Leftists struggle to find fault with Fidel
Insight on the News
Copyright (c) 2003 ProQuest Information and Learning; All Rights Reserved.
Copyright Washington Times Corporation Jun 10-Jun 23, 2003
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Volume 19, Issue 13; ISSN: 1051-4880
The last word
Leftists struggle to find fault with Fidel
Woody West
Filmmaker Oliver Stone, whose crazed view of American history is of
one evil conspiracy after another, calls him "one of the Earth's
wisest people." Bigfoot movie director Steven Spielberg says
breathlessly that the time he spent with the man was "the eight most
important hours of my life." He's "a genius," spouted actor Jack
Nicholson. And Kevin Costner described meeting him as "the
experience of a lifetime."
Who is this paragon of the species? The lovely Fidel Castro.
No one should expect astute, even sensible, opinions from the majority of those whose celebrity is based on a make-believe vocation centered in the artificiality of Hollywood. Too many stars of stage, screen and radio are exulting over the Cuban dictator, now more than 40 years into his bloody rule. They are classic examples of what the cynical Vladimir Lenin called "useful idiots." American idol? Hollywood is intent on presenting Castro as a paragon of the species.
In addition to the glitteries, the ranks of loud leftists who celebrate Fidel have been mobilizing in recent weeks, renewing their allegiance in the wake of his latest tyrannical frolics. There first was what amounted to the summary execution by firing squad of three Cubans who tried unsuccessfully to commandeer a ferry to escape from the island paradise. Shortly after, Fidel's cops rounded up 75 dissidents - journalists, librarians, economists - who speedily were sentenced by Castro's judges, each for up to 28 years in prison. The crimes of the "counter-revolutionaries" were indeed threatening: They were petitioning for reform of Cuba's implacably dictatorial government. (The White House responded to Castro's crackdown by expelling 14 Cuban diplomats - i.e., spies - from the regime's "interest section" in Washington and at the United Nations.)
These two episodes of course are only a drop in Fidel's bloody bucket. He's kept his jails filled and grave diggers busy since his overthrow of the Batista regime in 1959, abetted by the ecstatic support of New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews, an early Jayson Blair. All of this is documented but superfluous to most of the Castro groupies. These folks are of similar disposition (and often the same faces) as those who revered Stalin, adored Mao, cheered for Ho Chi Minh, insisted on the saintliness of the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua and generally have been saps for every hard-eyed thug who preaches a socialist gospel.
Why do these American aficionados of despotism plight their troth so strangely? Often it involves hostility toward their own country and a perverse notion that Third World countries are victims of the West, and that the "revolutionary" socialistic governments are more "authentic," no matter how brutal. Paul Hollander's 1981 book, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, is a rigorous analysis of the dispiriting phenomenon.
Artistic celebrities, however, don't often qualify as intellectuals - call it the Fonda/Streisand syndrome. To be politically active is seen by them as validating hollow personal identities submerged in media hype. The question is, however, why their views on politics and foreign policy (the tinsel activists were vacuously intense over the war in Iraq) are given constant attention by the media. Well, that's the old newsbiz.
There has appeared, amazingly, the slightest blip of reality among a few of the faithful after Castro's latest brutality. The den mother of American "progressives," Susan Sontag, actually chastised Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a longtime pal and apostle of Fidelisma. It was, she said, "unpardonable" that Marquez was silent about the vicious crackdown. And novelist Jose Saramago, Portugal's Nobel laureate, proclaimed that Cuba has "lost my trust, it has damaged my hopes, it has defrauded my illusions" notwithstanding that Castro has done nothing of late that he hasn't been doing for four decades.
Nevertheless, the recent hammering of dissent in Cuba is not Castro's fault, according to Wayne S. Smith, writing in the far-left Nation magazine. President George W. Bush is the culprit. Fidel merely was reacting "to growing provocations." Smith, who has led a cheering section for the Cuban jefe for years, also notes that the "U.S. policy of pre-emptive strikes and the beginning of the war in Iraq" were crucial because the communist bosses "could no longer afford to have dissidents, possibly directed by the United States, roaming free."
It was encouraging to read that Stone's wet-kiss documentary about Fidel was pulled by HBO - but only for a moment. Stone returned to the island, it is reported, and interviewed several anti-Castro Cubans so that his propagandistic film could be aired with a patina of "balance."
In the end, the fate of the ravaged island is up to the courageous Cubans who speak out at the risk of liberty and life. Even when Fidel departs this vale of tears, the struggle will continue. In Cuba, as in Iraq, the long tenure of dictatorship has meant that thousands of their people have been complicit in the unspeakable repression - and they will not easily surrender power to face retribution.
The punch line to this unfunny tale, however, is that Cuba has just been "re-elected" at the United Nations to membership on that odd institution's Human Rights Commission - which is chaired by Libya.
WOODY WEST IS AN ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR Insight MAGAZINE.