Five years ago this week a 90 year old Fidel Castro died peacefully in bed—a longevity and manner of passing he denied tens of thousands of his subjects. Naturally the big guns of the Democrat Party and Mainstream Media tried to give “balance” to his Stalinist regime’s “achievements” vs. its methodology. And some of them paid dearly—made to look like total jackasses—for their asinine commentary, Soledad O’Brien in particular.
The Castro regime (many of the same people running Cuba today) jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin did during the Great Terror. They murdered more Cubans in their first three years in power than Hitler’s regime murdered Germans during their first six.
And yet:
“Fidel Castro could have been Cuba’s Elvis!” (Dan Rather)
The Castro regime shattered — through mass-executions, mass-jailings, mass larceny and exile — virtually every family on the island of Cuba. Many opponents of the Castro regime qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period three times as long in Fidel Castro’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s Gulag.
And yet:
"Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, I frankly like him and regard him as a friend." (Democratic presidential candidate, Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, and “Conscience of the Democratic party,” George Mc Govern.)
Fidel and Raul Castro beat ISIS to the game by over half a century. As early as January 1959 they were filming their murders for the media-shock value.
And yet:
“Fidel Castro first and foremost is and always has been a committed egalitarian. He wanted a system that provided the basic needs to all. Cuba has superb systems of health care and universal education…We greeted each other as old friends.” (Former President of the United States and official "Elder Statesman” of the Democratic party, Jimmy Carter.)
The Castro brothers also came closest of anyone in history to (wantonly) starting a worldwide nuclear war.
In the above process the Castros converted a highly-civilized nation with a higher standard of living than much of Europe and swamped with immigrants into a slum/sewer ravaged by tropical diseases and with the highest suicide rate in the Western hemisphere.
And yet:
“Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly–even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!” (NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.)
Over TWENTY TIMES as many people (and counting) have died trying to escape Castro’s Cuba as died trying to escape East Germany. Yet prior to Castroism, Cuba received more immigrants per-capita than almost any nation on earth—more than the U.S. did including the Ellis Island years, in fact.
And yet:
“Viva Fidel! Viva Che!” (Two-time candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Jesse Jackson, bellowed while arm in arm with Fidel Castro himself in 1984.)
Fidel Castro helped train and fund practically every terror group on earth, from the Weathermen to Puerto Rico’s Macheteros, from Argentina’s Montoneros, to Colombia’s FARC, from the Black Panthers to the IRA and from the PLO to Al-Fatah.
Would anyone guess any of the above from reading or listening to the mainstream media, or the (Fake) History Channel, upon his death—or since?
In fact, from their reactions, all that dancing in the streets of Miami’s Little Havana when Fidel finally croaked seemed to strike many mainstream Media talking heads as odd, if not downright unseemly.
According to the scholars and researchers at the Cuba Archive, the Castro regime’s total death toll–from torture, prison beatings, firing squads, machine gunning of escapees, drownings, etc.–approaches 100,000. Cuba’s population in 1960 was 6.4 million. According to the human rights group Freedom House, 500,000 Cubans (young and old, male and female) have passed through Castro’s prison and forced-labor camps. This puts Fidel Castro’s political incarceration rate right up there with his hero Stalin’s.
It’s not enough that liberals refuse to acknowledge any justification for the Cuban-American celebrations upon his death. No, on top of that here’s the type of thing the celebrants are accustomed to hearing from the media and famous Democrats:
"Castro's personal magnetism is still powerful, his presence is still commanding. Cuba has very high literacy, and Castro has brought great health care to his country." (Barbara Walters.)
“Fidel Castro is one helluva guy!” (CNN founder Ted Turner.)
Whatever else you might say about Fidel Castro, nobody ever accused him of misreading the U.S. mainstream media.
“Much more valuable to us than military recruits for our guerrilla army were recruiting American reporters to export our propaganda.” (Fidel Castro’s sidekick Che Guevara, 1959.)
“Without the help of the New York Times, the Revolution in Cuba would never have been.” (Fidel Castro while pinning a medal on NY Times reporter Herbert Matthews, April, 1959.)
As seen from the quotes above, the propaganda services by much of the mainstream media for the Castro regime continues apace—despite half a century of terror-sponsorship, mass-murder, and mass-torture by their hero and his successors.