Speaker 1: Listen to today's voicemail kind of bums me out. It's about Cuba,
and we talk sometimes about the revolutionary left, it's a sort of pseudo populism on the left,
which sometimes blinds people to authoritarianism and the lack of progressivism and authoritarianism
where they end up supporting these, you know, often military uniform wearing faux populists.
And I've been talking this week about how the U.S. has some blame for the situation
in Cuba thanks to the hypocritical and counterproductive U.S. embargo of Cuba.
I want the embargo to be dropped. I don't want American involvement in Cuban politics. And yet
I cannot, as a progressive, support something as authoritarian as the Castro regime, which came
to power in 1959, handed power from brother to brother in 2008. That's not progressive.
That's just not progressive. And sadly, I did get a voicemail. It's very long. I'll only play
some of it from a revolutionary leftist who doesn't like my perspective. Take a listen.
Speaker 4: I'm really disappointed in you the way you're framing Cuba
politically. You are purposefully leaving out the full context. Fidel Castro is not start out as a
dictator nor a dictator wannabe. Speaker 1: So, first of all,
didn't start out as a dictator, conceding that that's eventually what he became.
Speaker 4: OK, he was a reaction to stuff. I see the regime friendly to the United States
corporate industrial oligarchy. Sure. The people in Cuba uprose because they were sick and tired of
being paid lousy wages. Sure, they didn't want to be serfs for the American industrial machine. OK,
Fidel Castro, I believe he was educated in the United States. And so he had a rule that one out
on his fellow Cubans and he made sure that they understood the true nature of what was going on.
Speaker 1: Listen, this is how faux populist authoritarians work. The fact that Castro came to
power in a context where there was genuine real in the streets. Dissatisfaction with Cuban leadership
doesn't change the fact that this is how faux populism works. It's the populist rhetoric.
And next thing you know, the same guys in power for forty nine years with a police state,
with complete and total control over every aspect of the people and end of the economy, the
fact that Castro replaced something bad and that those who were protesting in the 50s in Cuba did
so genuinely and for good reasons, doesn't mean that we praise Fidel Castro in power since 1959,
until 2008, at which point he hands power to his brother. It's not progressive. I can't support it.
And this is you know, it's a very similar playbook to Venezuela because in the 50s,
there were reasons to protest. Doesn't mean we now don't criticize what is an authoritarian regime.
Even the military uniforms similar between, you know, the Castro green uniform and Hugo
Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela appearing sometimes and, you know, essentially military
dress uniforms. And it's sort of disturbing to me that supposed progressives not only fall for
the faux populist rhetoric, but they even fall for like even the military uniform stuff doesn't raise
alarms to you. The suspicion that these folks have of the military uniform when it's the U.S. or the
U.K. military seems to go out the window. When you see the same sort of stuff being done in Cuba and
in Venezuela, I will never get it. And again, I at this point, I've done this so many times when
I do these political compass type tests, I am not an authoritarian leftist. I'm a small libertarian
leftist. So I can't as a progressive, support authoritarian regimes. And it makes me sad when
when people who sometimes think of themselves as progressive support, that is just disappointing.
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