Class act, ‘eh?

(WaPo) — With fresh swagger and volleys of tear gas, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has moved forcefully in recent days to extinguish the month-long protests against his government, sending security forces to clear barricaded streets while he taunts his opponents with new, lurid insults.

Hundreds of national guardsmen in riot gear swept through Caracas’s Altamira Plaza in a predawn operation Monday, seizing the square located in an upscale section of the capital that has been the symbolic center of the anti-government campaign.

On Tuesday, the plaza remained militarized, and although smaller groups of protesters rallied in front of motorists stopped at red lights, they did not attempt to block traffic or rebuild barricades.

Maduro said his forces would continue “liberating” areas occupied by the hardened protesters he has begun calling “Chuckys,” apparently a reference to the campy slasher films starring the red-haired homicidal doll “Chucky.”

“Get ready, Chuckys. We’re coming for you,” he said before sending in the troops. […]

In a speech over the weekend loaded with “Chucky” references, Maduro called jailed opposition leader Leopoldo López, who has been held in a military prison for a month and is accused of fomenting violence, “Crazy Chucky.” Another leading opposition figure, congresswoman María Corina Machado, is also a “Crazy Chucky,” Maduro said.

He then told a rambling, ribald joke about Henrique Capriles, the opposition leader Maduro defeated in last year’s election by 1.5 percentage points, calling him “Chucky Lucky.” The joke’s punch line was that Capriles had been sexually assaulted by a large gorilla while visiting Africa and was lucky to survive.

It was an instance of the “burlesque theater” and “verbal radicalism” that Maduro engages in that seem to mock the offers for dialogue, said students in western Venezuela, where clashes have been the most intense.