It’s a cheap tactic that frequently works for the US: when a nation espouses a rival ideology that capitalists don’t like, they sabotage, isolate, and attack it so it never stands a chance. Then, when it fails, they blame the system rather than what the US did. We’re seeing that playbook at work in Cuba right now.
Communism Doesn’t Work
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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This feature of US foreign policy, and the integral, associated, endless brainwashing by corporate media, is a character trait of treachery, utter sliminess and world class cowardliness, the effects of which are ubiquitous. It can be considered an active/subversive psychological projection.
Instead of simply accusing another of one’s own flaws (presumably to conceal them), it manufactures in “the other” plausible proof of a flaw which presence is then readily and incessantly screeched into the media airwaves to aggrandize the perp by comparison.
This twist was necessary precisely because the technique/illness was, if not originated, at least put into high gear, to counter the horrific specter of communism/socialism. Capitalist thieves & hoarders of national wealth realized that service to their supreme avarice was in real danger if the little people got wind of this “highly unorthodox” ideology. It had a real chance of allowing societies to approach true “equality” … rather than cynical weaponization of the term in the plethora of historical schemes to insure the exact opposite.
The perhaps most used tactic to achieve subversive projection is the “economic sanction,” which, in a sane world, would be prosecuted as the war crime it is. One of the longest standing examples is Cuba. We are promised a climax soon in this calamity. A recent such climax has been Venezuela. The current tune playing in the imperial jukebox is Iran. Although this is rapidly turning into a classic quagmire, the preliminary, “no muss, no fuss” approach was to pre-empt legitimate, peaceful popular protests of the effect of essentially 47 years of sanctions.
A related note: “Economic sanctions imposed by the USA or the EU were associated with 564,258 deaths ANNUALLY from 1971 to 2021, higher than the annual number of battle-related casualties (106 000 deaths).” Assuming the same death rate, post 2021, for Western sanctions, some 31 million have been killed in the 55 years to present. Source: The Lancet Global Health
@ https://tinyurl.com/44ax5v9v
If only there were a better example than Cuba to point to, oh well, no solution to this problem