The Case Against Communism: Cuba

On November 25th, 2016, two years and a day ago, Communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was pronounced dead by the current dictator Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother. Though Fidel Castro, perhaps one of history’s most horrible dictators, is dead, the situation in Cuba does not look any better today than it did in the decades of Fidel’s regime. If anything, dissidents say things have only gotten worse.
 
Following Fidel’s death, geopolitical experts thought there was an opportunity for a new era in the island. Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue group said, following Fidel’s death: “With Fidel’s death, the political and economic situation will probably open up.”
 
I will return to precisely why such a belief is asinine and historically wrong in a moment.
 
For now, let’s move on to just how exactly things have been looking on the communist island.
 
Jose Daniel Ferrer, General Coordinator of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), a large Cuban dissident group, told Breitbart News: “The situation in Cuba for dissidents remains very similar to that which we had during Fidel Castro’s life, and in some ways is even worse. The current dictator, Miguel Diaz-Canel… takes orders directly from Raul Castro [and] leaves clear who truly wields power.”
 
Carlos Paya of Cuba’s Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) told Breitbart News: “Following the death of Fidel, the repressive system remains intact. Arrests continue, sometimes for a few days and sometimes prolonged [arrests] like that of Eduardo Cardet.”
 
Eduardo Cardet, who is head of the MCL, was arrested soon after Fidel’s death for allegedly “refusing to sign a government-mandated condolence book for the late dictator during the state’s forced nine-day mourning period,” according to Breitbart. The government even convicted Cardet of allegedly assaulting Cuban state security officers despite the fact that no witnesses corroborated the claim.
 
Matter of fact, Breitbart News shares that “on the contrary, Cardet’s wife and children, who witnessed the arrest, said police brutally beat him in public after suspecting him of criticizing the condolence books. The court did not accept their testimony.”
 
As it stands, Cardet is serving a three-year prison sentence, devoid of medical treatment for his asthma.
 
Regarding Cardet’s case, Paya said: “He is more than a prisoner, he is a hostage of the regime.”
 
According to Breitbart News, back in October, “the NGO Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) documented over 200 arbitrary arrests (similar to Cardet's), most targeting groups like UNPACU, MCL, and the Ladies in White, a dissident group whose sole act of protest is attending Catholic Mass on Sundays. Nearly every Sunday, police arrest and beat their leader, Berta Soler, in public.”
 
I am not familiar with Cuban law regarding women and attending Catholic Mass, but one hardly needs a reason to arrest and beat someone in a communist regime. If the government doesn’t like you, that’s good enough for them.
 
Now, let me return to that previous topic of the reason why believing Fidel’s death would lead to political and economic opportunities for the future in Cuba is ludicrous. Earlier, I mentioned such a belief is asinine and historically erroneous. Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, national secretary of the Assembly of Cuban Resistance, puts it best: “There have not been any significant changes in Cuba in terms of economic and political freedom after Fidel Castro’s death… because we have to understand that Fidel Castro installed a system, not just a government.”
 
The reason the Cuban people don’t have hope for better political and economic opportunities following Fidel’s death is the same reason Venezuelans didn’t have much hope after Chavez’s death, the same reason North Koreans didn’t have much hope after Kim Jong-Il’s death, and why Russian citizens didn’t have much hope following Lenin’s death and Stalin’s death. These dictators all either created systems of government that would transcend their own lifetimes or made sure such systems would remain in place.
 
Similar, though perhaps not quite to this extent, to Obama’s lackeys in federal courts blocking everything Trump does in executive orders, constitutional as they may be.
 
Castro set up a communist system, not just a government. The communists have power at every level of government. The judiciary is theirs, there is no legislative branch separate from the executive, and obviously, Castro (Raul) is head of the executive.
 
They arrest whomever they deem a political opponent, beat them in public, suffer no consequences for it, and judges side with them. And when such a thing is brought up to them, they pretend that they are doing nothing wrong.
 
Back when Obama was President and was sidling up to Raul Castro, Jim Acosta asked Castro whether he would free political prisoners. Castro replied: “what political prisoners?”
 
Castro completely ignores the fact that his government and law enforcement basically terrorizes his citizens if they show themselves to be opponents of his regime.
 
It’s no wonder so many people in Cuba want to leave and attempt to flee. Such people are legitimate asylum seekers that we welcome with open arms into our country. Such people are escaping the horrors of communism. The very horrors that many Democrats seek to employ in this country.
 
Sure, the specific words may be different, but the language is basically the same. Communism is the result of big government. Socialism is virtually no different. So why in the world would anyone be willing to support people that fight for this sort of thing?
 
Throughout history, you see and hear stories of people escaping such rampant communism. Reading through Wikipedia, the Leftist organization that often gets things wrong due to bias, it mentions that a woman named Ivana Zelnickova, in 1971, married Austrian ski instructor Alfred Winkelmayr to enable her to leave Communist Czechoslovakia, fleeing for Canada, learning English and eventually moving to the United States.
 
Ivana Zelnickova is now known as Ivana Trump, Donald Trump’s first wife, with whom he had Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.
 
The former Mrs. Trump sought to escape communism. Many Cubans seek to escape communism. Many North Koreans seek to escape communism. Many Russians sought to escape communism. Many Chinese seek to escape communism.
 
Similarly, though my family and I did not live in a communist country, we sought to escape socialism in Argentina (not that it’s quite as bad as Venezuela, but it’s been pretty bad in the past and the only period of prosperity and freedom was when they actually tried capitalism for a bit).
 
Wherever there is communism or socialism, people tend to flee from those places. And considering communism has killed over 100 million people and that number keeps growing, I imagine that is a decent part of the reason.
 
Communism is not a system that can realistically work, and every time it’s tried, disaster follows for decades until such a system is completely dismantled and replaced with something else, namely capitalism.
 
The only reason China is still afloat is because they are a tad more capitalistic than other communist countries. Even Lenin had to employ some level of capitalism to keep the Soviet Union from collapsing on itself due to its overwhelming communism. But of course, Soviet Russia eventually fell, and so will China unless they completely abandon communism altogether.
 
So for these reasons, I cannot see any viable reason for anyone to support socialism and/or communism. The only reason I see anyone supporting socialism is because they have no idea what it actually is. And if you remember from a protest that happened in the summer of 2017, there was an Antifa protester who actually referred to himself as a “libertarian-communist.”
 
In the article where I talked about that for a bit, I tried to explain the difference between the two and drive the point that one cannot be both a libertarian and a communist at the same time. I mentioned that such a person would have to be either ignorant or brainwashed to believe someone can be a “libertarian-communist”.
 
Largely, I believe it takes some level of both. You have to be truly ignorant, bordering on moronic, to believe such a thing exists.
 
That kid CLEARLY had no idea what either of those things were, otherwise he wouldn’t show himself to be such an ignoramus as to say something like that. If he knew what libertarianism was and what communism was, I think he would rather call himself a libertarian...and leave Antifa.
 
Matter of fact, if everyone knew what socialism and communism was, its history and why it simply does not work based on that it requires reality to not be reality, the only people who would support it are truly evil people, likely in government or hoping to be in government, who don’t care about what communism does and has done and wants the power it brings them.
 
Obviously, there are such people in the government today, but I imagine most people are like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who might actually believe the crap that they are selling about socialism being good. She has shown that she is not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, so it makes sense that she thinks we can just poop money and pay for medicare-for-all, income-for-all, and all the other ridiculous things she wants without taking a hit in the economy and inflation.
 
If everyone knew exactly what socialism and communism are, and knew what it has done to people who have lived under it, there would be far fewer people who would be willing to support it.
 
Cuba is just one example of communism for us to be weary of it. North Korea, China, Soviet Russia and others are also warning signs of what not to do.
 
Here’s hoping socialism and communism never conquer the United States. But if it does, we can at least rest assured that Christ’s return would likely not be too far away.
 
Oh, and don’t tell me it’d be different here if we had “morally good” leaders. The media ignored every scandal of the Obama presidency, like Castro ignored the fact that he had political prisoners. They ignored the unemployment across the country, every scandal and treated Obama as though he could do no wrong when that was virtually all he was doing. Thank God we don’t have that kind of crap in the White House anymore.
 
Proverbs 29:2
“When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan.”
 
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Author: Freddie Marinelli.