrorism.” Meanwhile, Vance described Good’s death as a “tragedy of her own making.”

They accompanied these baseless claims with rhetoric directly contradicted by witnesses and video. Trump falsely claimed that Good “viciously ran over” Ross who was recovering in the hospital. In reality, Good’s car did not run over anyone, and Ross walked away from the scene unassisted. Relatedly, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, falsely claimed that multiple ICE officers were hurt. McLaughlin also falsely accused Good of “stalking agents all day long, impeding our law enforcement.” In reality, video evidence reveals that Good had been on-site for a few minutes. She had just dropped off her now-orphaned six-year-old child at school and was not blocking the road; in fact, cars can be clearly seen passing her vehicle throughout the footage. A crowd had gathered because an ICE vehicle was immobilized in the snow. Unlike the U.S. Postal Service, which is famously expected to operate in all weather conditions—under the creed, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”—ICE was visibly struggling to function in the elements.

These fabrications and baseless accusations reveal a profound callousness toward Good’s grieving family, most notably her wife and orphaned child. This stands in stark, bitter contrast to the demands for decorum and empathy that conservatives issued following Charlie Kirk’s death. One would expect a civilized nation to extend basic sympathy whenever a citizen dies: whether they are shot during a chaotic political protest or killed and denied medical attention. Faced with such blatant double standards, the nation must finally direct Joseph Welch’s famous rebuke of McCarthyism toward itself: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?'”

Rhetorically, most claim to view these incidents as tragedies; in practice, however, they operate with blatant double standards: empathy for one side while displaying callousness, or even cruelty, toward the other. A more sophisticated culture would remember comedian George Carlin’s wisdom: “Let’s not have a double standard. One standard will do just fine.”

Conclusion

To restore the soul of a nation fractured by digital fabrication, there must be a collective refusal to continue this cycle of reflexive tribalism. Engaging in a perpetual war of “us versus them,” where truth is sacrificed for the sake of a partisan win, ensures that everyone loses, and the country remains a casualty of its own division. It is insanity to continue entrusting the national discourse to unregulated algorithms and narcissistic creators, expecting that more of the same will somehow yield a different, more unified result.

The time has come to demand a higher standard: one that prioritizes evidence over engagement and human decency over ideological dominance. By rejecting the lure of the deepfake and the ease of the echo chamber, a path can be cleared toward a more sophisticated culture, one that values critical analysis, insists on corporate accountability, and understands that without a single standard of truth and empathy, the foundations of a functioning democracy cannot hold.

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Nolan Higdon is a Project Censored national judge, an author, and university lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Read other articles by Nolan, or visit Nolan's website.