Why are people getting all bent out of shape over Castro dying?

[bravenak]

Like Whoa! He lived a long life and died probably in a nice bed, better that those dictators in Libya and Iraq got. I mean, it's cool if some folks here were super in love with a communist dictatorship, but many of us won't miss him very much if at all.

But I am curious as fuck to know why some folks are all upset and pissed at those who are happy to see him go.

What was it about Castro that made you love him so much? Please tell us.

[William769]

1. I was called a sick troll for what I said about Castro.

I pretty much said the same thing about Castro as I did about Ronald Reagan. One less evil bastard in the world.

[bravenak]

6. I found that kinda over the top response to you strange as hell.

Plenty of evil bastards that I wont miss, like Cheney. Wont miss this guy either.

[RKP5637]

52. Some in the world are evil, they are just plain evil, and now one less! n/t

[ucrdem]

2. Complex character.

But the part that was idealistic was inspiring.

[bravenak]

10. Idealism is always inspiring to the half that feels inspired

Reality always sucks in comparison. I never like dictators myself, just because I hate seeing power in the hands of one guy and his minions.

[ucrdem]

15. It couldn't last but for a while Cuba was a model of egalitarianism.

A Utopia without classes or private property where all prospered and no one lacked. It was kind of before my time but the vibes lingered into the 80s in used bookstores on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley etc. "Rome is an ideal" says Commodus' sister in Gladiator and Fidel's Cuba was kind of the same deal.

That's the short version. . .

[JI7]

16. wasn't that because of the backing of the soviet union ? and once the soviet union started to fall

apart..................

[ucrdem]

18. Yes there was that.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

29. "Communism" and "Shortages" are not synonymous.....

That's part of the propaganda.

Gee, you are Capitalist and isolate a nation based on it being something other than Capitalist and your isolation causes shortages which you attribute to their non-Capitalistic system.

Ignore China.

That doesn't fit the argument.

[Riftaxe]

3. Some people have a natural aversion to

abuse, torture and summary execuctions...but your a hail one aren't you dear?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

4. Anti-American and or Anti-Western equals Fucking Awesome Revolutionary Bro

It's part blind admiration for anyone who hits the right rhetorical notes and part the culture of self-flagellation that sees any intervention in an idealized foreign dictatorship as imperialist and no different than King Leopold's pillaging of the Congo.

[Riftaxe]

5. Somehow in my lifetime none of that has applied

which has stopped not a bit of it. Sure we can celebrate Cuba, but that requires ignoring a lot, and that just not includes American policy.

I am glad the evil bastard is dead, may his victims find peace

[bravenak]

7. Truly, and it is a shame

[Riftaxe]

8. Do you have anything you would like to relate

to the relatives of the torture victims that were executed or should we pretend he was not evil?

[bravenak]

9. I'm not ACTUALLY indicating that he was not evil, just wondering why we have folks here attacking

those of us who are not SAD to see him gone. I was just on another thread remarking at how easy he had it in the end when out of NOWHERE i was castigated for being mean to Castro. I found that interesting and wondered why they love him so. So I made this op to ask them.

[Riftaxe]

11. On that we can disagree

I am not sad to see him gone, but the suffering, and pain he took such a joy in is at least dead for now.

[Ken Burch]

13. There's no good reason for anyone in Latin America to be "Pro-American".

All we have ever said to the Americas is "we have first claim on all profits that can be taken from your lands, and you owe us obedience".

The man was a dictator. He was also the first leader in Cuba's history to treat the working and jobless poor as human beings, created a universal healthcare system that is still a global model, and made free university education a right.

So it's not as simple as saying he was a bastard and that's all there is to it.

If you want to make sure there are no more Fidels, then start calling on THIS country to allow other countries in the hemisphere to establish egalitarian societies by democratic means, and to leave them the hell alone when they do.

If Sandino, Arbenz, Bosch and Allende(to name just a few)had not been crushed by our nation's sense of imperial entitlement, there'd have been no Fidel, no Che, maybe not even Ortega or Chavez.

Learn from that.

[Riftaxe]

14. Good lord!

What articles are you reading? it was a brutal regime, you will never reconcile that load of bullshit with facts.

But i do have popcorn aplenty, explain people who fled before '82.

[Ken Burch]

19. If we had left Cuba alone, those things wouldn't have happened.

It was never our place to try to order any Latin American country around.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

21. How far back are you going?

If it wasn't for virulent anti-Catholicism of the time Cuba would have likely become a US state after the Spanish American War.

[Ken Burch]

25. Something the Cuban people never wanted. They wanted independence.

Which we promised to then after the Spanish-American War(we also promised it to the Philippines but broke that promise, too, for a half-century, turning both places into colonies when we had no right to do so).

And it wasn't anti-Catholicism that would have prevented Cuba becoming a state, even if the Cuban people had wanted that-it was the fact that the majority of Cubans were either black or of mixed African-Spanish ancestry. There was no way any area with a nonwhite majority would have been granted statehood, in 1900 or today.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

17. There is no good reason to celebrate any crackpot dictator for their spoken word performances

nor for performing some of the basic functions of the state.

We fought communism and we were right to.

[Riftaxe]

22. ...

.

there can be no meeting of minds, some people believe evil is evil some will discount it if because it is "old". The thing is there is no old evil until the last person to pass on the message is dead as well...something Castro tried to short circuit.

Sorry DU, too many of us remember Castro to forgive or even forgive you for apologizing for the bastard.

[Ken Burch]

23. Few, if any of the "anticommunists" wanted a decent, progressive future for the world.

Few wanted the poor to have any hope, or for the imbalances in wealth to be corrected. Many supported indecent systems like apartheid.

And in the name of "anticommunism", democratic states we had no right to attack...Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Honduras under Zelaya-were targeted and replaced with regimes that brought nothing but misery. And we looked the other way while Spain was chained under Franco for thirty-six years(during most of which we sold the p;d bastard weaponry to oppress his own people with).

If we wanted to fight "communism",WE should have been the ones helping to liberate the world's poor from oppression and exploitation, so that the "communists" couldn't offer them anything . Instead, all we did was to further repress them and force them to choose between going "red" and having no hope at all.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

27. Is that what the Soviet Union offered?

No, they offered starvation.

[Ken Burch]

41. No. Deep repression, but not starvation.

Before Stalin, there was at least the possibility of the Soviet Union NOT being a police state.

And Cuba was never a carbon copy of the Soviet model, anyway.

Our country also devoted itself to crushing every non-Stalinist model of an alternative to greed-do you condemn THAT record?

[Zen Democrat]

36. "Anticommunists" is a euphemism for "Fascists" - I met a few of them in the 60's.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

39. I like Daniel Ortega.

[Ken Burch]

40. I did, too. But he borrowed to some degree from the Cuban model

And the main reason he did was the U.S. treatment of countries in the hemisphere.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

42. ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=8306483

[Ken Burch]

46. I agree with what you said there.

n/t.

And I posted THIS, as well:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028305971

[JI7]

20. who is "we" ? thare latin americans who have become US Citizens

and there is a reason people don't risk their lives to leave the US for Latin America but it does happen the other way around.

[Riftaxe]

26. The memo must be late

not all things are economic, even in Panama or near territories. Although with a Trump ass as president, we might have to start differentiating between everyone...or we could ignore the prick.

I can say it once, and it not encompass the suffering but Castro is the evil man you put your kids to night with tales of, for good reason.

[Ken Burch]

48. Most of the Latin Americans who have become American citizens are from Mexico

or Central America.

It's not as though life in the REST of the hemisphere is better than it is in Cuba.

In most of those places, unless you're a millionaire, its worse.

Not that Cuba is Utopia...it's just that's not as simple as saying "communism is worse than everything else, no matter what".

[malaise]

31. And how many times did the US try to kill him

Good post

[Recursion]

38. Though the Cuban interventions in Africa and South America were somehow fine

That's the part I never got

[Ken Burch]

50. At least those invertentions were meant to liberate people from oppression.

They happened in places where there was no hope whatsoever of change by democratic means".

No US military intervention anywhere since 1945 has had truly positive intent.

Even Kosovo was mainly about geopolitics and sending a message to Russia.

Forcibly switching countries to market economies never makes life better for the majority in those countries. The result is always a massive increase in inequality, a huge number of people being forced to lose everything for no reason, the rise in the grassroots and institutional bigotry that are always linked to capitalism(a system that cannot tolerate a bigotry-free society).

[MicaelS]

44. You nailed it.

The cult of "The US is the source of all evil in the world", is still alive.

[Riftaxe]

12. It is likely you wil get a split response on this

those over 65 will celebrate and those
under will show their ignorance.

[JI7]

24. it's not an age thing

[a la izquierda]

32. And you're showing that you...

only think in black and white.
I'm 39 with a PhD in modern Latin American history.
History is way more complicated than ignorance vs celebration.

[Grey Lemercier]

33. nice ageism!

I really take offence at your statement that anyone under 65 is more capable of ignorance than those above it.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

28. Most of what we know about Castro is propaganda.

[stonecutter357]

30. one less communist dictatorship.

[Thinkingabout]

34. Even though he turned everything over to his brother I was happy

To see him out of that position also. Fidel left a bad taste in my mouth for years.

[annabanana]

35. There will be "history" written today.

In the meantime we will watch the battle of the narratives. . .

[Zen Democrat]

37. With Trump gaining power, Cuba is looking better and better.

[SaschaHM]

43. Sometimes I just don't understand DU.

This Castro praise thing is one of those times.

[flamingdem]

45. Taking the bait to say that Castro exists because the USA has dominated Cuba for two

centuries. I've been to the island more times than I'd say and know that it's about 50/50 in terms of support for Fidel and the Revolution. People take the long view, they have relatives who lived under Batista. Of course many people, especially younger people, despise Fidel and the Castros and they have plenty of good reasons for this. But it's not as monolithic as the media would have you believe. You will see this at the funeral, many love the man.

Fidel supported AfroCubans and they did and many still do support him. All you have to do is read about what life was like for the poor of color in Cuba in the 1950s and you'll gain sympathy for what Fidel was all about.

---- Now going back a couple of centuries and you can understand why Cuba has had to fight so hard for it's independence and most of all FOR ITS IDENTITY with the USA only 90 miles away:

Black unrest and British pressure to abolish slavery motivated many Creoles to advocate Cuba's annexation to the United States, where slavery was still legal. Other Cubans supported the idea because they longed for what they considered higher development and democratic freedom. Annexation of Cuba was repeatedly supported by the US. In 1805 President Thomas Jefferson considered possessing Cuba for strategic reasons, sending secret agents to the island to negotiate with Governor Someruelos.

Secretary of State John Quincy Adams

In April 1823 US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams discussed the rules of political gravitation, in a theory often referred to as the "ripe fruit theory".

Adams wrote, “There are laws of political as well as physical gravitation; and if an apple severed by its native tree cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only towards the North American Union which by the same law of nature, cannot cast her off its bosom.

Adams described Cuba as “incapable” and described its separation from Spain as inevitable. He specified the islands gravitation towards North America rather than Europe. As he explained that, “the transfer of Cuba to Great Britain would be an event unpropitious to the interest of this Union.

[bravenak]

51. Very interesting

I see it might be a good time to expand my view of Cuba. I have an automatic response to dictatorships, left or right, they suck. Too rigid in my view, not enough dissent is allowed, not enough freedoms. But yeah, better to just read up on it more in depth and not just rely on anecdotes of people who fled. I know how we are as a nation and how we misuse power, I will never ever deny our privilege.

[flamingdem]

53. I will send you some good information - balanced I think

I'm pretty balanced about it and am not a fidelista but the historical perspective is muy importante to get past the rhetoric and understand the why of Fidel. After all we don't want to agree too much with Marco Rubio!

When I'm home I will send you some stuff unless you'd rather not get that into it.

[bravenak]

54. That's cool, thank you, I will read it

[flamingdem]

55. If you get CNN right now they're doing a Cuba program with Anthony Bourdain

Recommended!

[flamingdem]

56. There are parts of it online

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4lvpc9

[bravenak]

57. Thank you

[flamingdem]

58. Here's one: Black Radicals Owe a Great Deal to Fidel Castro

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/11/black-radicals-owe-a-great-deal-to-fidel-castro/

The Cuban leader, who died Friday, could be considered a founding father of the black radical movements of the 1960s. He is remembered not only for his in-your-face defiance of the United States but for creating a third-world Marxist nation that stood as a beacon for the oppressed during the 20th century.

Fidel Castro meeting Malcolm X in 1960.
The Harlem audience was determined to cheer everything Nelson Mandela said, which meant that ABC Nightline anchor Ted Koppel had to accept that he was at a disadvantage—what he called “a hometown crowd.”

It was 1990, and black America had been in the throes of Republican leadership for a decade. The Cold War had not begun to cool. Mandela—viewed then as a revolutionary leader of the African National Congress trying to destroy the white-minority racist apartheid regime of South Africa, not the cuddly teddy bear of reconciliation of a democratic one-party state that would define him later—had been recently freed thanks to a worldwide movement on his behalf. A critic in the crowd asked tough questions about Mandela’s support of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

I remember Mandela’s words as if it was yesterday: “One of the mistakes that some political analysts make is to think that their enemies should be our enemies. That we can’t and will never do.” The crowd exploded in applause for almost a minute after the first sentence. When was the last time a black leader sounded that intellectually decolonized on national television? Since Stokely Carmichael in the late 1960s?

“We have our own struggle, which we are conducting,” Mandela patiently explained, “… and our attitude toward any country is determined by the attitude of that country to our struggle.” More thunder from the crowd.

[bravenak]

59. That was an awesome article

I did not know most of that stuff about him. I can see why america did not like it one bit.

[flamingdem]

60. To understand what went wrong the book Back Channel to Cuba is a good read

‘Back Channel To Cuba’ Reveals A Hidden Relationship Between The U.S. And Cuba

From the clash at the Bay of Pigs to the Cuban missile crisis, American-Cuban relations have historically been perceived in as aggressive and confrontational. But behind the outward tensions lies a history of hidden communication and negotiations between both countries.

That’s the message of the new book by Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande. In “Back Channel To Cuba,” the authors recount their findings from more than 10 years of research, which appear to ultimately refute the conventional wisdom about relations between Havana and Washington, D.C.

“There’s a flipside to this history that is little known, but far more relevant today,” Kornbluh told HuffPostLive on Thursday. “That is the precedence of all the secret talks, not only to improve relations, but to actually change the framework to normal relations.”

Although in the past the will to reform the relationship never seemed to strike both countries at the same time, LeoGrande suggested that we may have finally reached a watershed moment.

“In both capitals now, I think we have a moment where the leadership recognizes that the past ought to be past and we should move into a new stage,” he said. “And it’s a matter of overcoming some of the political obstacles, particularly in the United States, to get that happening.”

Despite such obstacles, a chance for reconciliation could represent a huge opportunity for President Obama, whose approval ratings in the area of foreign policy have reached record lows.

“Barack Obama can’t run for reelection,” he said. “There’s really no political imperative for Obama to keep what he, himself, has said is a failed policy. ... He’s had a hard time on the foreign policy front recently. This is a place where he could make serious gains and I think relatively easily because, as I’ve said, the Cubans have indicated that they are very interested in trying to normalize the relationship.”

[malaise]

47. Go and study who really fought against apartheid

Who did the dirty work on Angola - you surprise me

[bravenak]

49. Don't get mad. I really want to know.

I don't like seeing power in the hands of one person for so long. Resembles a monarchy to me, especially since he handed power off to a relative. I neither hate him nor loved him. Before my time, honestly, by the time I came along he had been in for decades. Just surprising too see so many emotions, never really met many who loved him. The hate I have seen; that part has been explained in detail, I'll look it up though.

[malaise]

61. Not mad

just disappointed