Mr. Maduro believes like the late Mao Zedong that elections are for fools and that true political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. After spending several years confiscating firearms from his fellow citizens, he is now promising to rearm those loyal to him so they can help him remain in power. Last week, Mr. Maduro pledged to arm 100,000 of his loyalist supporters so they can help save his revolution and warned those who oppose him that he foresees deploying as many as a million armed supporters against his adversaries if that proves necessary.

In an earlier era, Germany’s Nazis came to power with assistance of armed thugs known as “Brown Shirts” who threatened, attacked and often killed political adversaries who dared question Adolf Hitler’s views. When Hugo Chavez was elected in 1999, he created and fostered a similar organization known as the “National Bolivarian Militia” made up of loyalist civilian volunteers willing to do his bidding. These militiamen have ties both to the government and to groups of thugs known as “Colectivos” as well as murderous motorcycle gangs described by the nation’s vice president as the “iron knights” of the Bolivarian revolution.

Mr. Maduro’s modern Brown Shirts have attacked synagogues, driven thousands of Jews to flee the country and are now targeting Catholic churches deemed disloyal to their maximum leader. They spend most of their time, however, harassing journalists less than fully committed to the Bolivarian Revolution and are deployed en masse against pro-democracy demonstrators who dare to take to the streets to protest the nation’s slide down the slippery slope to totalitarianism.