Enes Kanter Freedom Debuts Anti-Socialist Venezuela Shoes

Enes - Venezuela shoes
@EnesFreedom/Twitter
Frances Martel

Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter Freedom expanded his campaign against leftist authoritarian regimes on Tuesday night, debuting on the court a pair of sneakers in honor of the 6 million refugees created by the socialist dictatorship in Venezuela.

Alongside the sneakers — the first in his campaign to use footwear to raise awareness for the victims of socialism and communism — Freedom published a video from the president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, thanking him for his support. Guaidó, in turn, published a video of Freedom condemning socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and supporting Guaidó, urging the world to use international justice to put an end to the Maduro dictatorship.

The Maduro regime’s mismanagement and violent abuse of dissidents have prompted what experts believe will soon become the world’s largest migrant crisis, displacing nearly 6 million people as of this year according to the United Nations.

Freedom published photos of his shoes, designed by Venezuelan artist Jorge Torrealba, on social media on Tuesday. The shoes feature a caricature of Maduro as a fanged monster, illustrations of Venezuelan refugees families, and flames to represent the destruction of the country.

Freedom also published a video from Guaidó with a message thanking him and asserting that he is “the REAL president of Venezuela.” Guaidó became the president of Venezuela in 2019 after the National Assembly formally asserted that Maduro’s legal term ended. Maduro claimed legitimacy through a presidential election in 2018 that featured record-low turnout, widespread fraud, and violence on the part of socialist colectivo gangs against suspected dissidents. Venezuela’s constitution allows the National Assembly, the federal lawmaking body, to replace the chief executive with an interim president in the event of a “rupture in the democratic order.”

In the video, Guaidó thanks Freedom for being “a voice for millions who are suffering from the oppression of powerful regimes that consistently violate the human rights of the people and humiliate their dignity.”

“I’m here to speak for my country, Venezuela — we are fighting for our freedom, but we also have to join our voices with the people in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Belarus that are now in a nonviolent struggle against authoritarian regimes,” Guaidó asserted.

Guaidó also complains that Maduro retains his power through “fraudulent elections.” Maduro held the last such event in late November; Guaidó did not object to socialist opposition leaders fielding candidates in the sham race.

As Freedom posted Guaidó’s video on his account, Guaidó posted a video of Freedom, wearing the same t-shirt, on his page.

“It is crazy because, even though there is no war happening in Venezuela, the Venezuelan people are suffering as if there were,” Freedom said in the video. “Venezuela is under a cruel dictatorship that breeds hunger and violence headed by dictator Nicolás Maduro, a criminal who is now under investigation by the International Criminal Court … for torturing and killing Venezuelans.”

Freedom also mentions that Maduro is guilty of “corruption and narco-terrorism.”

“We need to take action,” he insists, calling on international institutions to use existing human rights law to “punish” Maduro.

Freedom notably did not use the word “socialism” to describe the Maduro socialist regime, as the Maduro regime identifies itself. Throughout his ongoing campaign against the Chinese Communist Party for its severe human rights abuses against its own people, Freedom has not abstained from using the term. Like Maduro, Guaidó was formerly part of a socialist political party: Popular Will, a full member of the Socialist International. Guaidó left the party in 2020.

Freedom also curiously omitted Maduro’s close relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As a former Turkish citizen and member of the Hizmet Muslim evangelist movement — which Erdogan persecutes and falsely accuses of being a “terrorist” organization — Freedom has faced intense personal persecution from the Erdogan regime, including frivolous attempts by the Turkish government to get Interpol to issue a “red notice” against him. A red notice requests that Interpol member countries arrest the individual targeted.

In years past, before inking trade deals with the Chinese Communist Party, Erdogan presented himself as a free-market, right-wing leader. Following the alleged failed coup against him in 2016, Erdogan began inching closer to Maduro. In 2018, Erdogan announced a trade deal that would “cover most of Venezuela’s necessities” and expressed the desire to fund the construction of a large mosque in the country. That same year, Erdogan invited Maduro to a summit of the Islamic Cooperation Organization despite Venezuela being a majority Christian country and Maduro himself claiming to be Christian (while persecuting the Venezuelan Catholic Church).

“Maduro’s participation in the extraordinary summit of the Islamic Cooperation Organization on Jerusalem is a powerful message to the world,” Erdogan said at the time. “This is a time where there is a lot of Islamaphobia around the world, so President Maduro’s support is very important to teach the world about acceptance.”

Following the 2018 sham Venezuelan presidential election, Erdogan said he was “shocked” that most of the free world did not recognize the results, signaling in particular President Donald Trump.

“Maduro brother, stand tall, Turkey stands with you,” Erdogan said at the time.

Freedom’s pivot to Venezuela follows a month-long campaign to advocate for the victims of Chinese communism — a far riskier stance in the National Basketball Association (NBA) given the league’s lucrative ties to Xi Jinping’s totalitarian government. Freedom appeared on the court wearing a series of sneakers with illustrations condemning the genocide of Uyghur people, cultural elimination of Tibetan identity, live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and others, and a pair depicting Freedom himself holding the severed head of Winnie the Pooh, who dissidents use as an avatar for Xi.

Freedom’s support comes at a difficult time for Guaidó, who long ago lost the support of most Venezuelan people, according to a growing library of nationwide polls. Despite being legally the president of the country, Guaidó has failed to exercise any of this material power in the country, largely due to Maduro continuing to control Venezuela’s military and police. Maduro has not vacated the presidential palace, Miraflores, for Guaidó, and has used the armed forces to physically assault him.

This weekend, Guaidó lost his top diplomat, longtime opposition figure Julio Borges. Borges quit the job claiming that “corruption” and inefficiency under Guaidó necessitated an end to his presidency.

“The interim government has deformed and become a sort of caste and an end in itself, where a space has been bureaucratized that is not fulfilling its reason to be. It needs to disappear completely,” Borges asserted.

The diplomat, who endured a public beating at the hands of socialists alongside Guaidó in 2016, said he was planning to use the National Assembly’s authority to galvanize votes to formally replace Guaidó.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

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