Socialist dictator of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro made the bizarre claim on Thursday that Generation Z is an “invention of Western psychological warfare laboratories and is implemented through social media.”
“Generation Z is a creation of the Western media that dominates Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. They want to shape a generation,” Maduro said during an official International Space Congress meeting hosted by the socialist regime in Caracas.
“They bombard those kids with the same content and mold them into Generation Z. Who invented that? Western psychological warfare laboratories invented it and implement it through social media to control the minds and expectations of young people while they continue with their plan to impose themselves as a new empire,” he continued.
Generation Z, or Gen Z, is the term widely used to describe individuals born around 1997 and 2012. Although the term mainly refers to Americans born in that time span, the term has been tacitly adopted by other countries as a demographic category.
Venezuelans who classify as Gen Z have effectively not known any other form of government in their country beyond the socialist regime, first led by late dictator Hugo Chávez and now led by Nicolás Maduro. Venezuelan Gen Z individuals have not known democracy in Venezuela, as Hugo Chávez became elected president in December 1998 under the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) party.
Years later, in 2007, Chávez merged MVR with other allied leftist parties and organizations to form what is now known as the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), consolidating his socialist regime, which Maduro presently leads. Chávez publicly announced that Maduro would succeed him as dictator of Venezuela on December 8, 2012, a day that the Maduro regime marks as a pseudo-holiday known as the “Day of Love and Loyalty to Commander Chávez.”
The Venezuelan dictator asserted that there is no such thing as “Generation Z” in Venezuela, as it is a “creation of Western media.” Instead, Maduro said, the country has a “Great Generation” made of teenagers between the ages of 14 and 16, which he described as Venezuela’s “atomic bomb” for the development of Venezuela’s future and its scientific hotbed.
“Wake up, guys, don’t let yourselves be manipulated. You are the great generation. Great in science, music, culture, sports, politics, and life. Forge yourselves as a great generation for humanity. For humanity,” Maduro said during the event.
Despite Maduro’s recent claims that Gen Z is a “Western invention” and criticism of social media, the dictator has spent an undisclosed number of resources expanding his presence across social media platforms. Most notably, his efforts appear to mainly target Instagram and TikTok, as “X” (formerly known as Twitter) remains banned in the country since the aftermath of the fraudulent 2024 sham presidential election. Maduro has since then replaced Twitter with Telegram. Despite the ban on Twitter in Venezuela, Maduro regime officials use the platform to issue false accusations against the United States.
On Instagram and TikTok, the dictator frequently posts videos that attempt to portray him as a “cool” and relatable “president” — including meme-like videos referencing his most recent attempt at speaking the English language.
This week, the Maduro regime published content on social media showcasing carefully curated footage of the Venezuelan dictator interacting and playing with children and teenagers in official events across Caracas.
“They call them Generation Z, but who says so? The same media that manipulate imperial power in the world. In Venezuela, it is the brilliant generation, aged 12 to 22,” Maduro said in an Instagram clip published Wednesday.
“Geniuses of the new Venezuelan identity. That is the brilliant generation aged 12 to 22. The brilliant generation is the generation that is setting the tone for the great Venezuela and the great new Venezuelan identity, based on principles of honesty, ethics, solidarity, creativity, and creation, which is the way to exercise the true mental independence that we are building in the new generations,” he continued at another part of the video.
Although Maduro claimed that Venezuela’s “Genius Generation” will build the nation – or rather, his regime’s – future, the reality is that Venezuela’s education system is in an extremely dire state as a result of decades’ worth of socialist mismanagement. Provea, a Venezuelan non-government organization, warned in September that one of the most critical problems in Venezuela’s crumbling education system is a shortage of specialized teachers and the lack of new recruits, citing the extremely low wages that the socialist regime pays to Venezuelan teachers as one of the main reasons. Enrollment in teacher training institutes plummeted from 116,000 in 2008 to 30,000 in 2022. Provea documented that graduation rates for education professionals fell by 80 percent in the past ten years of Maduro’s rule, going from 17,000 graduates in 2008 to less than 2,000 in 2022.
“The shortage is particularly acute in scientific fields such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. An alarming statistic is that only one mathematics teacher graduated from the latest class at the Caracas Teacher Training College,” Provea wrote.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
