Washington Post-Why Bernie Sanders's repeating Cuban propaganda rankles so many Latinos

[Gothmog]

sanders praise of Cuba is pissing off an important segment of voters https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/25/why-bernie-sanderss-repeating-cuban-propaganda-rankles-so-many-latinos/

The first thing to grasp is that Cuba’s global reputation for having an excellent education system isn’t a result of the quality of its education system. As scholars have long known, Cuba’s overall educational performance is middling for the region: roughly similar to that of many other Latin American countries that brought their literacy rates from round-about 75 percent in the 1950s to not-far-from 100 percent today.

Yes, Cuba made education available free to everyone through the university level. But so did countries such as Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. There was never any need to build a police state to bring people to school — an insight so obvious, it’s ludicrous to even have to write it.

In reality, Cuba’s reputation for educational prowess is mostly a product of a relentless, multi-decade propaganda campaign. Virtually every speech by every Cuban diplomat and regime admirer for the past seven decades has made a point of praising Cuba’s supposed literacy miracle. Cubans who have left know the propaganda only too well, and understand why a government desperate to establish its legitimacy in the face of the mass impoverishment of its population would turn to it again and again.

To Cubans and Venezuelans — who have witnessed much the same kind of propaganda — talk of Cuban educational prowess grates not because it’s wrong, exactly, but because it serves as a simple way to identify who’s ready to be duped by regime apologists. We know propaganda doesn’t need to be entirely false to be profoundly damaging. So we despair when we hear it parroted by those who ought to know better.

The bottom line is that when you associate yourself with an ideology whose past contains some of history’s worst crimes, you take on a special duty to denounce. When those denunciations come hedged with qualifiers that rest on propaganda lines, they ring entirely hollow.

[DanTex]

1. LOL at another WP column suggesting Bernie is "radical left-wing".

We get it, the WP editorial page hates Bernie. That was clear a long time ago.

[redstateblues]

3. WAPO hates Bernie? Sounds Trumpian. The truth hurts. Always the victim.

[DanTex]

4. LOL. Have you seen the WP editorial page? There is no "truth" here.

[LanternWaste]

16. Keep blaming the media. More effective than bumper stickers

and as it requires little more than anecdotal evidence, I absolutely understand your reliance on doing so.

[DanTex]

21. It's true. We all know it. Deny all you want.

But the WP editorial page is obviously anti-Bernie. Not that it’s working. Bernie’s way ahead in the polls, because people have caught on.

[msongs]

12. the WAPO sould only print poor bernie press releases from the bernie campaign lol nt

[Cha]

7. Don't Blame the Media for BS' praising Castro's

literacy program. That's All On him.

"FYI- Castro's "literacy program" was an ideological indoctrination ploy"

[DanTex]

8. Obama also praised Castro's education and healthcare programs.

So have many other people. It's not a secret that Cuba had strong education and healthcare. The outrage at Bernie is pure hypocrisy.

The WP editorial page, with people like Jennifer Rubin, has been bashing Bernie the entire time. This is more of the same.

[Cha]

14. Tell that to the Dems who are running in Swing Districts

BS was talking about what he thinks Castro's revolution brought to Cuba in 1959.

President Obama was talking about the post 2014 strides that Cuba had made as part of the negotiated
pre-conditions for normalizing US-Cuba relations. Cuba had to meet benchmarks during the gradual process of moving towards normalization.

President Obama made the remarks at a joint press conference in Cuba in March 2016.

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/1287576570

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Mahalo for the additional tweet, Goth!

[DanTex]

15. They know. Everyone knows.

The attacks on Bernie are political theater. Obama said exactly the same.

[Cha]

22. BS isn't helping our Down Ticket Dems.. he's hurting them

[Gothmog]

33. This makes me smile

Link to tweet

?s=20

[redqueen]

2. Not Latinos. Right wing Cuban and Venezuelan ex-pats.

This is so fucking aggravating. Many Latinos know the history of US intervention in LA so this is actually really sad to see this here.

Seeing Bernie's supporters called "Sandanistas" also makes me want to break things.

I hope most DUers know the history of what the US has done down there, and how it plays when right wing talking points about socialism are shared here.

[guillaumeb]

6. Recommended.

The entire US history of dealings with the Americas is support for dictators as long as those dictators supported US business interests.

[guillaumeb]

5. The literacy rate in Cuba did rise sharply under Castro.

And the US had no problems when dictator Fulgencio Batista oppressed his people. But Batista was very amenable to working with US Mafia and business interests.

[redqueen]

17. +1

People see right through this crap.

[guillaumeb]

18. Some do.

Some know that the US has no problem supporting certain types of business friendly dictators.

[AncientGeezer]

25. As did political prisoners....I wonder how many disappeared.

[guillaumeb]

26. Under Batista, the US supported dictator?

Yes, they did have political prisoners under Batista. But because Batista allowed US corporations to make huge profits in Cuba, the US said nothing.

Only when the Cubans expropriated these US holdings, and Mafia businesses, did the US discover the concept of political prisoners in Cuba.

[AncientGeezer]

27. Shall we gulli? Never gone well for you before

Are you denying the 10's of THOUSANDS of political prisoners under the Castros?
Are you denying the 10's of THOUSANDS of political refugees that came HERE..not to the South....Here?

[guillaumeb]

28. I am not denying that Castro was a brutal dictator.

Just pointing out that the US Government notices these things when it is convenient.

Similar to how the US Government overlooks the well documented political oppression of people in China.

[AncientGeezer]

29. The U.S has been calling out China's HR violations for decades....

.....c'mon..you know better...we've been over this before

[guillaumeb]

30. While purchasing billions in Chinese goods.

And the Trump family is personally benefitting from the Chinese connections.

Judge them by their actions.

[AncientGeezer]

31. "guillaumeb 30. While purchasing billions in Chinese goods."

Do you think that's New?....Again we've been over this....it's been going on for DECADES...

[Mike 03]

9. Interesting.

Thanks for posting this.

[Cal Carpenter]

10. So frustrating. He got called out for stuff he said in 1985

and had to address it. He has addressed it, for better or worse.

CONTEXT MATTERS. But nearly every interview, every pundit, every talking head panel, and a lot of people here on this site, are making it seem like Sanders himself is deliberately bringing up Castro's policies, now, in 2020, as some great example or something. He is NOT. He wants to talk about today, in the US, what policies will improve our society. But he is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't - if he tries to brush off these questions he gets accused of deflection, and if he does answer he gives the questions legitimacy as if they have anything to do with the present.

As Rev Al said this morning in South Carolina at the NAN event, (my paraphrase, ftr) every civil rights activist has been a victim of red-baiting, whether it was MLK, Mandela, or Jesse Jackson. They've all been called communists by people who opposed their message of equality. And like Rev Al, offering opinions and analysis of something, like Cuba's programs, does NOT equal support of communist dictators. He reminded the audience not to fall for these red-baiting traps - they are the same traps people who have fought for equality have had to dodge forever. These traps are designed to divide us.

When MLK criticized the US Bay of Pigs debacle, he was called a communist. When he recognized the Cuban's forward-movement on racial equality, he was called a communist in efforts to discredit him. Everybody from Bayard Rustin to James Baldwin was smeared as commies during that time period. In the 80s, Jesse Jackson was smeared as a commie during his presidential runs.

Everything old is new again. This stuff is 30 to 50 years old. Bernie is not holding up Castro's literacy programs as an example for today. But headlines and talking head rants make it seem like he is.

Makes me want to pull my hair out.

[KayF]

11. some perspective

https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary/

[ancianita]

13. Then I'M a Cuba apologist. The terrorist was the USA, trying to kill Castro several hundred times.

I hate when I read this stuff in America, but I won't back down from addressing it. It's been WE, the USA, that have been the terrorists. This is our proven, unclassified history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro

I lived just north of Miami for fifteen years, from age 3 to age 18, and made friends with at least three Cuban refugees who worked in the area. From 8th grade on I acquired conversational level Spanish in and out of school, and learned a lot about the Cubans who left and the Cubans who stayed.

You need to read more Cuban history of its constant conquering and enslavements, about Jose Marti, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes and others who fought for Cuban independence from colonial enslavement and exploitation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba#Independence_movements


Batista was a popular Cuban military veteran figure turned mafia capitalist. Hell, even I knew that because my parents told me so. Everybody in South Florida knew that Batista was tied up with Mayer Lansky's gambling mafia and who-knows-what-else. Castro and Guevara drove him out because Cubans suffered poverty and starvation under Batista. We, bad neighbor of El Norte, helped Batista become dictator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista

Cubans who have left know the propaganda only too well, and understand why a government desperate to establish its legitimacy in the face of the mass impoverishment of its population would turn to it again and again.

Cubans who left were Batista loyalists. Right wing. Capitalists. They did well in Miami because the gaming capitalists of South Florida welcomed them.

They're still there! They love Trump for the same reasons they loved Batista!

But not all of them. Some of them are working class Cubans. They know the old Cubans up in Ybor City, in Tampa, the first city founded by Cubans in Florida.

In reality, Cuba’s reputation for educational prowess is mostly a product of a relentless, multi-decade propaganda campaign.

Bullshit. I've talked to Cubans during two two-week visits in the last three years, and I can attest that they are well educated, whether they push a cart, farm, drive taxis or work in restaurants and hotels. Being a teacher, I made it a point to ask them how education in Cuba was for them. The literacy HAS been a miracle, and is the highest in the Caribbean if not the Americas. We can thank the lawyer, Fidel Castro, for setting up free education from 1st grade through college, whether you want to or not.

There's a reason their medical school has turned out thousands upon thousands of doctors who have aided Cuba's African allies struggling to throw European asset strippers off their lands. We can thank the doctor, Che Guevara, for setting up Cuba's medical school in Havana, and Cuba's hospital system.

I visited, with a group of six other Spanish speakers and a university professor guide, the northern farmlands and villages of Pinar del Río, Artemisa, La Habana, Mayabeque, Matanzas and Cienfuegos provinces. Many visits, talks with Cubans, photos of farmlands and people, and great learning about their so-called "poverty." In the south, on my second trip, a full week in Santiago de Cuba, formerly Oriente province, my guide for two days was a native Santiago resident, a lovely, proud young woman who rode me around by taxis and pedicabs, taught me so much history from Fidel's grave and the world class cemetery of the greats of Cuba in Santiago, through the city, all the way to the castle/forts on the coastline. (El Morro is a similar one in Puerto Rico)

We know propaganda doesn’t need to be entirely false to be profoundly damaging. So we despair when we hear it parroted by those who ought to know better.

Oh, I do know better. I know that every single thing I've learned from Cubans and Cuba shows that what you say here is the real propaganda, the same I've read since I was a kid learning about Cuba from Cuban refugees.

The bottom line is that when you associate yourself with an ideology whose past contains some of history’s worst crimes, you take on a special duty to denounce. When those denunciations come hedged with qualifiers that rest on propaganda lines, they ring entirely hollow.

No country who struggles for sovereignty or freedom is clean. Not a single one.

MY Bottom Line: I challenge anyone in DU to travel to Cuba and not come back changed. If they don't come back with an entirely changed view of Cuba, I will pay their air fare AND buy them a cerveza. Hold me to it.

The only "parrots who don't know better" are those who haven't, don't or won't go to Cuba to see for themselves, and prefer to parrot this mal vecino's propaganda dished out for the last 60 years.

We should be ashamed of what bad neighbors we have been to all of the Americas, especially Cuba, which we've coveted like an empire vulture since the last century. Oh, and Alice Walker, a great American writer, was among the first to challenge the travel sanctions imposed on US by our own government; you know, a wall.

Viva Cuba Libre!

[redqueen]

19. PREACH!

Sick of the expectation that we should be working to reinforce and bow to right wing spin.

[guillaumeb]

20. Recommended.

Now, about that cerveza….

[ancianita]

23. haha

No corona(virus) for you!

[Gothmog]

24. Havana gives front-page coverage to Bernie Sanders for praising Fidel Castro

Last edited Wed Feb 26, 2020, 08:49 PM - Edit history (1)

Link to tweet

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders views on the Cuban revolution have earned him a storm of criticism in the U.S. But there’s one place where his comments have received glowing, front-page reviews: Cuba.

Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, prominently displayed a report about Sanders and his praise of “some of the social programs implemented by the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro.”

“U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, today one of the strongest candidates for the nomination of the Democratic Party to the November presidential elections, recognized Cuba’s role in sending doctors worldwide,” Granma said.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article240626672.html#storylink=cpy

[Gothmog]

32. This makes me smile

Link to tweet

?s=20