...and they are all 100% sure that Cuba is an authoritarian dictatorship, Fidel was the Caribbean Hitler, and that everyone in Cuba despises their government and yearns for freedom, but they are just afraid to speak out about it.
Any of discussion of Cuba I've tried to have with US Americans - online or IRL - has gone the exact same way. It doesn't matter the evidence I show or how I clearly know the most about Cuba by far amongst my friends... I'm wrong. Cubans aren't free and the Communist Party has an iron grip on the country and they rule by fear and intimidation. It's just something every US American knows. And oftentimes I'm talking with people who are normally all "science is so cool" types who allegedly believe in "evidence".
Yes Cuba has elections but obviously they're rigged... so I explain how they have sealed boxes and all sorts of safeguards in place for a clean election. And how there are no legit international orgs that claim Cuba's elections are rigged (not like Cuba has to play by western liberal democracy rules anyway). Doesn't matter. Obviously it's all rigged and how dare I defend an authoritarian regime in the first place?!
It's just weird how quickly US Americans shut down when a country like Cuba is discussed and when they obviously don't have a clue what they're talking about. Like, everyone - left and right - likes to talk about how corrupt the US government is. But their brains can't let them even start to question US propaganda. I guess it's not surprising really, I think most Americans don't really think the government lied about Iraq, for example. Even reasonably intelligent and allegedly open-minded people I know just know that Cubans aren't free and gommunism no food, and they will never consider any evidence to the contrary.
And this is all hilarious to me given how US Americans have a comically bad understanding of countries outside the US.
I think what's even crazier is that some of the same people who might actually recognize that the US government has a habit of lying their ways into imperialist wars and interventions throughout it's history also eat up all the current lies as if there were no precendent for all this shit.
I argued with a DNC-worshipping West Wing lib back in college about this, and he legitimately argued that "we used to [overthrow democratically elected governments], but we don't anymore." I was still a radlib back then (didn't even think to bring up Libya or Honduras, though I was trying to make the case about Ukraine--not sure how accurate my sources at the time were, but I suspect the US was indeed involved behind the scenes on that one), and it still drove me up a wall.
The US was 100% involved in Ukraine, there's some transcript of a call that some State Dept ghoul (Victoria Nuland IIRC) talking about who they wanted to install in government.
Every time I bring up the Nayirah testimony or Iraqi WMDs to a liberal, they always have a reason why "this time is totally different,
trust me broyou fucking tankie"
It just goes to show how deeply saturated the United States is with propaganda
Cuba is bad because everything you've ever seen about Cuba is about how bad it is
The government doesn't even have to say it, you just absorb it directly from your education or entertainment or just from general culture
I don't think the CIA's protests in Cuba are going to achieve much of anything, at least inside Cuba. Aside from reminding the American populace that communism is bad, I don't really see their purpose.
In conversations I've had with left-liberals over the years, they really have a hard time talking shit about Cuba, especially since the corporate media is (as we all know) totally obsessed with Russia and China and, until a few days ago, had spent years pretending that Cuba does not exist, at least since Obama's visit to the country and his supposed moves toward lifting the embargo which I believe Trump reversed almost immediately. I've told several of my liberal friends that the world should be like Cuba—minus the blockade—and they agree. I think figures like Fidel and Che are also fairly popular (and probably the most popular communists in the USA). Cuba is already among the best places to be on Earth and really would be a communist utopia without that fucking embargo, which is why it's still there—Cuba still scares the American bourgeoisie. Honestly I would live there if I could, although I wouldn't want to contribute to gentrification or weigh the Cubans down.
When it comes to political conversations, I'm trying a new kind of PMC approach—using the PMC's obsession with credentials against them. I have liberal friends who are nurses, computer programmers, and who come from other professions. None of them know a tenth as much about politics, theory, and history as I do. Politics is one of my many jobs—it really is my life. I'm going to try to tell my friends that I don't tell them how to be a nurse or how to be a computer programmer, because I honestly know next to nothing about those fields. Likewise, they should probably do more listening than talking when they have political conversations with me.
I don't know about this approach so everyone here should feel free to criticize me. It seems super bourgeois. As Marxists we should always listen to workers. But when American workers betray the workers of the world, I think it's also time for us, as Marxists, to remind American workers that they should be in solidarity—particularly with a truly incredible achievement like the Cuban Revolution.
I don’t know about this approach so everyone here should feel free to criticize me. It seems super bourgeois. As Marxists we should always listen to workers. But when American workers betray the workers of the world, I think it’s also time for us, as Marxists, to remind American workers that they should be in solidarity—particularly with a truly incredible achievement like the Cuban Revolution.
Gary V told me I just have to work harder to have a better life and communism killed 6,000,000,000.000 people
I don’t know about this approach so everyone here should feel free to criticize me. It seems super bourgeois. As Marxists we should always listen to workers.
To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.
Same shit they pull with China and not knowing any first hand sources in the country who speak the language. Hell, :zenz: made a career out of this. Just claim to know that in your heart of hearts that the people are oppressed and you're good to go.
as a US born American who has literally traveled (not tourism, actual travel in rural areas and done homestays) Americans are so ignorant about Cuba that i want to leave the US and live almost anywhere else, because there is a 1000% chance the people there won't be as ignorant about Cuba. reading about the nuts and bolts of embargo prior to and during my trip there was a revelation to me, personally, about how much the US diplomatic mission hates the popular cuban revolution.
even from the perspective that the US is a stupid shitty empire, the extreme and vicious nature of the embargo against Cuba is unique compared to all the other bullshit sanction shit the US pulls to fuck with states/peoples that don't "play ball" with our empire. the US has a blinding rage towards the existence of revolutionary Cuba that has only mostly grown with time. it's the kind of hate that one only has for an entity which presents an existential threat. it's fear. we are not afraid of the cuban military or cuba's economic might. there is no material fear of cuba.
i think the fear is based on the notion that Cuba sets an example for any smaller nation willing to try an alternative to US hegemony, but there is also a grievance against Cuba for "stealing" itself from US-based capital.
something that occurred to me while i was there, looking at the thousands and thousands of once Baller McMansions for elites that were turned into tens of thousands of apartment buildings for regular ass people to live, cook and watch telenovelas between chill walks around the neighborhood to visit with friends and neighbors, unhassled by police and landlords and employers.
a lot of places could totally use a fresh coat of paint and maybe some basic plaster work, which are scarce materials under the embargo. but if you look at the fundamentals of a place like Havana, it's obvious it was absolutely the crown jewel of american empire: a playground for the super rich to spend their winters, waited upon by near-slaves and provided with fine tobacco and spirits grown by slaves. and the insurrection took all that shit away from the gringos and their sycophants.
that experience also gave me a completely new layer of understanding Florida. having lived there for 25+ years, i kinda thought i had it sorted. but seeing what was taken from the US by the Cuban Revolution made it clear that florida's post war hyper-development was executed to make Florida the consolation prize, for having lost Cuba: a place where organized crime runs rampant and is allowed to do so, because it promises to crush any labor movement and keep the wages of the service sector at the bottom. Florida is tied with Arkansas for having the oldest right-to-work laws. it is a playground for wealthy Americans to vacation, winter or retire, waited upon by the desperate eating food grown by people living in shipping containers.
toll roads everywhere, shitty schools, and grifters behind every public resource. it's not coincidence that Trump's physical resort-base is Florida.
I would absolutely love to hear about any of your experiences in Cuba, I'd really love to spend time there (like, significant chunks of time) one day...
There a lot of people who claim to be leftists who fall for 50% of us propaganda and laugh at libs for falling for 75% of it and conservatives for falling for 100% of it.
They don't think they actually need to research things and can somehow rely on the lies they've been told and other peoples less than 280 character posts
There a lot of people who claim to be leftists who fall for 50% of us propaganda and laugh at libs for falling for 75% of it and conservatives for falling for 100% of it.
Its very difficult to understand what is real and who to trust when you're buried this deep in the imperial core. There are layers to this shit. It took me decades to parse through it all, and the more I see the more I'm left doubting.
We routinely rip on guys like Stewart and Colbert as useful idiot libs and occasionally joke about Will, Matt, and Felix being deep-fake CIA cut-outs. But when you've got a guy like Noam Chompsky, a guy who should absolutely know better, repping Joe Biden... Really hard to see the bottom when you keep diving deeper and it only gets darker and murkier.
Agreed, unlearning most things that are accepted as true is difficult and the more you find out is false the more it seems like you're going crazy
It's another aspect of American exceptionalism - the US is the only country whose population can stand against its own oppressive government. Everyone else lacks the American Spirit and needs their help.
Honestly propaganda around American exceptionalism (which very much includes our narratives about the Official Bad Guys) is so strong that unlearning this stuff if you’re someone who is indoctrinated into it is more akin to internalizing that a religion isn’t true than it is a matter of reasoned debate. Not a super original point I know, but helps me stay sane in this brainwashed shithole.
A religion is a perfectly apt comparison. As someone who used to be a Young Earth Creationist evangelical, I'm very familiar with all the things people do to try and preserve their beliefs in the face of irreremovedble evidence. Like thinking that the center of the earth used to be a big ball of water, which would explain where all the water came from in Noah's flood...
Should just literally throw a book at people like that. Americans really just don't know how much they are propagandized to unless you give them something that actively causes them to question what they were taught.
Even then, they might just deny it cause the cognitive dissonance is too much
"The elections are rigged because they're held under a dictatorship." "What makes it a dictatorship? Why, the elections are rigged!"
Broke: Cuban elections are rigged because the government is Communist.
Woke: American elections are rigged because the government is Capitalist
Bespoke: American elections are rigged because Trump should have won
essential Links in such Conversations :
"Castro executed People" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD2QDij85XU (the fucking nerve to say that as a American)
Cuba and Black liberation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_Cuba
