The overthrow of what used to pass for democracy in Venezuela (such as it was) is now complete. The opposition party in that country has been effectively ousted from any legislative power and Nicolas Maduro has established himself as a tyrant in complete control of the country. Those who dare to speak out against him are quickly tossed into prisons or simply disappear. Any protests in the streets are quickly put down by armed militias supporting the ruling party. But aside from some individual sanctions by the United States and a few other half-hearted measures in Europe, not much is being done about it.

As we’ve discussed here in the past, Maduro isn’t in too much peril because both China and Russia have stated that they don’t intend to punish the dictator or participate in any actions against him. But it turns out that Venezuela’s ruler has more friends than just those two nations and some of them are in surprising places. Simon Tegel at NBC News has a dismaying analysis of other powerful political figures who have either refused to condemn Maduro or, in some cases, openly defended him.

In Peru, Manuel Dammert of the socialist Broad Front party actually hailed Maduro’s actions as, “an epic democratic accomplishment.” Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, considered a frontrunner in next year’s presidential elections, actually blamed the protesters for the violence they met at the hands of the militias. Brazil’s Workers Party is supporting Maduro and Spain’s populist Podemos party, which is poised to possibly take power in 2018, has defended the Maduro regime as being legitimate.

But the biggest shock, at least to me, is the support Maduro is receiving from the man who is predicted by many to possibly become the next Prime Minister of Great Britain if Theresa May falls from power over all of the Brexit unrest. That man is Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

But the most prominent European “Chavista” sympathizer is Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the United Kingdom’s main opposition party, Labour. Long an admirer of the Venezuelan model of “21st Century socialism” and once dismissed as a fringe leftist, he is now widely viewed as a likely prime minister after Labour’s unexpectedly strong showing in the June election. Corbyn has consistently avoided any clear condemnation of Maduro’s authoritarianism or acknowledgement of the Venezuelan government’s catastrophic policy failures. In echoes of U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial comments about the neo-Nazi violence in Charlotessville, Corbyn has been accused of drawing a false equivalence between Venezuela’s opposition protesters and the security forces trying to put them down by equating “the people who have died, either those on the streets or security forces that have been attacked by people on the street.”

Just how insane has our world become these days? And how deep are the roots of socialism and the globalist left around the world, allowing such attitudes to be so prevalent?

What’s happening in Venezuela right now is nothing short of a catastrophe. People are literally starving to death and being urged by their own government to hunt rabbits and feral cats and dogs to sustain themselves. The nation’s rich farmlands which once produced enough crops, poultry and beef to feed their entire continent now lie mostly empty thanks to the mismanagement and corruption of the socialist regime. Disease runs rampant as medical supplies are rationed out only to the ruling elites. People are terrified to speak openly against their government for fear of winding up in a dungeon.

These are the wages of socialism and it’s happened so many times over the course of history that it boggles the mind to think that people could still support it. And yet there is still a sizable mass of politically powerful groups around the globe who are willing to turn a blind eye to the suffering in Venezuela and cheer on the socialist cause.

America was supposed to serve as a beacon for freedom and prosperity. We remain the shining example of how a free people left to their own devices under basic rules of law can succeed and rise to become a global superpower in a few generations. But much of the world is still mired in the belief that socialism or communism is somehow more “fair” to the people. A great man once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It appears that insanity is built into our genetic makeup around much of the globe.