Nicolás Maduro’s war against Elon Musk has reached its climax with the temporary blocking of social network X, formerly Twitter, for ten days. The Venezuelan president accuses the US president of spurring a cyber coup. Guilty, he says, of spreading hatred, civil war and death throughout the country.

In a political event, the president explained that he signed the proposal to suspend X, drawn up by the National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel), with the aim of “enforcing the laws.” “Get X out of Venezuela for 10 days, so that they can present their documents and establish the definitive administrative measure, but enough is enough, enough of trying to sow violence, hatred, of trying to attack Venezuela from abroad,” said Maduro, who accused Musk of being part of a “cyber coup” against him.

He has assured that “some day, sooner rather than later, New Venezuelan social networks will be born“to free the country from these people,” referring to the owners of platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and TikTok, which, according to the head of state, function as “multipliers of hate” in the South American nation.

“Let the others take notice, but I was not born on the day of cowards (…) We have to defeat the cyber, fascist and criminal coup d’état“, he insisted. Maduro, announced as the winner of the elections on July 28, has denounced that there is a coup plan to ignore his victory, after it was denounced as fraudulent by the majority opposition, international observers and foreign governments.

In rejection of his proclamation as re-elected president, A crisis has broken out in the country, leading to protests -some of which turned into acts of violence- and police operations that resulted in 24 deaths, according to the NGO Provea, and more than 2,400 arrests, according to the report updated this Thursday by the president.