Fidel Castro, the scourge of the United States and the people of Cuba for nearly sixty years left the stage of history last night at age 90. The response of the world was predictable. Those that saw him as a romantic revolutionary figure who “stood up” to the oligarchs and brought “equality” to Cuba eulogized him as a unique and transformative leader. Those that saw him as a dictator who sought singular power and nearly brought the world to nuclear war, saw his death as overdue and good riddance. For the Cubans who had suffered under his oppressive rule and managed to escape his grasp the emotions were more direct and less philosophical – it was spontaneous celebration in the streets of Miami’s Little Havana.
The twentieth century was full of despots whose propagandistic manipulation of mass media brought them impressive cover for their dark and vicious suppression of those who might obstruct their total control. The slaughter of innocents and opponents was often sublimated by a press enthralled with the trappings of revolutionary rhetoric. The New York Times, consumed with the energy and zeal of rallies they observed in Germany, on November 22. 1922 reported on an emerging radical named Adolph Hitler :
“Several reliable, well informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism is not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.”
The use of mass rallies, uniforms, poster art, and movies to express the enthusiasm of the collective, caught left leaning investigative reporters into reporting the narrative, rather than totality of the cost of such collective impulses upon individuals. The violence and enforced directives regardless of the human toll were looked upon as a necessary side product of any desired collective societal change to overcome the obstruction of the “less enlightened”. The Berkeley Daily Gazette January 1, 1931, caught in the glow of Stalin’s ruthless but, in their mind, necessary transformation of Russia into a Soviet State, reported:
“The Soviet Union can look upon a year of enormous achievements in the direction of industrial expansion and collectivization. Translated into human terms, it means that the economic ways for the 160,000,000 were fundamentally changed. At the same time it was a year of costly sacrifices, sharpened internal conflict, food shortages, and political pressure.”
Fidel Castro had learned all the appropriate lessons of the tyrants before him. Socialism, to succeed in attaining complete power, must always have a youthful, revolutionary, and collective face that implies an inspirational and idealistic message of equality that will mask the reality of stolen freedom and failed collective economic production. He rode into Havana in 1959 a uniformed revolutionary, armed to defend the revolution, and never took his uniform costume off in public for decades. Parades and armies followed, patterned after the “citizen” brigades of the the French Revolution’s Jacobins and later the Directive, exporting Cuba’s revolutionary zealotry eventually into Latin America and southern Africa. Offspring like Sandinista Brigades of Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega and the beret wearing soldier for socialism Venezuelan Hugo Chavez attempted to export the Castro melding of militarism for the cause and distracting pageantry with some propagandistic success but similar economic destruction.
For all these despots, the literal truth for their people of economic collapse and massive oppression of individual freedoms in the name of collectivist victories of so called “universal” healthcare and education. The result each and every time was the accumulation of massive quantities of wealth in the hands of a very few, and the economic calamity to the masses, hidden behind a ruthless “protection” of the revolution behind a military and secret police domination. The socialist heroes Castro and Chavez became billionaires, their generals millionaires, living in exclusive enclaves, while their people struggled for existence. In each case, “liberal” celebrities jockeyed to have their picture taken with the dictators, to connect with the “juice” of revolution and laud the “equality”, only to retreat to their own mansions and private planes supported by their own success in their own “unjust” society.
And always, the crushing of individual incentive, personal liberties and freedoms, the destruction of families, the starvation of the culture beneath the artificial global message of “social justice”. Despite the clamp down by left leaning media sublimating objectivity for the “truth” as they wanted to believe present, the real truth always managed to bleed out. In Castro’s case, it was the non-stop incredibly dangerous whatever the odds exodus of his people across the Florida Straits to the beacon of individual freedom they perceived the United States to be.
The collectivists will always be enthralled with those who are willing to be ruthless for the “greater good”. Socialism hates the individual, who keeps getting in the way of the equality of the greater good, sold in propagandistic and pseudo-religious overtones, such as ‘global warming’ and ‘social justice’. Individual expression is a dangerous weapon for “other”, that exists to reinforce the inequality of innovation, creativity, and success that are seen as non-progressive.
The finality of death is unfortunately often the only weapon to remove these dictators from the money and idolatry that supports their nonsensical economics and totalitarian hold on their people.Mortality offers the one universal weapon of the oppressed that sometimes gives them the crack of weakness necessary to overthrow the rickety dictatorial structures of the overlords and restore a nation’s humanity.As so often in the past, there is nothing about these dictator’s staying on history’s stage way past their welcome that is worth celebrating in the least.
The President elect put it most succinctly for all of humanity that has suffered under the Castros of the world. Fidel Castro is dead!
If only we could believe the collective oppression that has stood in the way of humanity for the past 110 years might be on the way across the River Styx with Fidel. Good riddance indeed.
Postscript: To understand what Castro and his ilk created in Cuba, read City Journal reporter Michael Totten’s “The Last Communist City”. Its worth your time to the last word.