Fidel Castro

Fuck off

I made it into a wiki

oh right
well I’ve already boasted about it now

How come I can’t edit it? @sean

Literally shocked to discover he was actually alive for so long.

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Some proper history being written by the winners stuff going on with this atm
Britain’s been just a lovely place for/to everyone forever I guess!

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There’s only China can save us from America now mates. So disappointed in Putin, that fucking turncoat sold us all out wrt Trump.

I was overseas for a few days around the time of his death. In both cities i visited (in Europe) people seemed noticably affected, even gloomy about it, and i must’ve seen a dozen examples of public graffiti in his honour. Seemed a bit out of kilter with his popularity beforehand. I know lots of you sorts like wearing berets and smoking doobies and pretending you’re revolutionaries and all that, but why is/was he so revered?

Because he looked fucking cool with that hat and cigar.

I thought it was just presented as something that you wouldn’t likely know in general, which seems to be true, judging by the reaction. Seems to have been presented more in a “while Thatcher was pro-Apartheid, Castro was fighting it” rather than the suggestion he was pivotal, although that Mandela speech implies Mandela felt what he did was important.

Ah fair enough. I just felt like the places I’ve seen this information presented haven’t sought to imply he was central to ending Apartheid. Obviously people can spout all kinds of rubbish, though.

I guess mainly I feel like you’re saying this but refusing to be drawn into actually stating an opinion. Maybe you think it’s obvious or maybe it is if you’re someone who knows politics.

Maybe if more than 5% of the Cuban people were able to access the internet, you might see more examples of them writing it themselves.

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I actually got to speak to Fidel Castro just before he passed away, and I asked him who was the best central midfielder he had ever seen. Without hesitation he replied “Paul Scholes”

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Innit. having been to Cuba - even as a fat, wealthy, white Western tourist barely getting to experience much of the ‘true’ country - it was clear to me that whatever benefits they might have gained in healthcare and education were lost tenfold absolutely everywhere else. Heartbreaking misery and poverty, on top of what’s been pretty comprehensively documented as a brutal dictatorship.

And yeah, you can blame a lot of the poverty on the US embargo, but I do think that Cuba is hugely romanticised by a certain type of person who desperately, desperately wants there to have been a successful communist/socialist state. This wasn’t socialised wealth distribution - like most countries, the wealth accumulated and remained at the top. the difference is that, for various reasons, there wasn’t much of if left for everyone else.

I thought Owen Jones’ recent piece was one of the more balanced, in terms of recognising the magnitude of Castro’s achievements but also acknowledging the oppression under which most of the country lives.

…and who also desperately hates the US.

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nailed it

That 4th paragraph…I can’t imagine how bleak that must have been.

reading an Owen Jones article?

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I’m not trying to romanticise Cuba at all man, just saying I’ve seen some pretty hypocritical stuff coming out

Oh no, absolutely. Cuba has always been a proxy for the socialist/communist divide and you could have predicted who was going to say what about Castro when he died at pretty much any point since the Cold war ended.