Fidel Castro: Brutal Dictator and Leftwing Icon
Leftists heap praise on the late Cuban tyrant
In the wake of Fidel Castro’s death, various world leaders have been issuing statements expressing their condolences and support for the late Cuban leader.
Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau expressed “deep sorrow” upon learning of the death of “Cuba’s longest serving President”, mourning the loss of this “legendary” and “larger than life” figure. He also praised Fidel Castro’s contributions to quality of life in Cuba in the form of healthcare and education.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter issued the following statement: “Rosalynn and I share our sympathies with the Castro family and the Cuban people on the death of Fidel Castro. We remember fondly our visits with him in Cuba and his love for his country.”
The President of the EU Commission declared that “with the death of Fidel Castro, the world has lost a man who was a hero for many.”
United Kingdom Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn proclaimed that Fidel Castro was a “champion of social justice.”
President Obama’s statement remained noticeably silent on Fidel Castro’s moral impact, simply referring to Castro as a figure that evokes powerful emotions and altered the course of history.
This whitewashing and romanticization of Fidel Castro is utterly ridiculous and shameful.
Fidel Castro was a brutal, murderous dictator who ruled Cuba with an iron fist.
For all the leftists romanticizing the late Cuban dictator, ask yourself: Why are Cuban refugees in the United States cheering the death of Fidel Castro? Or better yet: Why are there Cuban refugees in the United States in the first place?
In stark contrast to the left-wing ideologues and the plutocratic elites heaping praise on Fidel Castro and sanitizing his legacy, Cuban-Americans in Miami took to the streets to celebrate the death of a man who brought such immeasurable misery to them and their families that they risked their lives to flee their homeland to seek freedom and opportunity in the United States.
For many leftists who decried Donald Trump as a deplorable strongman who would allegedly institute a repressive regime toward cultural minorities and deprive LGBT Americans of basic human rights, their praise and whitewash of Fidel Castro is more than a little ironic — it’s downright hypocritical and disgusting.
The atrocities committed by Fidel Castro and his regime run the full gamut of leftist totalitarianism — here are just a few that his leftist sympathizers need to come to grips with.
Fidel Castro brutally tortured and executed his political opponents, killing thousands by firing squad since he seized power in 1959.
In the words of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro’s enforcer and another leftist icon,
To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution. And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.
Photographic records of Fidel Castro’s firing squad practices are available here:
And these executions were not only carried out in the early days of the regime. Check out this report from the LA Times in April 13, 2003:
A Cuban firing squad has executed three men who hijacked a ferry less than two weeks ago, sending a chilling message to anyone else considering commandeering a boat or plane to the United States. The executions Friday followed a series of hijacking attempts, but also coincided with an islandwide crackdown on dissidents. A court had sentenced the men to death after finding them guilty of “very grave acts of terrorism,” said a statement read on state television.
Fidel Castro also set up forced labor camps where he sent tens of thousands of people he wanted to exclude from his communist utopia, including Christians, homosexuals, and political dissenters.
The Castro regime rounded up anyone who rejected Marxist ideology and forced them to undergo what was euphemistically referred to as “re-education”, which included propaganda, hard labor, malnourishment, torture, and even death.
A video playlist of a documentary about these labor camps, with English subtitles, can be accessed here:
To describe Fidel Castro as anything other than an brutal tyrant who devastated Cuba and its people is not only a moral offense, it is a blatant denial of reality.
The list of examples of Fidel Castro’s extensive history of totalitarianism and brutal tyranny could go on and on, including countless instances of systematic suppression of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of movement, due process rights, private property rights, free elections, and more.
From an American perspective, Fidel Castro and his ideology represent a complete rejection of the most basic and foundational values recognized by the Framers. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
Witnessing leftists praise the legacy of Fidel Castro and his supposedly great “achievements” in healthcare and education for the Cuban people while whitewashing the above-mentioned atrocities provides stark confirmation of the moral depravity and factual deficiencies of the leftist worldview.
First, it is plainly not true that Fidel Castro made great advancements in healthcare and education for Cuba.
Secondly, even if it were true, how would that in any way justify or override the horrific brutality of the Castro regime? How can anyone describe a dictator who literally executed people for trying to leave the island as a person who had great love for the Cuban people?
The Cuban people who suffered under the rule of Fidel Castro and fled to the United States as refugees intimately understand something that these leftist ideologues, far removed from the real life consequences of their failed ideology, cannot understand:
Freedom matters.
