Venezuela Was a Top-5 Economy. Then Came Socialism.

Germania Rodriguez was 11 years old when her family fled Venezuela . Her mother, one of the regime's most aggressive journalist critics, had just been falsely accused by Hugo Chávez's government. Two decades later, sitting in NYU lecture halls, Germania became a Bernie Sanders supporter anyway. In this episode, Germania joins The Curious Middle to explain how someone who watched socialism destroy her home country still fell for it in an Ivy League classroom — and what finally broke the spell.   We get into why the New York Times and Hollywood have a decades-long blind spot for left-wing dictatorships, the actual difference between Norway's social democracy and Venezuela's socialism, why "free stuff" isn't the same thing as the government seizing the means of production, and how Cuba spent 70 years exporting revolution across Latin America. Venezuela went from a top-5 global economy in the 1960s to nearly 9 million refugees and 70%+ of households in poverty in under 30 years. Germania breaks down how that happened, and why the same playbook is showing up in New York City politics right now.   Timestamps:  0:36 – Fleeing Venezuela at 11: her mother's persecution by the Chávez regime 2:00 – Quitting the Daily Mail after refusing to stay silent about the NYT calling Delcy Rodríguez a "moderate" 3:09 – Media bias: is it ideology, or access  5:17 – The NYT's long history of covering for communism 6:29 – Hollywood's blind spot: Danny Glover, Chávez, and a Peabody-winning documentary <a class=