Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has announced that he will take up arms and start a war if he loses the May 20 election to opposition rival Henri Falcón—who, he said, wants to sell the country out to “the gringos [whites] and Europeans.”

Maduro made the announced in a campaign speech this week, accusing Falcón, of wanting to sell the country out to “the gringos.”

Maduro said the opposition’s “only offer” is to “hand over the country to the gringos and the European oligarchs.”

“If someday a government was in power that intended to hand over [our] riches, I would be the first one to raise the alarm, grab a gun and start an armed revolution with the people, if necessary,” he told a crowd of supporters in Vargas.

“I would be the first one to do it, and call the people to arms.”

According to the Mirriam Webster dictionary, the official definition of “gringo” is an “often disparaging” word for a “foreigner in Spain or Latin America especially when of English or American origin.”

Maduro’s remarks have passed without comment from any of the international “anti-racist” organizations which are always quick off the mark if any white leader anywhere says something that could even be slightly interpreted—even unintentionally—as being “racist.”

However, because Maduro is a Hispanic of mixed racial origins—and therefore above criticism by the “anti-racists,” he remains free to utter comments which would raise all manner of opprobrium if uttered by any white politician anywhere in the world.

* Venezuela is another Third World disaster zone, and the election on May 20 has all the trademarks of an “election” in those countries. Most of the major opposition groups have called are calling for an outright boycott of the election because of irregularities.

The government has sidelined key opposition parties and jailed or disqualified some of its most prominent opponents.

Despite being oil rich, the country is an economic and social mess, with hyperinflation and sporadic food and medicine shortages. At least one million Venezuelans have fled.

Venezuela’s inflation rate, already by far the world’s highest, spiked from 4,966 percent to nearly 18,000 percent in just March and April — a trend that, if it continues, could push the country’s annual rate to more than 100,000 percent by year’s end, economists say.