Chavez' officials, like Venezuela's own Elizabeth Warren, Karlin Granadillo, claimed "the law of supply and demand is a lie", and her socialist party nodded in unison to this ideological rhetoric:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201112003937/http://www.bloomb...
Only an echo chamber can allow this kind of economic illiteracy to proliferate.
But I'll bite. There's lots of legit criticism of Chavez. However, democracy is not one. He was popular. I believe his elections were legit.
I also think it's a mistake to mix up Chavismo with the US right/left axis. Venezuela is not an extension of the United States. You can get into trouble when you mix up American political contrasts and inject them into places that work very differently. Chavez did not have anything in common with US democrats.
He did seize private oil companies for the state. He had a lot of propaganda with his TV program and whatnot, and bullying and demonizing opponents. But he was popularly elected. I think even your short sentence above is an exaggeration. (This is not my first consideration of the man. I've listened to him in his original Spanish.)