Fidel Castro Dead

Imari
What's the difference between calling someone Japanese and calling them a jay ay pee (word filter will not let me type that word without it autocorrecting apparently, despite it being relevant to the conversation)? One is intended to be a term of disrespect and abuse, as you clearly intend "commie" to be.

You're not calling a spade a spade. You're calling a spade a dirty :censored:ing hole grubber, in the hopes that the emotional response that people have to the term "commie" will cause them to agree without fully considering the argument.

If you can't refer to the subject without resorting to slander, you're unable to be objective. I know you're not sorry, but I feel sorry for you that you have this irrational hatred of communists and communism. They're just people too.
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Commies are people too. Sure. Lenin, Stalin, Mao. Swell bunch of guys, probably be great to have a brew with down at the local watering hole. Jes' ordinary folks. It's only my irrational hatred of communists and communism that makes me dislike them. :lol:
 
I feel like there's a lot of this going on right now across the Internet regarding Castro's death.

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I don't know any Cubans personally so I can't say how they feel, but the ones I've seen talking about what's going on makes me think they are well within their rights for celebrating the man's death.
 
Johnnypenso
Commies are people too. Sure. Lenin, Stalin, Mao. Swell bunch of guys, probably be great to have a brew with down at the local watering hole. Jes' ordinary folks. It's only my irrational hatred of communists and communism that makes me dislike them. :lol:
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See how you're unable to address succinctly and clearly your actual problems with communism without resorting to sarcasm?

If you want to make a point, make it. Stop hiding behind abuse and rhetorical tricks. You don't like communists, to the point of being rude about it? Why?
 
FrzGT
Id rather see the expression of actual Cubans following his death without any censorship.
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We can't post what they actually say about Castro though. Something about the AUP and obscenities.
 
For reference, here is a list of the ten most commonly used words that are prohibited on GTP and subject to our automated swear filter...

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🤬 🤬 <--- that's a really bad one!
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and my personal favourite...
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plus any of these words with -ing, -er, -ity, -wad or -face added.
 
McLaren
Unless, his brother was waiting for his death to start really changing things.
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This is what I think. Out of respect for his brother he waited and now the capitalism tsunami can begin.
 
McLaren
Castro treated his own people like scum. Let me know where any of the US Presidents decided to have such a literal death grip on us Americans that we were even close to what Castro's people went through if they broke a law.
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Read up on the history of black people in the US. You'll be shocked.
 
Imari
Read up on the history of black people in the US. You'll be shocked.
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Not even a remotely sane comparison. The history of black people from the first acts slavery in Jamestown, 1619 to the Civil Rights Act of 1968 is a 350 year time span alone that ranges in different eras of socially accepted practices & granted freedoms over those hundreds of years to the acts of a single man in under 50 years against his own people.
 
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McLaren
Not even a remotely sane comparison.
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Let's try and keep this civil, shall we? I don't think it helps to conversation if we start calling each other insane simply because we have a difference of opinion on how acceptable it was to enslave and discriminate one's own people for the colour of their skin as opposed to their political convictions.

The history of black people from the first acts slavery in Jamestown, 1619 to the Civil Rights Act of 1968 is a 350 year time span alone...
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It certainly is. That's a long time.

What point are you trying to make with this? Is it incomparable because the time spans are so different? I'd argue that 350 years of oppression is worse than 50 years, and so treating them as comparable can only be favourable to blacks in the US.

...that ranges in different eras of socially accepted practices & granted freedoms over those hundreds of years...
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Ah, so the social standards and freedoms of the time are relevant to judging whether actions may be, if not justified, at least acceptable based on the situation that they occurred in? Sure. I agree, there are things that are acceptable in war, for example, that would be considered monstrous in peace time.

So by what standards and freedoms are you judging Fidel Castro?

For me, I see a man that essentially liberated his country and elevated it to probably the highest standard that it had known, but then also stifled it's progress and citizens with his economic and political policies. His international political decisions were somewhat forced by the Cold War and the US insistence on doing everything possible to suppress the country now that it wasn't their puppet any more, but he was the leader and that Cuba and Cubans lost 30-40 years of development because he couldn't improve the country and refused to hand it over to someone who would try something different.

...to the acts of a single man in under 50 years against his own people.
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Certainly it was against his own people. I hope you're not arguing that African Americans weren't the people of the US, because it seems like a technicality that they weren't granted citizenship for so long.

As for him being a single man, what difference does that make? Is it somehow different or better if many different leaders oppress their people over a long time instead of a single man over 50 years? I don't understand what point you're trying to make that would invalidate the idea that both the US and Cuba have a history of oppressing their own people.

Frankly, Castro (like Che Guevara) was an incredible revolutionary and by all reports a charismatic leader. But he was a terrible politician, and neither of them were able to run a country to save themselves. Castro should be respected for saving Cuba from a brutal regime and preventing them from becoming a puppet for the US. He should be viewed kindly in that he always seemed to want the best for Cuba and he did a lot of good things to make it a better country, but at the same time he should be viewed harshly for his crippling of the country and his brutally uncompromising treatment of his people. His inability to allow change when Cuba needed it is his primary downfall, in my opinion.

So you can see that my view of the man is at best mixed. He did some things that I can respect and admire, and some things that I think are reprehensible. So I don't agree with either the people saying that he's a horrible tyrant and his death should be celebrated, or the people who think that he was the best thing that happened to Cuba. He was neither of those things, he was a strong and uncompromising leader who was there when his country needed him but didn't know when his 15 minutes were over.

To compare him to Stalin and Mao simply because they shared an economic ideology I think is profoundly unkind. Those are two of the worst mass murderers in history, with death counts in the 7 figures. I'd say chances are good that more Americans died in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan than Cubans were killed by Castro, which sort of puts things into perspective. Killing your own people is never good, but if we're judging by modern standards then he was really a bit of an amateur.
 
Dennisch
This bit remains ignored, wanna bet?
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Looks like I missed the interesting part because it's deleted now, but I'll respond to this. I think that there's a big difference between Mao killing 50+ million people and Castro killing perhaps somewhere on the order of 100 thousand, a non-trivial proportion of which were during legitimate military or revolutionary actions.

As I've said before, I don't condone his penchant for using violence and death to control his citizens. But the actual results don't strike me as really that far from what other "civilised" countries do. The US has killed a lot of it's own citizens in wars in recent times that were essentially for political purposes. But that's considered an acceptable way to kill your citizens, because that's how the media chooses to present it.

At the end of the day you have a lot of dead people.

I don't even see the point of getting started on the comparisons of unjust incarceration. The US is a world leader in that category, and even Cuba can't hope to keep up.

If people want to say that everyone who has killed it the same, then so be it. We'll have Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt all lumped in with Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. I think you'd find it very, very hard to find a world leader that has not indirectly caused the death of at least one person. In a position of such power you're responsible for so many things that it would be impossible not to. In countries with the death penalty, even more so.

Personally, I think that in such a case it's worth making a distinction between people like Washington and Lincoln who wielded their power for the most part justly and for the good of their country and to the minimum detriment of those that they fought, and people like Stalin and Mao who used death as a tool to silence their opponents, strike fear into anyone who was left and generally bully the population into submission. Which leaves room in the middle for people like Castro who did a fair bit of both.

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And I must say that reading this thread it seems like the people who are convinced that Castro was pure evil are the ones responding in the most reactionary and least rational fashion. It's hard to relate to an alternate position when people won't stop posting snappy one-liners and telling me that I'm wrong for long enough to explain why I'm wrong.

I don't even think I'm necessarily right, but this is my current perception of the man that Castro was. I think that any leader could learn both good and bad things from his examples. If you find yourself living in a banana republic that is being crushed under the heel of a repressive regime sponsored by a major world power, you could do a lot worse than follow Castro's example.
 
@Imari

That bit was about you, and others, thinking that those who are (somewhat) happy that this dictator is dead are saying that because he was a commie, he successfully opposed the US, and what not, but all of them were talking about his crime record.

He was a ruthless dictator. I posted his killstreak a couple of pages back. And that seems to be a hard point to grasp for some.

And yes, you are right about the leaders of the "civilized" world. Pretty much all of them have blood of the innocents on their hands too. But that's not the topic of the thread. This is about Fidel.
 
America has always been irrational, angry and irritated when it comes to Fidel Castro. He successfully defied us for over 50 years, and nobody gets away with doing that, not forever. We will get our revenge on him, his people and his puny little country.

He kicked our mob out of Havana. He defeated the CIA at the Bay of Pigs. Surviving numerous assassination attempts by us, he perhaps killed JFK. He avoided arrest and prosecution by any court. He installed a communist regime right where we didn't want it, and he made it work for generations, holding a seat at the United Nations. Unforgivable what that tough little hombre did.
 
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Dennisch
No, you won't. Unless you guys are planning to kick over his bucket of ashes in the next couple of days.



And yes, most likely. US capitalism will flood Cuba. McDonalds and Starbucks on every corner.
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We will get our revenge by belittling and tarnishing him and his achievements at every opportunity. We will write his history and we will write it bad. The worst killer since Attila the Hun. A beast more foul than Caligula. We will dance Trump on his grave.
 
For me, the only dictator that probably deserved to be totally hated is Kim Jong Il.

The others I'd rather refrain. Castro in 1960s is way different than in the 2000s. Not exactly a good thing but atleast way better than Kim's which basically unchanged. Theres something about North Korea that "fascinates" me in every ways.
 
FrzGT
For me, the only dictator that probably deserved to be totally hated is Kim Jong Il.

The others I'd rather refrain. Castro in 1960s is way different than in the 2000s. Not exactly a good thing but atleast way better than Kim's which basically unchanged. Theres something about North Korea that "fascinates" me in every ways.
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Dennisch
So, time blurs out atrocities. Good stuff.
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I'll give him the benefit of doubt and highlight this.
 
Dennisch
Give it some time, Kim Jong Un will be even worse than Il and then people will say that Il wasn't so bad after all.
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Wrong. Ever see any internet access in North Korea? Ever see Cuban people actually worshipping their leaders like in North Korea? Hell, just see any of documentaries, even unbiased ones, and you can easily see whats wrong with the NK, far more than Cuba ever "dream" of.

Take account that Fidel approves ties back to US, which means atleast Cuba actually seeking progress, possibly realizes past regime wrongdoings. We'll later see if the inheritance government of Castro is retracted and back into, at least, Chinese-like communism. Not the best and far from actual democracy, but its a start for multiple steps.

Dennisch
So, time blurs out atrocities. Good stuff.
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Say you have two people. One is a murderer in the past but not nowadays, even seeking forgiveness. The other is also a murderer in the past and still is now.

Would you befriend or even employ those people? Hell no. But which is more sympathized is a different story.
 
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