Jackie Levy
I’ll be missing Fidel
Jackie Levy rejects Castro’s views, but respects his old-time leftist desire to change world
One need not be an avowed fan of the communist doctrine in order to feel something in the face of the curtain falling on Fidel Castro’s regime. In an era where most nations hand over the helm to small-time bureaucrats and sly lawyers that look and sound as if they came off the same production line, Castro may be the last leader who can be recognized only by his silhouette.
In my view at least, the issue is Castro being an old-time leftist. It may be difficult to remember it these days, but there used to be a time when the Left’s basic definition had to do with struggle, courage, revolution, and mostly the realization that things cannot go on like this, and that is it certainly possible to do them differently.
We are dealing with a mythical, colorful figure that is difficult to address in terms of success or failure. Whether Cuba progressed or remained in place, this is not the issue here.
History
Associated Press
Ailing leader says will not accept new term when newly elected parliament meets after nearly a half-century in power
The forefathers and teachers of today’s leftists despised the bourgeoisie dodging. They showed contempt to any status quo or foot dragging. They believed in far-reaching reforms, with the most radical and well-known one being the challenge to private property rights and inheritance laws.
Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of this vision was a complete failure. Unfortunately, the very attempt exacted a very heavy price. Time passed and the Left changed its agenda, but it appears that it threw out the baby with the bathwater.
To this day, traditional leftists tend to hold an affinity to the militaristic and bearded portraits of Fidel and Che Guevara, but it is hard to see the connection between the old-time leftists and current day leftists.
Arab ‘freedom fighters’
Today’s leftist discourse has no trace of struggle, revolution, or changing the ways of the world. At times it appears that today’s leftists mostly inherited vague and meaningless emotions, sympathy or revulsion, that mostly hover around their soul without context or meaning.
The Soviet regime marked in an early stage of the 20th century the peoples, or in fact creeds, which it viewed as the oppressed proletariat. Alongside the native-Americans that fight US capitalism, the communists portrayed the Arab freedom fighter as the one who fights the Zionist occupier.
This distinction became well entrenched and to this day, when a European socialist sees an Arab millionaire who made his fortune from the slave trade let’s say, but happens to wear a Kaffiyeh, let’s say, or an Arab fascist who believes in every imaginable form of oppression, such socialist would still insist to see a freedom fighter.
Just like a Jew who no longer believes in anything yet still hates Reformists and is scared of dogs, the traditional Left is also left without neither faith that the world can be fixed nor desire or energy to do it. The most common phrase we’ve been hearing from the left side of the map in recent years is “That’s true, but what’s the alternative?” And as there’s no alternative, and there is mostly no energy to start looking for it, things might as well stay the same.
And on that point at least, I think that I’m already missing Fidel Castro.
