The answer is probably not, because I doubt I'm going to have any response that deflates a lifetime of American culture and propaganda, but I'd like to know if y'all have made any success.
I ask because earlier today a person I know came to me, asking if I knew about what's going on in Cuba. I answered there's a kind of small anti-government protest alongside much larger pro-government demonstrations. This was immediately flipped as proof of Cuba's tyranny, since a large pro-government demonstration means everyone's afraid of being jailed or executed. I tried mentioning Cuba has a pretty popular government, the vote on the constitution seems proof of that, but that also just gets flipped as proof of tyranny.
I don't know, it was frustrating and I otherwise respect this person. Have y'all been having trouble?
You can't, because you can't understand Cuba in a vacuum. To actually understand reality there, you also have to understand Xinjiang and Iraq and Nicaragua and Iran and Grenada and Haiti and Chile and Vietnam and Korea and Gladio and Paperclip etc etc.
The reality is simple: US foreign policy serves the interests of capital, and always has. But Americans are the most deeply propagandized people in history, so literally everyone other than the left (and even then...) believes very strongly in unreality. This unreality is that US foreign policy - despite the occasional oopsie-doopsie - is generally good and well-intentioned because the USA is a good country. And because we're a good country, when wer'e told by the government and media that someone else is bad, we believe them. And if America is good, then on some level that makes me good too.
So you're not going to convince someone of the truth about Cuba unless you get them understand the broader strokes of US foreign policy. Unless someone is shaken from their belief that the US is generally good and the government and media is trustworthy, nothing you say about Cuba (or China for that matter) will stick.
Welcome to Communism. To understand it here's a library of books, a masters degree in macro-economics, a masters degree in history, and a bunch of mostly-unsolved problems in the field of resource allocation and socio-political organisation.
"No luck finding them WMDs?" is my go-to for people repeating state department propaganda. There's a lot of evidence of that lie you can easily point to. Hopefully once you demonstrate how the government and journalists lied to get us into one war it knocks something loose in his head but probably not.
If they're interpreting everything as evidence of tyranny, call that out directly.
In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
:parenti-hands:
of all the people who are always correct, Parenti is the always correct-est
honestly the yellow video is worth watching in its entirety. parenti is a very skilled, very compelling orator.
I was going to say "look up yellow parenti on youtube and search for the Q&A at the end" but yeah, that's pretty much it
Been having similar difficulties communicating my views on the Xinjiang/China "discourse." If you figure something out let me know
imo Cuba is much easier to talk about. Focus on the embargo, libs can easily figure out that it's cruel and immoral.
Yeah I agree, it's a lot more clear cut and straightforward. China's harder talk about because there's a lot of context, historical specificity and nuance that has to break through decades of propaganda and chauvinism.
Off topic, but I listened to this lecture about China's programs in Africa at work today. I feel like she did a good job explaining the nuances and historical context and she clearly knows what she's talking about.
Oh, I do know the answer to that one. I ask them about what the USA has been doing in Afghanistan for the past 20 years and how they felt about it. That's usually where to start.
Yeah good point. It's just hard to get around the Whatabout Wall.
I'm sorry, I don't want to get into a China struggle sesh or get banned but I will never go bat for China like I will forCuba.
You give a shit about "tyranny"? How about the tyranny of the biggest military on the planet preventing you from properly trading for food and medicine and whatever else?
You literally can't say Cuba's government or economy don't work properly until you actually let them work as intended. Lift the embargo first, then we'll talk.
That's actually pretty close to how I responded, but this person apparently is friends with a few Balseros and cited their experiences. It just became a loop of "Cubans wouldn't have to live in poverty or flee from it if the embargo ended" then "No, they're poor because of communism" and back and forth.
Show them the state department memo about Cuba someone posted here, it's pretty explicit about both the motivations of the embargo and the popularity of the government.
Say the best thing the US can do is end the Blockade. While you can say you don't think there is a dictatorship, you can say that if there is a dictatorship, ending the blockade will prevent the US from being used as an external threat to justify their power.
To play devil's advocate, ending the blockade could be a disaster for Cuba. The Cuban government could liberalize like the Russian government did in the 90s. Like what if Guantanamo was made into an American Hong Kong or West Berlin? All that foreign capital in Cuba would challenge the power of the communist party and it wouldn't be long until we saw a McDonald's in Havana.
Ending the embargo doesn't mean that Cuba will immediately have free trade with the US, much less free flows of capital. It just means that the US would no longer attempt to prevent Cuba from conducting transactions with other nations.
Cuba could end up allowing foreign capital (like China), but that's a political issue, and one for the Cuban people to decide on. Personally, I trust the Cuban and the Communist Party to protect the revolution, like they've done for decades.
Being able to trade isn't the same as engaging in completely free trade like you just described. NOw, any company that wants acces to the US market refuses to have any form of interaction with the island, or else they get massive fines, or might even lose theor acces to it altogether. Like this Dutch bank and this French bank for example.
Talk about how the minute it happened the news and president whipped up a regime change discourse. Point out that American media is obfuscating the situation and ask them to think about that.
Then just answer their questions, it'll let you talk about Batista and the embargo in a way they'll listen.
What's the best thing Americans can do in general to support Cuba?
Yea you can tell them to fuck off! Jk,. I would point to Haiti why are these 2 countries in crisis one backed by the United States and the other embargoed by the United States? Because we want to make Cuba another failed US capitalist satellite state. It's proven by history we do not give a shit about dictatorship, or the general welfare- we only care about our foreign policy objectives. Look at our so called allies Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India to name a few. The people you're talking to probably know as much too. People believe what is expedient to them and their material interests.
Oh yeah. Should have listed Columbia in those US allies- implicated in assassinating Moise. Very ironic because Columbia has had huge protests in the past few months and we heard fuck all about it. But, once again our foreign policy objectives are to maintain and increase US dominance and exterminate any ideological opponents. That's why its Cuba instead of Columbia, Bolivia, Chile, Haiti etc.
Whenever I saw the Colombian protests mentioned on Spanish language MSM it was talked about much in the same way BLM is talked about by the MSM. It was like "LOOK AT ALL THE LOOTERS AND RIOTERS." And "The police say blah blah blah." And then tucked all the way at the end of the segment "Oh yeah, this is why people are protesting, whatever."
Coincidentally enough this person I was speaking with earlier today is of Colombian descent.
I did mention the huge protests in America last summer, which did give them some pause to reconsider. I might try going with that angle in the future.
I tell libs that the average Cuban or Chinese person is much, much more politically active than the average American.
Ask them what THEY specifically can do to make the situation better, even if they believe the situation is genocide or whatever ridiculous stories imperialist media is pushing. Help them come to terms with the fact that the only thing they'd be doing by agitating and spreading those stories is encouraging a coup, and then if the history of countries being couped into fascist dictatorships far worse than anything they had before isn't enough to convince them, nothing is.
Nope they don't know they're already mentally dead and there's not much point telling them
