\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what we call a gram of coke here in Cuba?\u201d<\/p>\n
In the humid outskirts of Havana, I felt like I\u2019d drifted into a sepia-tinted parallel timeline.<\/p>\n
\u201cA \u2018Fidel\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
My laughter wasn\u2019t forthcoming. Not that it wasn\u2019t funny. I was paralyzed by the surrealism. It was the last week of six decades of Castro rule and the final week of Ra\u00fal Castro\u2019s presidency, yet here I was with his granddaughter Gabriella. And her boyfriend was selling me drugs.<\/p>\n
Hadn\u2019t her grandparents put people to death for selling drugs? Yes. Four high-ranking officials were executed by firing squad in 1989 for drug-smuggling. Despite this, her presence gave me an odd sense of safety. Some farm animals are more equal than others. And these, surely, were the most equal of all.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd half a gram?\u201d<\/p>\n
He eyed me.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026a \u2018Raul\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Try as they might, Marxists can\u2019t escape hierarchies. I wondered if they\u2019d caught the irony. At least this one had a sense of humor. I turned to see if Gabriella was amused. The Castro name is quite a burden to carry. New World nobility. Her face remained stoic as a Castilian queen. She was more interested in the music.<\/p>\n
If this was their way of welcoming me to their country, they went overboard with the midnight Lada racing through the capital. Cuba\u2019s cocaine communists really put North London\u2019s champagne socialists to shame.<\/p>\n
Speaking of which, in the latest season of Radical Chic, eight years on from the Castros, a flotilla of useful halfwits has arrived.<\/p>\n
From England comes cardigan-commie Jeremy Corbyn, Labour backbencher Richard Burgon, and YouTuber Owen Jones. Influencer Hasan Piker swapped Hollywood for Havana, wearing glasses worth $1,380 and a $690 T-shirt. \u201cWe have just been living\u00a0la vida loca <\/i>\u2026 Just peppering people with wads of cash,\u201d he humbly divulged to the press \u2014 oblivious to what this revealed about which society better delivers material prosperity.<\/p>\n
He was joined by fellow Americans Christian Smalls, the former Amazon unionist, the women-led anti-war group CODEPINK, and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar\u2019s daughter Isra Hirsi. Isra proudly following in her mother\u2019s footsteps by siding with the enemies of the nation that so warmly welcomed her family from Somalia.<\/p>\n
They are all part of the Nuestra Am\u00e9rica Convoy, which arrived in Havana this week. The delegation brought together over 650 people from 33 countries and 120 organizations, delivering roughly 20 tons of humanitarian aid. What a hoot. I only hope their phones have enough battery to capture selfies when they hear ordinary Cubans chanting \u201cDown with communism!\u201d through the blackouts.<\/p>\n
And that is exactly what Cubans have been chanting in Mor\u00f3n, outside the local headquarters of the Communist Party of Cuba. But the Nuestra Am\u00e9rica Convoy is not there to protest decades of brutal dictatorship, but rather the US \u201cblockade,\u201d recently reinforced by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n
On 29 January, the United States issued Executive Order 14380, titled \u201cAddressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Cuba.\u201d In it, President Trump declared that the situation with respect to Cuba \u201cconstitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat\u201d and announced a national emergency.<\/p>\n
The real question is how long it will take Corbyn & Co to realise they are on the side of Cuba\u2019s dictatorial regime. After all, none of them have uttered a word about the lack of democracy in a country where only Communist Party members may hold office.<\/p>\n
Not a peep about the breadlines \u2014 which I have witnessed on every one of my trips to Cuba over the last twenty years, both during and since the Castro era. Breadlines in Santiago de Cuba. Breadlines in Trinidad. Breadlines in Havana.<\/p>\n
While there have been\u00a0interesting reports<\/span><\/a>\u00a0about how the Radical Chic Flotilla was funded by the US-born self-described Marxist billionaire Neville Roy Singham, the root of this idiocy was perhaps best articulated by the Irish rap band Kneecap.<\/p>\n If the Black Panthers had Leonard Bernstein, what does it say about the Nuestra Am\u00e9rica Convoy that their house band are Kneecap? The Belfast hip-hop trio is most famous for its vocal support of Hamas and Hezbollah \u2014 and the resulting terrorism charges against one member. On a Havana boulevard, they dish out their Radical Chic\u00a0insights to the press<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap, Kneecap\u2019s rapper, has things to get off his chest: \u201cI can\u2019t remember the last time Cuba invaded a country.\u201d Bless his cotton socks. They have. Panama and the Dominican Republic (1959), Algeria (1963\u201364), Congo (1965\u201367), Guinea-Bissau (1966\u201374), Angola (1975\u201391), Ethiopia (1977\u201389), Syria (1973\u201383), Mozambique (1975\u201380s), South Yemen (1970s\u201380s), Nicaragua (1979\u201390s), and Grenada (1979\u201383).<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just stupidity that motivates Kneecap. \u201cThey wanna isolate all these countries and make them feel like they have no support \u2026 and then when that happens, that\u2019s when imperialism takes over.\u201d Here Bap gets to the heart of it.<\/p>\n Anti-imperialism. It is the same blind ideology that has these rappers supporting the forces of evil wherever they emerge: Gaza, Tehran, Caracas. But it could not be more fitting than here in communist Cuba, for it is the central pillar of Castroism.<\/p>\n \u201cI propose the immediate launching of a nuclear strike on the United States. The Cuban people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the destruction of imperialism and the victory of world revolution.\u201d<\/i> So said Fidel Castro in a telegram to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on 26 October 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.\u00a0According to Fedor Burlatsky<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a member of Khrushchev\u2019s inner circle \u2014 this was the real turning point. So shocked was Khrushchev by Castro\u2019s brazen desire for national suicide that the Soviet leader immediately changed tack and sought a resolution with President Kennedy. Imagine an ideological derangement so potent it makes Soviets blush.<\/p>\n Today, despite the cries for \u201clibertad!\u201d from Cubans downtrodden by six decades of this anti-imperialist experiment, the ideology is thriving \u2014 not in Cuba, but in the coffee shops of Islington, the vegan restaurants of Beverly Hills, and the congressional district offices of Minnesota. Anti-imperialism is the ultimate luxury belief.<\/p>\n My last interaction with Gabriella Castro came as we stepped out of the car after racing around Havana. She\u2019d made it clear she was staunchly anti-American, but I thought I\u2019d poke a bit further.<\/p>\n \u201cHow does one say \u2018friends\u2019 in Spanish?\u201d I asked, knowing the answer but pretending otherwise.<\/p>\n \u201cAmigos.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut what if it\u2019s male and female?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAmigos.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s still masculine?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cS\u00ed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIsn\u2019t that a little\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSexist. Yes\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n She paused, looking seriously into the distance.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026we should change it.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n This is republished with the author\u2019s permission from Substack: www.winstonmarshall.co.uk\/p\/cocaine-with-the-castros<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Winston Marshall is a writer, musician, and host of \u201cThe Winston Marshall Show\u201d podcast. His writing is available on his Substack, Winston Marshall:<\/em>\u00a0 https:\/\/www.winstonmarshall.co.uk\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n