DSA's Cuba 'Solidarity' Is Actually Solidarity With Castro's Tyranny, Not the Cuban People
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "DSA’s ‘Solidarity’ With Cuba Looks a Lot Like Solidarity With Castro | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." August 23, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author argues that when a socialist organization (DSA) celebrates Fidel Castro's birthday and calls him a hero while accusing a U.S. official of 'genocide' for criticizing Cuba's government, it's really showing loyalty to the dictator, not to the Cuban people who suffered under him. Real support for Cubans, the author says, would mean wanting them free from that regime, not defending it.
Conclusion
The DSA's claimed 'solidarity with the Cuban people' is a fraud; the organization's actions and statements reveal its true allegiance is to the Castro dictatorship and its Communist successors, not to Cubans who suffered under that regime.
Premises
- The DSA issued its proclamation defending Cuba on August 13, Fidel Castro's birthday, and praised him as 'an organizer, a fighter, and a stalwart symbol of anti-imperialist struggle and self-determination.'
- Castro's regime imposed decades of economic hardship, including food rationing beginning in 1962 that continues today.
- The Castro dictatorship seized private property, banned political opposition, and imprisoned dissenters (the 'plantados'), including long-serving political prisoners like Eusebio Peñalver.
- Castro's government persecuted homosexuals via forced labor camps and tortured political prisoners, as documented in multiple firsthand accounts and films.
- Castro executed potential rivals, such as General Arnaldo Ochoa, after a show trial.
- Thousands of Cubans risked their lives fleeing the regime by sea, demonstrating the severity of oppression under Castro and his successors.
- True solidarity with the Cuban people would require advocating for their liberation from the current regime, not defending it or accusing its critics (like Rubio) of 'genocide.'
Assumptions
- Genuine solidarity with a nation's people is incompatible with praising or defending the dictator who oppressed them.
- The DSA's public statements and historical actions (trips to Cuba, tributes to Castro) accurately reflect the organization's actual political sympathies.
- Rubio's foreign policy positions on Cuba are aimed at the liberation and betterment of the Cuban people rather than harming them.
- The DSA's use of the term 'genocide' against Rubio is an illegitimate rhetorical exaggeration rather than a substantive claim.
- Historical accounts of Castro-era atrocities (rationing, imprisonment, executions, persecution) are accurate and representative of the regime as a whole, including its successors.