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I would encourage the commenters in this thread who see Fidel's legacy as a black-and-white matter of an "evil dictator who did bad things and was wrong about e

I would encourage the commenters in this thread who see Fidel's legacy as a black-and-white matter of an "evil dictator who did bad things and was wrong about economics" to step back, bear witness to the objective facts about Fidel Castro's life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro), think sincerely about what could lead a highly intelligent and charismatic person to become or follow Fidel Castro (as many have), and take a moment to reflect on the complexities of global politics in the 20th century. I am not a fan of Fidel Castro - quite the opposite - but humans are cut from a common cloth. When we see revolutions turn into dictatorships, and idealism deteriorate into a cynical fight to survive, it is foolish and dangerous to dismiss the dictators and revolutionaries as "evil" or "idiots" or some similarly otherizing term. It is dangerous because it means we are refusing to learn from history, and to apply the lessons of other lives to our own. Fidel Castro's mistakes are our mistakes to repeat, or to learn from. If you hold yourself holier than Fidel Castro, and think that celebrating the death of someone you perceive as "evil" is prudent, take a deep long moment and try to learn something non-trivial from his life. "Fidel Castro" in the particular was not some kind of unique demon who plagued humanity. He was a charismatic revolutionary who occupied a very complex time. His life's trajectory was in many respects one of tragic failure. He may have, in reality, occupied a very dark corner of history, but that is for us to learn and judge, not to assume. If you think you're better, then do better. Be better. Don't refuse to acknowledge the humanity of another person because you believe you can totalize their entire life under a cheap tagline.

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marcoperaza 10y ago
My family and the family of just about everyone I grew up around had their whole lives destroyed by this evil man. He has executed thousands, has imprisoned thousands more, and has totally ruined a country that was once the most prosperous in Latin America. You may philosophize about the 'complexity' of the life of this evil man, but for people who actually lived under his abuse, who have seen what he has done to their homeland, or whose families suffered greatly to flee his terror, it is very simple.
- Animats 10y ago
  Fulgencio Batista was better?
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    We are talking about Fidel's regime and how he decided to rule. Batista was an evil man and a bad ruler, but the economic and societal destruction of communism is in its own category, as is the level of totalitarian control that the Castro regime has imposed, which includes a committee in each neighborhood responsible for suppressing dissent. Because of how backwards Cuba is today, everyone thinks it was always like that. Cuba was a country with a rapidly expanding middle class.
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      Consider that despite many natural disadvantages Cuba had higher standard of living, better educated public, better healthcare system, etc. than any of the countries in Latin America which started at similar level but were left under the control of US-backed right wing governments. I’d much rather live in Cuba of the 1960s–1980s than in any of Washington’s pet quasi-fascist police states or in those Latin American states undergoing active civil war with US-trained paramilitaries genocidally slaughtering peasants. Arguably the US embargo, cut of diplomatic ties, invasion attempt, repeated assassination attempts, piles of money illicitly funneled to opposition, etc. had as much to do with Castro’s entrenchment/radicalization as anything to do with his personal ideology. Just after the Cuban revolution, Castro was interested and open to US relations, but ideological prejudices and commitments by American elites made friendly relations impossible. Then a feedback loop ensued by which mutual trust was destroyed and both sides were increasingly radicalized. Many things Castro did over his long career were reprehensible, but the same certainly can be said for pretty much every US president, and most other national leaders in similarly political turbulent situations.
      - selectodude 10y ago
        > I’d much rather live in Cuba of the 1960s–1980s Yes, while the Soviet Union was sending Cuba billions per year, it was much better there.
jokoon 10y ago
I wonder if you could use this same comment and apply it to Adolf Hitler, and how people would read it. I believe we should be able to. I don't like Hitler and I'm quite on the left, but if we can start to stop demonizing political characters, it would appease many political problems.
pif 10y ago
When you write "evil dictator", you mean that a dictator could not be evil. This is hugely wrong. Dictatorship contains evil. I appreciate your effort to invite people to learn from history instead of just rejecting a portion of it. But this is a black-and-white matter: he chose to be a dictator, and he was wrong. Subsequent crimes and economics theories are less important once you keep people from choosing their fate/government.
- peteretep 10y ago
  > Dictatorship contains evil. > this is a black-and-white matter No matter how much you repeat your opinion, or how strongly you state it, it doesn't mean it suddenly become consensus reality.
  - vixen99 10y ago
    I guess it's pretty much black and white for most of us if for life's duration we're forced to do what someone tells us to do. If permitted, we could do a few polls and discover whether such sanctions are regarded by those affected as 'consensus reality'. 'Evil' has religious overtones but it's not a bad word to sum up such a situation.
    - eyko 10y ago
      Even in democracies, we're forced to do what our govt tells us to do, or not do. Soft drugs and alcohol are the perfect example of someone's opinion forced down our throats. the fact that some drugs are harness but illegal while others are harmful but legal. Americans couldn't travel to Cuba. During the cold war, USSR. Americans couldn't freely express socialist ideas never mind communist ones. This in a democracy. I don't really see a big difference. The peculiarities of Cuba can be understood in its geopolitical context.
      - Trombone12 10y ago
        No, daylight saving is the perfect example of someone's opinion forced upon us. There is a general case to be made for regulating toxic substances and the examples given are of people arguing over if particular substances really are toxic enough.
valgaze 10y ago
"PARIS — Cuban leader Fidel Castro asked the Soviet Union in 1962 to launch a nuclear attack on the United States if it invaded Cuba, according to letters published today by a French newspaper. The respected daily Le Monde said the letters were exchanged between Castro and Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis. In an acrimonious reply, Khrushchev suggested that Castro was irresponsible, since such a war would have killed millions of people in both East and West and destroyed Cuba."
tmptmp 10y ago
Charismatic? Yes, but so was Hitler and Osama bin Laden. Revolutionary? yes, but so was Hitler. So, let's get it clear that that doesn't make him humane and good for society. >>If you think you're better, then do better. Be better. Don't refuse to acknowledge the humanity of another person because you believe you can totalize their entire life under a cheap tagline. This is a disingenuous advice. Will you not criticize Hitler? So, do you propose to acknowledge the humanity of Hitler and don't criticize him? Castro would have happily become Hitler, if he could get power. Criticizing him or anyone is not necessarily reducing them to a tagline. He deserves much and harsh criticism than most thugs, criminals and religious extremists in the world. He was an extremely cruel, dictator with no remorse for his cruel and inhumane actions. But what do you expect from a follower of communism? Communism is a very vicious ideology which leaves no room for any type of dissent. You either toe the party-line or get killed/maimed/imprisoned. Sad, this criminal didn't die a lot earlier.
- apsec112 10y ago
  I'm as anti-communist as they come, but comparing Castro to Hitler is ridiculous. Castro never set up camps for the sole purpose of mass murder. Castro didn't create special army units to machine gun hundreds of thousands of civilians. Castro didn't deliberately starve entire cities of people to death.
  - briandear 10y ago
    Castro was Hitler without the industrial base. http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=55 http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=55 Essentially he was a pre-revenue Hiltler.
  - geezerjay 10y ago
    You're arguing that some aspects of Hitler's National Socialism don't match Fidel Castro's Marxism-Leninism, while purposely ignoring all similarities, common to any totalitarian and repressive regime. Castro's long list of political executions are well documented. We may agree that Nazi death camps have a scale of their own, but this is no reason to turn a blind eye to the oppressive and persecutory nature of Fidel Castro's regime.
jl6 10y ago
Otherizing - great terminology. It is important to remember that all of history's "monsters" were human beings. Calling them monsters is pretending that it couldn't happen in your own culture. It could, and vigilance is required.
- hisham_hm 10y ago
  Indeed. It could, and it still can.
woodpanel 10y ago
I've come to see the Cuban revolution as something different than the sole work of Castro etc. wether you regard their work as accomplishment or atrocity. Also Socialism, Communism, Marxism are just the packaging. The core of the whole movement back then was the wast income inequality combined with US-foreign-affair meddling with Cuban domestic affairs, perfectly illustrated by mafia movies depicting Cuba as the playground for America's filthiest politicians and Nouveau riche. It was a US-caused political niche that was eagerly filled by the most opportunistic/capable people available.
- macspoofing 10y ago
  >Also Socialism, Communism, Marxism are just the packaging. That's like saying modern terrorism as practiced by groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS has nothing to do with a particular interpretation of Islam, but is rather just a response to colonialism and foreign interference in middle eastern countries, etc. There was an ideological basis to the Cuban revolution that tapped into a existing global Marxist ideology. 'Packaging' was critical.
  - quonn 10y ago
    I don't think this is accurate. I can't point to a source right now, but I have read a lot about the revolution in the last decade and my impression was that some of the revolutionaries were Marxists, but there was no official ideology and Cuba became Marxist perhaps a year after the revolution. This involved a power struggle and some revolutionaries emigrated or went to prison. Castro eventually sided with the communists (Che, Raúl).
    - CWuestefeld 10y ago
      Che wasn't a communist either. He was just a nasty guy who wanted to stir up trouble and enjoy some ultraviolence.
  - AngrySkillzz 10y ago
    A lot of people would say that, actually. World leaders throughout history have always picked up religions, ideologies as a way to get additional support, not because it's something they believe in or want implemented.
Beltiras 10y ago
I found this video [1] quite enlightening about the nature of power and how to hold onto it. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  Somewhat depressing to combine the insight of that video with the future of AI and widespread automation. Dictatorships here we come.
briandear 10y ago
Butchering priests in the name of revolution? Nope. Sorry. Can't appreciate the 'humanity' of someone that clearly doesn't deserve to be called such. Suggesting Castro deserves acknowledgement of his humanity is like suggesting Hitler was a sensitive art student.
- afarrell 10y ago
  Both are true though. Many humans have butchered fellow humans. Hitler wasn't uniquely evil in human history, but a part of a long-running tradition
  - dorfsmay 10y ago
    I don't care how human anybody is, killing fellow humans, except to prevent the crime of others (police and military interventions in very specific cases) is not OK. That line cannot be crossed. That includes death penalty and political revolutions.
    - peteretep 10y ago
      > is not OK Why not? We kill plenty of other living things. Why not people?
      - dorfsmay 10y ago
        Because you have to draw the line somewhere. Morale/ethics do change over time, but not killing people has been shown throughout history to be the bare minimum for a decent society, and an accepted standard today. We can discuss and expand on adding more species, kingdoms and domains, but humans are not up for discussion.
        peteretep 10y ago
        > to be the bare minimum > for a decent society So if a utilitarian-leaning society could show it was improved by killing people, you'd be fine with that?
erokar 10y ago
On the contrary, it's dangerous not to call out evil for what it is. Of course it might be wise to try to analyze what genetic/family/social/economic/political factors shape people like Castro, Gaddafi, Franco etc. — but if you think you're dealing with people like you and me you fail to grasp the phenomenon. Dictators that prosecute and murder their opponents, like Castro did, share a very predictable set of psychopathic/narcissistic/paranoid personality characteristics. They are, by definition, not normal.
- deleted 10y ago
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- bnegreve 10y ago
  > Dictators that prosecute and murder their opponents, Sorry, this is not a discriminative feature of dictators, non-dictators also prosecute and murder their opponents. (e.g. see any government involved in a war) The difference is that you feel like they are right to do it.
  - berntb 10y ago
    You seriously argue that there is no difference between a democracy and a dictatorship. A trivial counter example -- if you causally dismissed your government as a Cuban in Cuba online, what happens? (Since Cuba has a really, really strict control of the Internet last I looked, it is of course a bit of an academic question...) Edit: This comment is really jumping up and down in votes... :-)
    - Daishiman 10y ago
      Well, ask people in Honduras or Nicaragua, which are "free" countries, effectively how much better they have it than Cubans. Hint: they don't, because their countries are "democratic" in theory yet they're overrun by gang violence, misery to a level that makes the worst of Cuba a paradise, and have state actors that claim democracy in theory yet will do what they need to keep their power. If anything, the history of Cuba's attempted overruns by the US only serve to justify the regime's paranoia.
tgarma1234 10y ago
If you have never seen the movie Before Night Falls I recommend it. While I agree that 20th century politics in Latin America was complicated, it's also true that the Castro regime committed a lot of human rights violations in ways that now seem really unjustified. I am not saying the United States was innocent. I am saying that a lot of people suffered under the regime needlessly and that should be acknowledged honestly.
- mrleinad 10y ago
  Right after the USA acknowledges ALL of their crimes against humanity, which are far more and spread much more wider. No cuban children sleeps in the streets tonight. You can't say that about northamerican children.
  - tehwebguy 10y ago
    How could you possibly assume that no children in Cuba sleep on the streets?
    - quonn 10y ago
      I think his general point was that there are basically no homeless people. True or not, this can easily be checked by traveling there. It is possible to travel freely and I certainly got the same impression while I was there.
    - hisham_hm 10y ago
      I know it's mindboggling, but really there aren't. This is one thing that Westerners typically don't get about the Communist-bloc countries, or don't seem to care. Whereas in average the standard of living was always much higher in Capitalist countries, if you looked at the Eastern European Communist bloc for example, there's no extreme poverty, because the state takes care of that (and it's an extremely important thing for the State to take care of, or else the population would come to believe that Socialism wasn't working). Sure, being an average American in the 70s would be a lot more comfortable than being an average Pole in the same period — but there were no people living under bridges in Poland scrapping food from trashcans. If you ask the poorest people of any Capitalist country whether they'd switch places with the poorest ones of a Communist country, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Of course, this idea gets lost to the mind of the Western middle class because in general they just don't think about the poorest members of their society (or some just think they deserve their fate). The Communist era had numerous well-documented flaws, but really, the things it got right aren't spoken about enough in the West. We could learn something from that. For example, the levels of education of the population in the Soviet Union were never attained in the United States. How do we fix that in the Capitalist system? Do we want a more educated population in the first place? Do we want to live in a society with no children in the streets? If we do, what do we have to change in our society to attain that? It's important not to take a whole system for granted as a full package ignoring its flaws, be it Communist or Capitalist. But indeed, the saying _is_ correct: "Millions of children will sleep on the streets tonight. None of them is Cuban."
jackarg 10y ago
simply replying to save this well phrased comment
- asveikau 10y ago
  If you go to your own user page you can see comments you upvoted.
fspear 10y ago
Castro is up there with the worst of the worst (Hitler, Pol pot, amin, mugabe, chavez, Kim Jong, Stalin, Mao, etc) these individuals resigned to their humanity the moment they decided to step all over their citizen's rights and dignity for their own benefit. Please stop trying to humanize him.
- Trombone12 10y ago
  A yes, one bucket holds all evil, and the bool is the only integer the honest man needs, that's your position I take it?
  - tehwebguy 10y ago
    Sure, executing dissenters is one of the bools. Not sure there is any getting around that.
    - jpttsn 10y ago
      So if you execute one person, you may as well keep going, because you're already evil and there's no scale?
      - tehwebguy 10y ago
        Executes dissenters
        hisham_hm 10y ago
        But life inprisonment is okay, right? Asking for a friend (Chelsea Manning). Or is it just a matter of calling dissenters "traitors" and then it's fine? I'm sure Castro ticked that checkbox before the executions.
        tehwebguy 10y ago
        That is quiet a jump you made.
tehwebguy 10y ago
No one is taking his humanity away. He generously donated it every time he executed a dissenter.
MichaelMoser123 10y ago
> Fidel Castro's mistakes are our mistakes to repeat, or to learn from. i don't see how i could ever turn into a dictator who puts his political opponents in jail (as well as everyone who just wants to get out of the country) - all in the name of some higher cause. Interesting if these dictators ever took note of the discrepancy between the Cause and reality; or were they always able to self-justify their actions like in the 'grand inquisitor' by Dostoevsky, who knows... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor
lap42 10y ago
What a pathetic piece of text!
blfr 10y ago
the complexities of global politics in the 20th century All the complexities in the world won't cover up the fact that communism was by far the worst evil of the 20th century, beating nazism by a mile, by tens of millions of people killed to no benefit. It had no redeeming qualities. Murder, slavery, and poverty is all communism gave to the world. Now its major protagonists can burn in hell together. I hope they do.
necessity 10y ago
Actually being an evil dictator who murdered thousands usually tops everything else a person has done in his life.
todd3834 10y ago
Get to the facts and stop telling me how to think
RodericDay 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism#U.S._Code_.28U.S.C..29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism#U.S._... --- Commenting on the genesis of this provision, Edward Peck, former U.S. Chief of Mission in Iraq (under Jimmy Carter) and former ambassador to Mauritania said: > In 1985, when I was the Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Task Force on Terrorism, [my working group was asked] to come up with a definition of terrorism that could be used throughout the government. We produced about six, and each and every case, they were rejected, because careful reading would indicate that our own country had been involved in some of those activities. […] After the task force concluded its work, Congress [passed] U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2331 ... the US definition of terrorism. […] one of the terms, "international terrorism," means "activities that," I quote, "appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping." […] Yes, well, certainly, you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours is one of them. […] And so, the terrorist, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.[62]
ianamartin 10y ago
I'm really glad that this post is at the top. This is the kind of intelligent and nuanced discourse that keeps me coming back to HN. Thank you for bringing some sanity to this discussion, good sir. In addition to what I wrote below about the nature of the Good/Evil abstraction, I want to put this here. I think there's a level at which this all boils down to beliefs. Not which ones you (generally you, not you as an individual) have, but rather if you believe anything at all. Beliefs--like believing in good and evil, but there are many--are fundamentally a scary proposition. And I can't understand how people maintain them. Belief, by definition, is accepting something as true while knowing there is insufficient evidence for that thing to be true. This is not substantively different from a definition of insanity: a case where a person accepts something as true that isn't supported by a reasonable body of evidence. This is kind of a bold statement, but I stand by it. People who believe things are not really different from people who are insane. There's a lack of reason common to both categories of people. The Good/Evil dichotomy is only one projection of belief. But it may well be the most important one. Because fundamentally, assertions of good and evil are really just high-level abstractions for the beliefs. Good vs. Evil is a shortcut to feeling good about yourself. It's a shortcut for saying, "I believe x about y and I have no reasonable proof for any of that, but it makes me feel good about myself." We should do away with beliefs. We're smarter and better than that. And getting rid of beliefs would have the nice effect of tossing the good/evil garbage out as well.
- kamjam 10y ago
  "There's a principle of ideology that we must never look at our own crimes. We should on the other hand exult in the crimes of others and in our own nobility in opposing them." I believe the quote is from Noam Chomsky but couldn't find any references. Some interesting debate in this thread, but as you and the OP say, there is no black and white, good vs evil, just many shades in between with many actors playing many roles simultaneously. Fidel Castro was certainly no saint and at times was the devil, but there were also those other times inbetween.

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marcoperaza 10y ago

My family and the family of just about everyone I grew up around had their whole lives destroyed by this evil man. He has executed thousands, has imprisoned thousands more, and has totally ruined a country that was once the most prosperous in Latin America. You may philosophize about the 'complexity' of the life of this evil man, but for people who actually lived under his abuse, who have seen what he has done to their homeland, or whose families suffered greatly to flee his terror, it is very simple.

Animats 10y ago
Fulgencio Batista was better?
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  We are talking about Fidel's regime and how he decided to rule. Batista was an evil man and a bad ruler, but the economic and societal destruction of communism is in its own category, as is the level of totalitarian control that the Castro regime has imposed, which includes a committee in each neighborhood responsible for suppressing dissent. Because of how backwards Cuba is today, everyone thinks it was always like that. Cuba was a country with a rapidly expanding middle class.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Consider that despite many natural disadvantages Cuba had higher standard of living, better educated public, better healthcare system, etc. than any of the countries in Latin America which started at similar level but were left under the control of US-backed right wing governments. I’d much rather live in Cuba of the 1960s–1980s than in any of Washington’s pet quasi-fascist police states or in those Latin American states undergoing active civil war with US-trained paramilitaries genocidally slaughtering peasants. Arguably the US embargo, cut of diplomatic ties, invasion attempt, repeated assassination attempts, piles of money illicitly funneled to opposition, etc. had as much to do with Castro’s entrenchment/radicalization as anything to do with his personal ideology. Just after the Cuban revolution, Castro was interested and open to US relations, but ideological prejudices and commitments by American elites made friendly relations impossible. Then a feedback loop ensued by which mutual trust was destroyed and both sides were increasingly radicalized. Many things Castro did over his long career were reprehensible, but the same certainly can be said for pretty much every US president, and most other national leaders in similarly political turbulent situations.
    - selectodude 10y ago
      > I’d much rather live in Cuba of the 1960s–1980s Yes, while the Soviet Union was sending Cuba billions per year, it was much better there.

jokoon 10y ago

I wonder if you could use this same comment and apply it to Adolf Hitler, and how people would read it. I believe we should be able to. I don't like Hitler and I'm quite on the left, but if we can start to stop demonizing political characters, it would appease many political problems.

pif 10y ago

When you write "evil dictator", you mean that a dictator could not be evil. This is hugely wrong. Dictatorship contains evil. I appreciate your effort to invite people to learn from history instead of just rejecting a portion of it. But this is a black-and-white matter: he chose to be a dictator, and he was wrong. Subsequent crimes and economics theories are less important once you keep people from choosing their fate/government.

peteretep 10y ago
> Dictatorship contains evil. > this is a black-and-white matter No matter how much you repeat your opinion, or how strongly you state it, it doesn't mean it suddenly become consensus reality.
- vixen99 10y ago
  I guess it's pretty much black and white for most of us if for life's duration we're forced to do what someone tells us to do. If permitted, we could do a few polls and discover whether such sanctions are regarded by those affected as 'consensus reality'. 'Evil' has religious overtones but it's not a bad word to sum up such a situation.
  - eyko 10y ago
    Even in democracies, we're forced to do what our govt tells us to do, or not do. Soft drugs and alcohol are the perfect example of someone's opinion forced down our throats. the fact that some drugs are harness but illegal while others are harmful but legal. Americans couldn't travel to Cuba. During the cold war, USSR. Americans couldn't freely express socialist ideas never mind communist ones. This in a democracy. I don't really see a big difference. The peculiarities of Cuba can be understood in its geopolitical context.
    - Trombone12 10y ago
      No, daylight saving is the perfect example of someone's opinion forced upon us. There is a general case to be made for regulating toxic substances and the examples given are of people arguing over if particular substances really are toxic enough.

valgaze 10y ago

"PARIS — Cuban leader Fidel Castro asked the Soviet Union in 1962 to launch a nuclear attack on the United States if it invaded Cuba, according to letters published today by a French newspaper. The respected daily Le Monde said the letters were exchanged between Castro and Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis. In an acrimonious reply, Khrushchev suggested that Castro was irresponsible, since such a war would have killed millions of people in both East and West and destroyed Cuba."

tmptmp 10y ago

Charismatic? Yes, but so was Hitler and Osama bin Laden. Revolutionary? yes, but so was Hitler. So, let's get it clear that that doesn't make him humane and good for society. >>If you think you're better, then do better. Be better. Don't refuse to acknowledge the humanity of another person because you believe you can totalize their entire life under a cheap tagline. This is a disingenuous advice. Will you not criticize Hitler? So, do you propose to acknowledge the humanity of Hitler and don't criticize him? Castro would have happily become Hitler, if he could get power. Criticizing him or anyone is not necessarily reducing them to a tagline. He deserves much and harsh criticism than most thugs, criminals and religious extremists in the world. He was an extremely cruel, dictator with no remorse for his cruel and inhumane actions. But what do you expect from a follower of communism? Communism is a very vicious ideology which leaves no room for any type of dissent. You either toe the party-line or get killed/maimed/imprisoned. Sad, this criminal didn't die a lot earlier.

apsec112 10y ago
I'm as anti-communist as they come, but comparing Castro to Hitler is ridiculous. Castro never set up camps for the sole purpose of mass murder. Castro didn't create special army units to machine gun hundreds of thousands of civilians. Castro didn't deliberately starve entire cities of people to death.
- briandear 10y ago
  Castro was Hitler without the industrial base. http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=55 http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=55 Essentially he was a pre-revenue Hiltler.
- geezerjay 10y ago
  You're arguing that some aspects of Hitler's National Socialism don't match Fidel Castro's Marxism-Leninism, while purposely ignoring all similarities, common to any totalitarian and repressive regime. Castro's long list of political executions are well documented. We may agree that Nazi death camps have a scale of their own, but this is no reason to turn a blind eye to the oppressive and persecutory nature of Fidel Castro's regime.

jl6 10y ago

Otherizing - great terminology. It is important to remember that all of history's "monsters" were human beings. Calling them monsters is pretending that it couldn't happen in your own culture. It could, and vigilance is required.

hisham_hm 10y ago
Indeed. It could, and it still can.

woodpanel 10y ago

I've come to see the Cuban revolution as something different than the sole work of Castro etc. wether you regard their work as accomplishment or atrocity. Also Socialism, Communism, Marxism are just the packaging. The core of the whole movement back then was the wast income inequality combined with US-foreign-affair meddling with Cuban domestic affairs, perfectly illustrated by mafia movies depicting Cuba as the playground for America's filthiest politicians and Nouveau riche. It was a US-caused political niche that was eagerly filled by the most opportunistic/capable people available.

macspoofing 10y ago
>Also Socialism, Communism, Marxism are just the packaging. That's like saying modern terrorism as practiced by groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS has nothing to do with a particular interpretation of Islam, but is rather just a response to colonialism and foreign interference in middle eastern countries, etc. There was an ideological basis to the Cuban revolution that tapped into a existing global Marxist ideology. 'Packaging' was critical.
- quonn 10y ago
  I don't think this is accurate. I can't point to a source right now, but I have read a lot about the revolution in the last decade and my impression was that some of the revolutionaries were Marxists, but there was no official ideology and Cuba became Marxist perhaps a year after the revolution. This involved a power struggle and some revolutionaries emigrated or went to prison. Castro eventually sided with the communists (Che, Raúl).
  - CWuestefeld 10y ago
    Che wasn't a communist either. He was just a nasty guy who wanted to stir up trouble and enjoy some ultraviolence.
- AngrySkillzz 10y ago
  A lot of people would say that, actually. World leaders throughout history have always picked up religions, ideologies as a way to get additional support, not because it's something they believe in or want implemented.

Beltiras 10y ago

I found this video [1] quite enlightening about the nature of power and how to hold onto it. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

ZeroGravitas 10y ago
Somewhat depressing to combine the insight of that video with the future of AI and widespread automation. Dictatorships here we come.

briandear 10y ago

Butchering priests in the name of revolution? Nope. Sorry. Can't appreciate the 'humanity' of someone that clearly doesn't deserve to be called such. Suggesting Castro deserves acknowledgement of his humanity is like suggesting Hitler was a sensitive art student.

afarrell 10y ago
Both are true though. Many humans have butchered fellow humans. Hitler wasn't uniquely evil in human history, but a part of a long-running tradition
- dorfsmay 10y ago
  I don't care how human anybody is, killing fellow humans, except to prevent the crime of others (police and military interventions in very specific cases) is not OK. That line cannot be crossed. That includes death penalty and political revolutions.
  - peteretep 10y ago
    > is not OK Why not? We kill plenty of other living things. Why not people?
    - dorfsmay 10y ago
      Because you have to draw the line somewhere. Morale/ethics do change over time, but not killing people has been shown throughout history to be the bare minimum for a decent society, and an accepted standard today. We can discuss and expand on adding more species, kingdoms and domains, but humans are not up for discussion.
      - peteretep 10y ago
        > to be the bare minimum > for a decent society So if a utilitarian-leaning society could show it was improved by killing people, you'd be fine with that?

erokar 10y ago

On the contrary, it's dangerous not to call out evil for what it is. Of course it might be wise to try to analyze what genetic/family/social/economic/political factors shape people like Castro, Gaddafi, Franco etc. — but if you think you're dealing with people like you and me you fail to grasp the phenomenon. Dictators that prosecute and murder their opponents, like Castro did, share a very predictable set of psychopathic/narcissistic/paranoid personality characteristics. They are, by definition, not normal.

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bnegreve 10y ago
> Dictators that prosecute and murder their opponents, Sorry, this is not a discriminative feature of dictators, non-dictators also prosecute and murder their opponents. (e.g. see any government involved in a war) The difference is that you feel like they are right to do it.
- berntb 10y ago
  You seriously argue that there is no difference between a democracy and a dictatorship. A trivial counter example -- if you causally dismissed your government as a Cuban in Cuba online, what happens? (Since Cuba has a really, really strict control of the Internet last I looked, it is of course a bit of an academic question...) Edit: This comment is really jumping up and down in votes... :-)
  - Daishiman 10y ago
    Well, ask people in Honduras or Nicaragua, which are "free" countries, effectively how much better they have it than Cubans. Hint: they don't, because their countries are "democratic" in theory yet they're overrun by gang violence, misery to a level that makes the worst of Cuba a paradise, and have state actors that claim democracy in theory yet will do what they need to keep their power. If anything, the history of Cuba's attempted overruns by the US only serve to justify the regime's paranoia.

tgarma1234 10y ago

If you have never seen the movie Before Night Falls I recommend it. While I agree that 20th century politics in Latin America was complicated, it's also true that the Castro regime committed a lot of human rights violations in ways that now seem really unjustified. I am not saying the United States was innocent. I am saying that a lot of people suffered under the regime needlessly and that should be acknowledged honestly.

mrleinad 10y ago
Right after the USA acknowledges ALL of their crimes against humanity, which are far more and spread much more wider. No cuban children sleeps in the streets tonight. You can't say that about northamerican children.
- tehwebguy 10y ago
  How could you possibly assume that no children in Cuba sleep on the streets?
  - quonn 10y ago
    I think his general point was that there are basically no homeless people. True or not, this can easily be checked by traveling there. It is possible to travel freely and I certainly got the same impression while I was there.
  - hisham_hm 10y ago
    I know it's mindboggling, but really there aren't. This is one thing that Westerners typically don't get about the Communist-bloc countries, or don't seem to care. Whereas in average the standard of living was always much higher in Capitalist countries, if you looked at the Eastern European Communist bloc for example, there's no extreme poverty, because the state takes care of that (and it's an extremely important thing for the State to take care of, or else the population would come to believe that Socialism wasn't working). Sure, being an average American in the 70s would be a lot more comfortable than being an average Pole in the same period — but there were no people living under bridges in Poland scrapping food from trashcans. If you ask the poorest people of any Capitalist country whether they'd switch places with the poorest ones of a Communist country, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Of course, this idea gets lost to the mind of the Western middle class because in general they just don't think about the poorest members of their society (or some just think they deserve their fate). The Communist era had numerous well-documented flaws, but really, the things it got right aren't spoken about enough in the West. We could learn something from that. For example, the levels of education of the population in the Soviet Union were never attained in the United States. How do we fix that in the Capitalist system? Do we want a more educated population in the first place? Do we want to live in a society with no children in the streets? If we do, what do we have to change in our society to attain that? It's important not to take a whole system for granted as a full package ignoring its flaws, be it Communist or Capitalist. But indeed, the saying _is_ correct: "Millions of children will sleep on the streets tonight. None of them is Cuban."

jackarg 10y ago

simply replying to save this well phrased comment

asveikau 10y ago
If you go to your own user page you can see comments you upvoted.

fspear 10y ago

Castro is up there with the worst of the worst (Hitler, Pol pot, amin, mugabe, chavez, Kim Jong, Stalin, Mao, etc) these individuals resigned to their humanity the moment they decided to step all over their citizen's rights and dignity for their own benefit. Please stop trying to humanize him.

Trombone12 10y ago
A yes, one bucket holds all evil, and the bool is the only integer the honest man needs, that's your position I take it?
- tehwebguy 10y ago
  Sure, executing dissenters is one of the bools. Not sure there is any getting around that.
  - jpttsn 10y ago
    So if you execute one person, you may as well keep going, because you're already evil and there's no scale?
    - tehwebguy 10y ago
      Executes dissenters
      - hisham_hm 10y ago
        But life inprisonment is okay, right? Asking for a friend (Chelsea Manning). Or is it just a matter of calling dissenters "traitors" and then it's fine? I'm sure Castro ticked that checkbox before the executions.
        tehwebguy 10y ago
        That is quiet a jump you made.

tehwebguy 10y ago

No one is taking his humanity away. He generously donated it every time he executed a dissenter.

MichaelMoser123 10y ago

> Fidel Castro's mistakes are our mistakes to repeat, or to learn from. i don't see how i could ever turn into a dictator who puts his political opponents in jail (as well as everyone who just wants to get out of the country) - all in the name of some higher cause. Interesting if these dictators ever took note of the discrepancy between the Cause and reality; or were they always able to self-justify their actions like in the 'grand inquisitor' by Dostoevsky, who knows... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor

lap42 10y ago

What a pathetic piece of text!

blfr 10y ago

the complexities of global politics in the 20th century All the complexities in the world won't cover up the fact that communism was by far the worst evil of the 20th century, beating nazism by a mile, by tens of millions of people killed to no benefit. It had no redeeming qualities. Murder, slavery, and poverty is all communism gave to the world. Now its major protagonists can burn in hell together. I hope they do.

necessity 10y ago

Actually being an evil dictator who murdered thousands usually tops everything else a person has done in his life.

todd3834 10y ago

Get to the facts and stop telling me how to think

RodericDay 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism#U.S._Code_.28U.S.C..29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism#U.S._... --- Commenting on the genesis of this provision, Edward Peck, former U.S. Chief of Mission in Iraq (under Jimmy Carter) and former ambassador to Mauritania said: > In 1985, when I was the Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Task Force on Terrorism, [my working group was asked] to come up with a definition of terrorism that could be used throughout the government. We produced about six, and each and every case, they were rejected, because careful reading would indicate that our own country had been involved in some of those activities. […] After the task force concluded its work, Congress [passed] U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2331 ... the US definition of terrorism. […] one of the terms, "international terrorism," means "activities that," I quote, "appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping." […] Yes, well, certainly, you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours is one of them. […] And so, the terrorist, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.[62]

ianamartin 10y ago

I'm really glad that this post is at the top. This is the kind of intelligent and nuanced discourse that keeps me coming back to HN. Thank you for bringing some sanity to this discussion, good sir. In addition to what I wrote below about the nature of the Good/Evil abstraction, I want to put this here. I think there's a level at which this all boils down to beliefs. Not which ones you (generally you, not you as an individual) have, but rather if you believe anything at all. Beliefs--like believing in good and evil, but there are many--are fundamentally a scary proposition. And I can't understand how people maintain them. Belief, by definition, is accepting something as true while knowing there is insufficient evidence for that thing to be true. This is not substantively different from a definition of insanity: a case where a person accepts something as true that isn't supported by a reasonable body of evidence. This is kind of a bold statement, but I stand by it. People who believe things are not really different from people who are insane. There's a lack of reason common to both categories of people. The Good/Evil dichotomy is only one projection of belief. But it may well be the most important one. Because fundamentally, assertions of good and evil are really just high-level abstractions for the beliefs. Good vs. Evil is a shortcut to feeling good about yourself. It's a shortcut for saying, "I believe x about y and I have no reasonable proof for any of that, but it makes me feel good about myself." We should do away with beliefs. We're smarter and better than that. And getting rid of beliefs would have the nice effect of tossing the good/evil garbage out as well.

kamjam 10y ago
"There's a principle of ideology that we must never look at our own crimes. We should on the other hand exult in the crimes of others and in our own nobility in opposing them." I believe the quote is from Noam Chomsky but couldn't find any references. Some interesting debate in this thread, but as you and the OP say, there is no black and white, good vs evil, just many shades in between with many actors playing many roles simultaneously. Fidel Castro was certainly no saint and at times was the devil, but there were also those other times inbetween.