Not just street crime, but the kind of reign of terror that went on during the French Revolution, or Lenin's red terror, or Stalin's extended horrors, or Castro's paredon, or Mao's cultural revolution, or Pol Pot's Cambodia. A sort of late-stage, demonic killing spree in the interest of consolidating the hellhole into an absolute dictatorship. Theoretically, the tottering dictatorship then is embraced by relieved citizens of these murder-ravaged hellholes to give thanks for stability' over the bloodshed that came before. It's a sort of collective battered woman syndrome and aspiring tyrants know very well that it works.

In Venezuela, it's the next thing on the socialist menu, and it's extremely ugly.

PanAm Post (hat tip: Babalu blog) has a report stating that low class Chavista loyalist known as 'colectivos' - hooded, armed, motorcycle thugs - have started beheading dissidents for supporting Venezuela's acting president, Juan Guaido. They're not only engaging in those depraved acts, they're desecrating the bodies of those they murder and giggling for the cameras afterward. Like ISIS, or perhaps even more accurately, Mexican or Colombian drug lords, they take a special pleasure in filming themselves and their prey and then posting those videos on 'social' media to terrorize the rest of the nation.

PanAmPost writes:

In 2014 the whole world was scandalized when several videos of the terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS) showed their members beheading prisoners. Today, in Venezuela, equally frightening events are taking place, but this time is not ISIS, but the thugs who serve Nicolas Maduro who are beheading those who oppose the regime During the last few day a video has spread all over social media, and via WhatsApp groups, in which two thugs loyal to the regime show the heads of two men they have just beheaded as trophies. Among laughter, while showing both heads, they say: “Look, this one and this one were supporting President Guaidó.” Like ISIS, the intention of these groups of thugs loyal to the regime record and disseminate these terrorist acts to intimidate and send a threat to the followers of President Guaidó. They seek to sow fear among Venezuelans.

This is the socialist playbook, played all over again, same as happened in Russia, Cuba, Vietnam, China, North Korea and any country that ever came under the communist boot. Terror arrives after the regime exhausts itself yet refuses to give up power.

Let's hear Bernie Sanders or Rep. Ilhan Omar try to defend that one. Or Sean Penn. Or Oliver Stone. Or the Maryknolls, whose literature in the oughts was loaded with praise for Venezuela's socialist turn. Bernie would slink away of course and claim he was always talking about Sweden. Omar would be stupid and brazen enough to try to defend it, mouthing lies as a cover. None of it is going to work as this terror - unlike the past ones - finds its way onto the Internet.

It's ugly activity indeed coming on top of all the horrors Venezuelans have been through already, and it might not be the last one to come, either. This site has the horrible videos PanAm Post couldn't bring itself to link - the beheadings, and other colectivo crimes - a girl lying in the street after being shot or run over and colectivos (and some inhuman creature in a uniform) standing over her until she dies. Thugs shooting randomly into the Blade Runner-style ruined cities. Thugs taking a man to shoot him. Thugs surrounding a woman for no apparent reason and beating her with truncheons in the street as a gun goes off. Thugs entering an apartment with guns drawn to get someone. These aren't reenactments or witness accounts, these are death squads filmed in the act, in events as they happened, often by horrified, screaming witnesses. The screaming Solzhenitsyn once wrote about.

This kind of terror is often a prelude to civil war as some citizens try to fight back, which is frankly, their imperative if they don't want to die quietly. It happened in revolutionary France (which the Russian socialist revolution was openly modeled on), in the communist Soviet Union including its vassal states, in communist Chile, in Cuba...and it may happen in Venezuela.

Unless something is done from the outside to stop this, the spiral downward, into the socialist hellscape, will continue. For now, we are at the beheading stage and there will be a bacchanal of beheadings now as Chavistas seek to seal their absolute power. It's going to get very, very ugly.

Image credit: Twitter screen grab