Celebration of the 47th anniversary of the triumph of the Sandinista Popular Revolution in Managua. (July 19, 2026)
In the context of the US ruling elite’s intensifying assault on democracy and freedom around the world, seeking to recover its now vanishing monopoly control of world trade and finances, subversion of free and fair elections has long been a mainstay.
The overall US global offensive aims to consolidate control over US vassal states around the world, militarizing them, while maintaining division among potential rival power structures such as BRICS and undermining powerful adversaries such as the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. This same logic underlies and drives the different varieties of aggression by the US and its allies against any country resisting the US government’s gangsterism.
Integral to the US offensive against political and economic freedom around the world is the manipulative control of public opinion by means of relentless psychological warfare. This involves the most extensive concentrated control possible of news and related reporting in communications media and too of messaging and surveillance via the powerful digital platforms controlled by giant multinational US corporations like Meta, Palantir and Alphabet explicitly and actively aligned with US government intervention internationally. Among the most consequential objectives of this psychological warfare is to allow vassal governments to normalize acting against the political and economic interests of their own countries and peoples.
Latin America and the Caribbean
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the US ruling elite’s war on democracy, which some experienced observers call Plan Condor 2.0, referring to the period of US supported dictatorships in the last century, has used its huge psychological warfare resources to control, manipulate and intimidate voter opinion on a mass scale. Together with the influence of US allied local oligarchies over local judicial and electoral systems the combined effect eliminates any chance of free and fair elections. Last year’s national elections in Honduras and Ecuador, for example, were clearly vitiated both by abuses of the electoral process and by brazen US government interference, which also markedly affected the outcome of Argentina’s legislative elections that year.
This year, similar electoral abuses and interference facilitated the highly questionable electoral victories of pro-US candidates in Peru and Colombia, where the president elect even has dual Colombian and US citizenship. An important regional and international effect of these successful attacks on democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean is that regional integration forums like the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) are rendered ineffective by deliberate obstruction from US aligned governments. Similarly, the region’s vassal governments become more susceptible to US policies seeking to block China’s economic relations in the region, while also promoting the region’s diplomatic relations with the genocidal regime governing Israel.
Nicaragua rejects US electoral meddling
Right now in Latin America and the Caribbean, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua are the main countries forthrightly defending their sovereignty and self-determination, fundamental concepts of the UN Charter and international law. This is the context of the current, highly contrived media and political furor over purposefully misreported remarks by Nicaraguan Co-President Daniel Ortega during last weekend’s celebration of the 47th anniversary of the triumph of the Sandinista People’s Revolution in 1979. Faithfully translated in context, Comandante Ortega addressed the issue of undue US influence in Nicaragua’s elections saying, “…there will be no elections like that again here, no more elections via which they can cheat their way to government so as cheat their way to taking power.”
However, practically no mainstream or alternative media in Europe or the Americas truthfully reported the sense of Co-president Comandante Ortega’s remarks. In Western and allied media, Daniel Ortega’s declarations were reported as stating flatly that Nicaragua will no longer hold elections at all or else that future elections would include only government approved candidates. Currently, Nicaragua’s National Assembly and the country’s Supreme Electoral Council are preparing the relevant legislation strengthening the integrity of the country’s election process to present for review and approval by the National Assembly in early August.
In an interview with the Sputnik news agency, Dr. Gustavo Porras, National Assembly president, explained that the legislative and electoral authorities are working so as “to identify the principal elements and not leave even the tiniest opening which might permit dreadful manipulation by the imperialists and their servants… never again elections serving the imperialists or their underlings who are enemies of our country.” The misreporting of this episode is the most egregious recent example of a long history of malevolent false reporting on Nicaragua by Western and allied news media.
Implanting false beliefs and false memories
Conventional journalism around the world in general, but especially in the US and Europe, long ago abandoned conventional reporting standards to practice outright psychological warfare instead. No one employed in Western media reporting on foreign affairs now would keep their job if they tried genuinely to respect due diligence, cross checking facts and corroborating quotes, acknowledging their own viewpoint so as to offer as faithful a report as possible of any given issue. Practically no Western news outlet offers information on international affairs in a way that allows people to make up their own minds by mentioning contrary sources and interpretations.
Attempts to distribute or even access truthful foreign affairs reporting now face practically universal censorship in most Western and allied media. Internet search engine algorithms filter out reporting sources contradicting dominant western narratives and doctrines. Artificial intelligence is wide open to the mis- and dis-information falsely touted by Western media as good faith reporting. Examples of this reality abound in relation to NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine, Israel’s genocide in Palestine or Iran’s courageous defense against US and allied aggression. For decades now, Western psychological warfare has planted false beliefs in the minds of a mass public who assimilate them as false memories, enabling the West’s sinister ruling elites to constantly dupe their countries’ populations into accepting policies that damage their own interests.
The main false belief inculcated among the peoples of the Americas and Europe has always been the falsehood that their governments seek to ensure freedom and democracy both at home and abroad. But the use of lawfare to exclude politicians as electoral candidates or of the abuse of government aligned media to stigmatize politicians and political parties is normal in Europe, as has long been the case in the Americas. Among the most prominent examples are those of Marine Le Pen in France or the AfD party in Germany or the brazen EU interference in the last elections in Moldova and in Rumania or more recently, in the US, repressive moves against candidates challenging the Democratic Party’s old guard domination of selection processes.
Outright political censorship and arbitrary politically motivated repression too are now the norm across Europe against anyone seeking to challenge government support for Ukraine or Israel. Brave reporters like German citizen Hüseyin Dogru or respected commentators like Swiss national Jacques Baud, among many others have been stripped of basic rights and have no legal remedy. That political repression is accompanied by systemic corruption. Political funding scandals are a fixture of French and German politics while, in the UK, the current orchestrated attack on Reform party leader Nigel Farage has highlighted the gross double standards prevailing in Britain over campaign financing.
In all Western countries the electoral rules permit funding one way or another by big business and wealthy donors blocking genuinely independent candidates and political parties from achieving electoral success. Less blatant but more sinister has been the growing use of data analysis and surveillance to target voters via social media so as as to influence their voting intentions. The mass harvesting and analysis by Cambridge Analytica of the data of tens of millions of Facebook users to try and influence both the 2016 Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election is notorious. That abuse has become even more sinister and sophisticated since then with digital technology billionaires openly treating sovereign governments with contempt as an anachronism, good only for fleecing.
As Abraham Istillarte the Venezuelan communicator has remarked, elections can be heavily and readily influenced by the capacity of algorithms to target individuals via “psychological microsegmentation seeking to make you feel in specific ways and along particular lines so that you come to believe specific things, so that you do indeed think in a particular way and act in a particular way.” Self-evidently, the fusion of corporate and political power in Europe and the Americas has created an ever more clearly fascist status quo fusing corporate and State power in which elections are bought, managed and controlled so as to offer flimsy legitimacy for antidemocratic policies dictated by the ruling elites against their peoples’ interests.
Sandinista youth participate in the celebration of the 47th anniversary of the triumph of the Sandinista Popular Revolution in Managua. (July 19, 2026)
Nicaragua’s authentic democracy
After twenty years in government, Nicaragua’s co-presidents enjoy well over 80% popular approval, with good reason. Nicaragua’s economy has again grown at around 4% a year since 2022. Unemployment is around 3%. Inflation has held steady at between 5% and 7%. The country’s exports increase briskly from one semester to the next. The Central Bank holds record foreign exchange reserves. The country is self sufficient in food production. Education and health care are free, provided by the best equipped public health system in Central America and the region¡s most innovative education system. The country has the best highways in the region and the best citizen security.
With Chinese help, the government is providing thousands of new houses a year for people on low incomes. Russian development cooperation has provided an advanced plant producing vaccines for use across the region and is developing a nuclear medicine center to provide state of the art cancer care. The country has harmonized its medicine protocols with India to facilitate the purchase of inexpensive medicines. The electricity supply now covers 99% of the country, with up to 80% generated from renewable energy sources. 95% of the country has access to drinking water. The percentage of people hoping to migrate abroad has dropped to 12% from a high of 38% in 2021.
The government has achieved these enviable levels of political support thanks to the formidable results of its economic management and commitment to the well-being of all Nicaragua’s families but especially the majority on low incomes. For that reason, the government subsidizes the cost for households using less electricity, the fares for bus services and, since 2022, the prices of diesel, gasoline and liquid gas for cooking. The government also provides assistance to school students at the start of the year to purchase their school needs and ensures a free school meal every day for around 1.2 million school children.
Western governments and media constantly attack Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo because they are focused on the human development of all Nicaragua’s families via poverty reduction, provision of accessible, good quality health care and education, maintaining a strong economy and encouraging a strong sense of national unity and identity. Above all the country has recovered a stable equilibrium of peace and security with a highly respected national police and much trusted and admired armed forces. These are the reasons the US ruling elites and their allies detest Nicaragua. They cannot stand so much Truth and Light from a country devoted to and committed to its Christian, Socialist, Solidarity inspired authentic democracy focused on the human development needs and aspirations of its People.
A naturalized Nicaraguan citizen, Stephen Sefton is a writer and community worker based in Nicaragua since 1994. Besides coordinating the web outlet Tortilla con Sal since 2008, he has supported community education and health programs in and around Estelí, where he lives, since 1996.
