For normal people, leftist and corporate media ambivalence toward the Cuban government’s recent crackdown on unprecedented democracy protests seems inexplicable. The post-Bush Democratic Party has reclaimed the mantle of interventionism and militant democracy promotion from the GOP. And such protesters, under any other circumstances, would usually be recognized as the clear-cut victims of oppression in such a situation. They are even multi-ethnic and include thought-leaders such as artists.
But for much of the Left, America’s foreign dominance renders us the enemy by default. Not long ago, Nikole Hannah-Jones, founder of the historically dubious 1619 Project, put forward and defended the far-left’s view of the Cuban dictatorship as the hero of the story.
Given the obvious failure of their centurylong communist experiment, leftists are now seeking to revive The Cause with slightly different branding. Sure, Cubans may feel compelled to send their children abroad on flotillas made of trash to escape the poverty and oppression wrought by their government. But, Hannah-Jones counters, have you seen how equal all the races are?
“Cuba has the least inequality between black and white people of any place really in the hemisphere,” Hannah-Jones said on a podcast in 2019. “I mean the Caribbean, most of the Caribbean it’s hard to count because the white population in a lot of those countries is very, very small, they’re countries run by black folks. But in places that are truly at least biracial countries, Cuba actually has the least inequality, and that’s largely due to socialism, which I’m sure no one wants to hear.”
Everyone is equal in a bread line or the Gulag, just as everyone is equal in the grave. So what if communism failed at improving the lives of the working class? If the only metric is literally equality with a special salience cast on race, then of course Cuba should be an extraordinary success! (Aside from the fact that it really isn’t.)
How about a modest compromise for Hannah-Jones and her ilk: We will take in every Cuban brandishing an American flag and, in exchange, hand over to the Cuban government an American leftist who really buys what Hannah-Jones is selling. That seems like an immigration compromise that could unite most of the political spectrum.
