Slavoj Zizek: The Left’s Fidelity to Castro-ation

I feel the same way about a lot of Iranians who left Iran after '79 (especially Persian Jews). Sure, it's easy to claim they're "working with imperialists" but really, who the fuck wants to live under a totalitarian theocracy? Who cares if the Shah was worse and the Islamic Republic has good health care and a UBI? It's still a fucked up government run like a police state in some regions.

It's almost as if you don't need to be a socialist to be a cool guy that tells porky to suck it.

bay of pigs was carried out by cuban emigres. they also worked to murder che, and commit terrorism against cuba. cuban americans are also a committed anticommunistic political force and voting bloc in american life. they're scum

and the US still fucked them

top kek

Are you denying the difference in wealth, opportunities, etc. (USA vs. Cuba)?

Second generation Cubans are left wing.
poop

no, i'm saying that they could have fulfilled their desire for better material conditions without also volunteering to work as american lapdogs
then they should show it more loudly and drown out the whining of their treacherous parents
no

So they are guilty because… capitalism? Because they have to work for porky to get by (and get by better than in Cuba)?

are you ignorant on the history of anti-castro cubans in america or something? i'm talking about criminals like orlando bosch and the slime who carried out bay of pigs. plus the naturalised citizens who politically agitate for state violence and terrorism against cuba

leave cuba all you like. doesn't mean you have to start attacking it once you get to america

no they the fuck aren't. they're libshits.

second gen cubans are spit down the middle and older cubans are rightist as fuck for obvious reasons

Do all Cuban immigrants attack Cuba? Nope. Did all Cuban immigrants participate in the bay of pigs? Nope.

Do you even have a point?

when did i say all? i specifically mention terrorists and criminals. besides, are you unfamiliar with generalities of speech? fucking smartass retard

Also, to Zizek's point, many of these Cuban migrants may very well have legitimate grievances with Cuban government policy. It's literally the same thing with Persian Jews in LA: "oh, how could they abandon such a beautiful anti-imperialist state? They must all be WRECKERS!" - when most of them had everything they ever knew pulled out from under them post-79 (let's not forget the Ayatollah was NOT a socialist).

Do you even have a point besides "people leaving Cuba: bad?"

my point is: eat shit and fuck off retard. i won't submit to your ego

wew

I'm unironically pro-imperialism tbh. Western countries need to recolonize backward countries and develop the productive forces so that Communism can be achieved.

Read Parenti

DUSTBIN

You get'em (sniff)
fucking revisionist imperialist scum. Probably a cia plant!

Nonsense. Cubans paid the price of US imperialism and outliving the USSR, while the regime itself has had no ideological renewal such as what Ocalan has imposed on the PKK/PYD.

Ah, the eternal American… again, as always.

Zizek plz

That's not how colonialism works. Colonies were prevented from developing industry.

yup

Just a few of the topoi generally found in the North American left (and especially, more intensely in Cuba).

The big other for the Cuban communist is the international comrade, for whom they offer their suffering.

The cold war is over. Get over it.

The people of Cuba are not dupes to dumb leftists in North America they're hostage to forces beyond their control; as are we all.

lol you mean like complete abandon of socialism

This thread is everything wrong with 20th century nostalgist 'communists'.

You think a materialist analysis would help Castro? Actually, you get to do it. Since people love parroting statistics (that are irrelevant to communism) on infant mortality, poverty, malnutrition etc. How did those look before the revolution? Oh right, Cuba was the best country in the region Before that as well, and in fact a lot of that was mismanaged by the Cuban government post-revolution.

You will find if you do actual, unbiased materialist analysis of any 'actually existing socialist' country that what happened post-revolution economically speaking was a continuation of what was happening before, but with more vigour, exploitation and efficiency and ideological veils than the old autocratic governments could dream off.

Take China: under the KMT the peasantry was ruthlessly exploited to feed the army, for conscripts, food, horses, all of it. After the civil war they were used as a buffer, sponge and auxillary to the industrial development in the cities, Life in the rural areas was as neglected as ever. Before the civil war, as after, as now, the peasants that where so glorified in the struggle against the nationalists and the japanese have just been getting extorted of everything, just with more efficiency. Because that's what's convenient to the government. There are no excuses like "capitalist roaders".

The same happened in Cuba, where after the revolution, a lot of the communists that had fought the government separate from Castros army had to lay down their arms, and the trade unions that were finally hopeful of workers rights flourishing had to bend knee as well.

What is it that is so hard to understand? Leaders like Castro, Chavez, Mao had absolutely no problem with trampling workers, industrial or agricultural – they had no problem using attack dogs to chase striking workers back into factories; they didn't stop the abstract market forces from eating people and their dreams to churn out profit on the other side any more than Park Geun-Hye or Putin or Obama. Some speculative idealist nonsense is the only thing that could possibly redeem anti-American dictators and not even that works now because Zizek is dispelling that bullshit as well. You don't have to idealize America, liberalism or imperialism to understand this you autists.

Zizek, a communist, is more critical of Castro than even Holla Forums and the rest of the "leftist" world.

That really makes me think.

Yes, modern communists are hard-line anti-moralists who don't care about the evils of previous regimes, only the evils of regimes that called themselves socialist – for they are the ones that tainted its name. Modern communists declare that there was no improvement after the revolution (debatable) and as such no point to the revolution in the first place; as if revolutions come from nowhere and have no grievances backing them; as if history itself and the people who acted in it were not driven by circumstances which were deadly and real to them. All prior revolutions are to be examined ex post and declared to be entirely about outcomes and bereft of principle even as people died for both. What this view concludes is that the 20th century was a failure and nothing but; and it is an affront to modern communist sensibilities that anyone could look to the past with anything other than disdain.

Please, spare me. I've had enough of this self-conscious anti-history posturing as serious analysis, especially with a fashionable helping of psychoanalysis and literary reference in place of actual historical materialism.

Yes, the 20th century was a damn failure of outcomes but it had and still has principles that are worth defending, and those principles were bound up in the revolutions of that century. The people who fought in it were not fools they were revolutionaries grasping for a way forward. The movements at hand were all they had to work with, and those movements derived much of their inspiration and rhetoric from socialism. That alone was enough to strike fear into the heart of the bourgeoisie, but most of them followed through on what little prescriptions were available and what was understood to be the material platform of their ideology – though tempered as always by ambition and domination. Understanding this is not the same as putting the likes of Castro on a pedestal: it's about understanding why the 20th century was a failure of outcomes even as the principles of communism were carried around the globe.

This refrain of "The 20th century is over!" is only shocking to those living in a time warp or perhaps under a rock; it's real purpose is to bury the past and condemn it as nothing to do with socialism, as if history does not weigh upon the minds of the living as a nightmare. Communism cannot divorce itself from the history carried out in its name no matter how hard it is shouted to the contrary – thinking otherwise? That is dangerous as well as stupid.

You're a fucking idiot. In an attempt to be as sanctimoniously anti-communist as possible you're literally parroting reactionary talking points. Pre-revolution had a high GDP!! Big fucking woop. What does it matter that a small percentage of Cubans were raking in dough from colluding with western corporations and the mafia while half of the country was unemployed and living in destitute poverty. 40% of the country was illiterate. Take your head out of your ass.

It's the same shit post-revolution man, except people can't even feed themselves.

You are conflicting two different categories: ideology and propaganda with political power and economy.

It's really not. Food insecurity hasn't been an issue since the Special Period.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Cuba
What the fuck is with communists and agriculture?

I agree.

For all its massive spending so that everyone will have free education and health care, Cuba is still a grim place.

I visited it once a few years back and did a motorcycle trip across the country, farmers still grow shit like coffee and small animals, but their major cash crop that they export is sugar. That's not a good system to run by.

And virtually no freedom of speech (let alone democracy exists). And didn't Castro enact a useless subsidy to build a Russian Orthodox Church somewhere in Havana 10 years back? Just to show consolidation with Stalin? Lenin must have rolled in his grave.

And all those free land, for what reason?

Castro really did buy Stalin's collective industralization meme.

I give more weight to the latter in explaining Cuba's predicament, over asinine claims that Cuba is a nation of self-flagellating ideologues genuflecting en masse to Western leftism.

Not hard to understand.

In one of his recent interviews in the mainstream media (forgot where exactly) Zizek said that western leftists like Cuba & Yugoslavia so much because they percieved it as something different than the Eastern bloc, I think its the same here on Holla Forums. Aside from the Stalinists no one here is nostalgic for the USSR and yet every so often there is a thread about how great Tito was

There is nothing stopping cubans from making fertilizer and building tractors, man.

I mean come the fuck on, this is North Korea tier, except North Korea imports less food.

Anarchist Catalonia and Rojava too.

That's a completely false statistic. Cuba imports 70-80% of a few staples that are part of the government food ration program. ALL OF THE REST OF THE FOOD IN CUBA is grown locally, and with a minimal use of oil and gasoline.

I got sources on mine, what's your source on you?

- t. Slovenian fist-fucker

They need to revitalize their agricultural industry for sure but importing your food isn't what factors into food insecurity. I never said it was a perfect place but saying life was better under Batista is ridiculous. Nobody is dying of hunger or malnutrition.

www.fap.org/faostat/en/#country/49
Check out the food access and availability charts

Just saying that the cubans cannot function if they are suddenly at war and the food imports are cut.

That's how bad shit is.

Wow Zizek said something I must genuflect at his altar.

Think what you want about Castro but to act like there weren't quality of life improvements for the vast majority of Cubans after the Revolution is just ignoring reality.

so this is how trotskyists became neocons

whoah

tbh they were never that far apart. They see themselves as the elect, anointed to rule over the masses.

So did you post this on here or r/zizek first?

Yes, that's an asinine claim. Too bad nobody made it.

If the idea of communism is true, clinging to its failed attempts to materialize is to misdirect your fidelity from its possible reemergence to nostalgia. This is in no way burying the past, but treating the living dead in its proper place.

The accusation of nostalgia as got to be one of the worst things Zizek has ever popularized. It isn't a negative phenomenon either – it's profoundly human.