While I would hardly call myself an expert or historian about the political, government and/or broader socialist movement of Nicaragua, I understand that the establishment consensus of the country is that it is a brutal authoritarian country where nobody is free.
It's not even relevant what the government is like in Nicaragua now, what's relevant is that the Americans were absolutely on the wrong side of the Contra-Sandinista conflict in the 80s. I wasn't alive during the scandal to say this with complete confidence, but reading about the Iran-Contra affair it seems like the general consensus was that the Reagan administration seriously fucked up and the stuff we've learned about the Contras (and America's direct involvement with their atrocities) have only made the entire thing seem that much worse. There's no real argument about what came before the Sandinstas either because the Somoza regime was pretty transparently brutal and repressive.
It seems to me like everyone is playing revisionist history and pretending that the Contras were the good guys and that America was just "promoting democracy." Idk, maybe I'm wrong and the narrative about Nicaragua and the Contras has always been terrible, but I'm honestly surprised to see how successfully the MSM is able to push these kind of lies when the Iran-Contra affair was such a major event in the 80s.
NYT slammed Bernie for being at a Sandinista rally in the 80s last year.
I guess the mainstream consensus is now "Contra death squads good actually."
While I would hardly call myself an expert or historian about the political, government and/or broader socialist movement of Nicaragua, I understand that the establishment consensus of the country is that it is a brutal authoritarian country where nobody is free.
Obviously, this far from the case.
It's not even relevant what the government is like in Nicaragua now, what's relevant is that the Americans were absolutely on the wrong side of the Contra-Sandinista conflict in the 80s. I wasn't alive during the scandal to say this with complete confidence, but reading about the Iran-Contra affair it seems like the general consensus was that the Reagan administration seriously fucked up and the stuff we've learned about the Contras (and America's direct involvement with their atrocities) have only made the entire thing seem that much worse. There's no real argument about what came before the Sandinstas either because the Somoza regime was pretty transparently brutal and repressive.
It seems to me like everyone is playing revisionist history and pretending that the Contras were the good guys and that America was just "promoting democracy." Idk, maybe I'm wrong and the narrative about Nicaragua and the Contras has always been terrible, but I'm honestly surprised to see how successfully the MSM is able to push these kind of lies when the Iran-Contra affair was such a major event in the 80s.