Worshipping tyrants
Daniel Finkelstein is planning a dinner party:
I had a strange idea yesterday. I had the idea of inviting Harriet Harman home for dinner. This isn't a thought that occurs to me often, but I suddenly felt it might be fun.
I'd invite my Dad too. And then, when we'd given Harriet a nice meal (what do you think she likes to eat?), my father could tell her his story.
He could tell her how the Soviets and the Nazis closed in on his home town of Lvov in September 1939 and how the town council chose the Soviets to surrender to. Then he might tell her how the fathers of his friends were taken to the woods at Katyn and shot by the communists.
He might recount the story of his father's arrest as an antisocial element, of Adolf Finkelstein's repeated interrogations leading to a trial in his absence and a jail sentence of 15 years' hard labour. Then Dad could tell the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party about his own experience as a child, exiled to a remote Siberian village. And how he and his mother and his father never saw their home again.
And, when he'd finished, he could let Harriet speak. And she could explain to Dad why she thinks that Fidel Castro is a hero.
Amazingly enough a cabinet minister - Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, no less - can get away with this. As Finkelstein patiently explains, old Fidel was no freedom fighter:
Let's eliminate from our inquiries the idea that Fidel was somehow better than the rest of them, better than Honecker and so forth. Those cigars, those battle fatigues, that beard. Kinda cool, no? No. Death sentences for those who want to flee, prison sentences for dissidents, gags for the press, jail for homosexuals, ruinous central planning for the economy, his support for a nuclear first strike against America, his opposition to any kind of reform, his four-hour long speeches, his personality cult. Fidel Castro was just like the rest of them.
Oliver Kamm points out that during the Cuban missile crisis - Castro was egging Khrushchev on to launch a nuclear strike on America:
The most perverse aspect of Western attitudes towards Cuba is not a misconceived US embargo, but a widespread romanticism towards its target. Today's antiwar campaigners appear unaware that the historical figure who more nearly than anyone brought the world to nuclear destruction was Fidel Castro. In the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Castro cabled Khrushchev and urged a nuclear first strike in the event of a US invasion of the island. (Khrushchev responded to his volatile ally with understated reason: "Dear Comrade Fidel Castro, I consider this proposal of yours incorrect.")
When Mikhail Gorbachev visited Cuba in 1989, shortly before the edifice of Soviet Communism imploded, he was greeted with a huge banner unsubtly declaring: "Long live Marxism-Leninism!" Stalinist by ideology, warmonger by inclination, and autocrat by temperament, Fidel Castro will be an easy act to follow.
James Forsyth of the Spectator points us at the Freedom House report on Cuba:
All political organizing outside the PCC is illegal. Political dissent, spoken or written, is a punishable offense, and those so punished frequently receive years of imprisonment for seemingly minor infractions. Continuing a trend from 2003, in 2006 the Cuban government harassed dissidents, including using arbitrary sweeps and temporary detentions of suspected dissidents. The regime also called on its neighbor-watch groups, known as "Committees in Defense of the Revolution", to strengthen vigilance against "anti-social behavior", a government euphemism for opposition activity. Several dissident leaders claimed to suffer "acts of repudiation" by state-sponsored groups that attempt to intimidate and harass government opponents...
Freedom of the press remains tightly curtailed, and the media in Cuba remain controlled by the state and the Communist Party. The independent press is considered illegal by the state and is the object of a targeted campaign of intimidation by the government, which uses Ministry of Interior agents to infiltrate and report on the independent media. Independent journalists, particularly those associated with a dozen small news agencies established outside state control, have been subjected to continued repression, including jail terms of hard labor and assaults by state security agents. Foreign news agencies may only hire local reporters through government offices, limiting employment opportunities for independent journalists.
In 2004, 22 independent journalists arrested in March 2003 remained imprisoned in degrading conditions, which included physical and psychological abuse; acts of harassment and intimidation were also directed against their families. In April, two journalists held without trial since March 2002 were finally tried by a court in Ciego de Avila on charges of insulting Castro and the police and creating public disorder; one received a three-year prison sentence and the other a sentence of three and a half years.
Access to the internet remained tightly controlled. It is illegal for Cubans to connect to the internet in their homes. State-owned internet cafes exist in major cities, but web sites are closely monitored, and access costs are inaccessible for most Cubans. Only select state employees are permitted access to e-mail at their workplaces as well as to an intranet system that limits access to websites that the government deems inappropriate...
The government restricts academic freedom. Teaching materials for courses such as mathematics or literature must contain ideological content. Affiliation with official Communist Party structures is generally needed to gain access to educational institutions, and students’ report cards carry information regarding their parents’ involvement with the Communist Party. In 2003, state security forces raided 22 independent libraries and sent 14 librarians to jail with terms of up to 26 years. Many of the targeted individuals were charged with working with the United States to subvert the Cuban government, thereby committing national security violations and aiding a foreign power. Several political prisoners have subsequently been released for health reasons, but they are subject to re-arrest at any time...
Workers do not have the right to bargain collectively or to strike. Members of independent labor unions, which the government considers illegal, are often harassed or dismissed from their jobs and subsequently barred from future employment. The government has also been reducing opportunities for private economic activity; a trend toward revoking self-employment licenses continued, and privately run farmers’ markets also came under increased scrutiny, a further intensification of the movement toward increased state control of the economy.
The executive branch controls the judiciary. In practice, the Council of State, of which Castro is chairman, serves as a de facto judiciary and controls both the courts and the judicial process as a whole.
According to a domestic monitoring group, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, there are more than 300 prisoners of conscience in Cuba, most held in cells with common criminals and many convicted on vague charges such as "disseminating enemy propaganda" or "dangerousness". Members of groups that exist apart from the state are labeled "counterrevolutionary criminals" and are subject to systematic repression, including arrest; beatings while in custody; loss of work, educational opportunities, and health care; and intimidation by uniformed or plainclothes state security agents. Dissidents reported being subject to even tighter surveillance following Fidel Castro’s illness, as the government mobilized to thwart any potential public disruptions.
This seems to constitute a fairly comprehensive catalogue of reasons why liberals and progressives of any stripe should condemn Castro's Cuba. And yet, a cursory glance at the comments section on various news and blog sites shows how our pseudo-liberal left are prepared to overlook all this: they point to Cuba's universal free health care, or its high level of adult literacy. Is this really fair compensation for tyranny. It used to be said of Mussolini that whatever his faults, at least he made the trains run on time. At least we can say of Castro that his people can read official propaganda in prison - and won't have to pay for their treatment after being beaten up.
The real reason why Castro still has fans on the Left is that he has stuck two fingers up at America for a very long time - and this is why the fans of Castro are also prepared to overlook the crimes of other tyrants: the crimes of Saddam are forgotten so that his removal by the U.S. and U.K. can be condemned; the phenomenon of Srebrenica-denial by some on the left and their attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of Slobodan Milosevic - another despotic leader defeated by Western action - is another example.
All of which makes it all the more bizarre that even government ministers in a western democracy can still spout this sort of line. Here's Daniel Finkelstein again:
Which leaves me with one final reason for the Left's attitude to communism - that anyone who defies the United States is somehow seen as a valiant progressive, whatever their crimes. I am sure that Castro's resistance to the US is a major reason for Harriet Harman's admiration.
From time to time, Left thinkers make an effort to reconcile liberals and America. From Tony Crosland in the Fifties to Jonathan Freedland's admirable and convincing book Bring Home the Revolution, the efforts have failed. Almost anyone - a homophobic, misogynist Islamist cleric for example - is given some credit if the US is their punchbag.
A few months ago the Tory candidate Nigel Hastilow had to resign for saying that Enoch Powell may have had a point. And it was right that he went.
Calling Fidel Castro a hero is worse.
It is indeed - but we won't hold our breath for a resignation.
|
The New Party News