Why Are Canadian Professors Legitimizing State-Led Repression against Venezuelan Students?

On May 4, forty-four years to the day that National Guard troops in Ohio stormed Kent State University and opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War, an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of International Affairs and Global Development published an article dismissing state-led repression against student protesters in Venezuela.

According to Susan Spronk, the international media has erroneously assailed the public with “images of ‘innocent’ student protesters — mostly from the academic bastion of the Venezuelan elite, the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) — being brutalized by state security forces.”

Spronk’s article, published in the Bullet (a periodical of the Socialist Project), questions why the press should cultivate sympathies with “right-wing” protesters when the legitimacy of the Venezuelan regime is — quite clearly for Spronk, if less so for others — backed by a valid electoral mandate.

Why, indeed.