Collective power: Molly de Blanc, Nicolas Maduro & Debian become defendants in same federal courthouse

20:30 Tue, 03 Feb 2026

If the open source astroturfing law suit goes to trial, we may see characters like Molly de Blanc arriving on the doorstep of the same US federal courthouse where Venezuala's Nicolas Maduro is about to face trial.

Remember, it is Molly de Blanc who attended FrOSCon in Germany and told us:

We can use our collective power to push others

Reports about the regime of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro describe a similar philosophy. The Heritage Foundation is one of many organizations to publish some comments on the similarities:

Maduro and Mamdani: Two Collectivists Check Into Public Housing

...

In the first volume of Capital, first published in 1867, Karl Marx wrote that by acting collectively, individuals would cooperate to create “a new power, namely, the collective power of masses.”

Only that “new power” just never materializes. Instead, we always get penury and repression. As Marx himself recognized, “All combined labor on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing authority.” That authority is the state, which, because it owns all the means of production, also owns the media and can quash dissent.

Venezuela itself is Exhibit A of the problems with collectivism and a command economy. It has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, over 300 billion barrels. Its oil production, however, is less than one million barrels a day, about one-fourth what it produced in 1970.

Controlling the media and quashing dissent is a common theme in rogue open source "communities" today.

In 2012, Sarah Gail Hunter, University of Georgia, published a masters thesis on the topic "Love and exploitation: personality cults, their characteristics, their creation, and modern examples". She chose three collectivists, Putin (Russia), Castro (Cuba) and Chavez (Venezuala). On Chavez:

Control of Media

In order to control his image and his sole claim on the Bolivar myth, Chavez worked to control the Venezuelan media. The power awarded to him, both by the constitution and by his own popularity allowed him to do just that and shut down independent media outlets. An old and very popular television network, RCTV, was closed in May of 2007. Later, another independent station, Globovisión, was closed down. After this, any media outlet that opposed Chavez was either intimidated or closed. Chavez eventually gained a media empire of television networks, radio stations, and newspapers that were used for Chavez propaganda and to discredit the opposition. Chavez now owns a majority share in the one opposition media outlet (Krauze, 2011). Freedom House also rates Venezuela as “Not Free”

One of the more repugnant talks Molly de Blanc gave us was on the same theme, "Enforcing" the Code of Conduct gaslighting, in other words, shutting down independent media and enforcing groupthink on the population.

When Molly de Blanc encouraged the use of "collective power", she gave us a slide with a hand-drawn diagram of three users pushing a developer.

When three or more people gang up on a small business owner in America, they commit the felony crime of civil disorder. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate for her to explain her plans in federal court.