Just when you thought the story of the Labour Party in the 21st century couldn’t get any more tragic, Jeremy Corbyn decided to issue a statement celebrating the life of a totalitarian leader who tortured and murdered his opponents. I wonder how many people will be ripping up their membership cards after Corbyn’s comments on Fidel Castro.
Perhaps not many, because Castro’s Cuba acted for so long as a lodestar for those who still see the United States as the greater evil in the region: a predatory colonial force holding the poor of Central and South America as hostages to neo-liberalism. A country without adverts, but with a functioning health service, 99 per cent literacy, the Buena Vista Social Club and Carlos Acosta: now that, they say, is surely something to admire. Castro’s zombie socialism has allowed his supporters in the west to dismiss the arbitrary arrest of human rights activists and journalists, the repression of dissent, the beatings, the public acts of shaming (source: Human
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