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this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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Cuba and Venezuela are both more democratic than the US Empire, and moreover affirming the US Empire's narrative on Venezuela while it manufactures consent for terrorizing and killing Venezuelans is the opposite of what a socialist should be doing. By affirming the US Empire's narrative, Mamdani is providing a block on what is considered "acceptable leftism" in the public discourse.
Venezuela is a shit show politically by any measure and no US Empire whataboutism can change that. It's possible to call out Maduro and call out the US. Sometimes there is no good guy, just bad guys and worse guys.
Venezuela is a quasi-socialist country attempting to build a real, solid socialist foundation, and has to do so while juggling aggression from the genocidal US Empire. Maduro is popularly supported by the people, and demonized in the west due to being a socialist. There's no "whataboutism" here, not all comparison is inherently poor logic, no matter how much anti-socialists protest.
Additionally, talking about "good guys" and "bad guys" is just Marvel-logic, the world doesn't run on metaphysical ideals of good and evil, and trying to describe situations as such without careful materialist contextualization just blunts any actual discussion.
Cuba is more democratic than the US? By what metric? It has been a one party state since 1959.
Edit: Just read a little history and shame on the US for trying to turn entire nations and their peoples into their vassals. Colonialism never ended, it just got rebranded and communism/socialism has been the only way for people to take power back, particularly when the (predominantly Western) gaze of extractionary greed, dehumanization and exploitation is upon them.
Cuba is comprehensively democratic, but it's not a multiparty liberal democracy. Instead, it's a unitary socialist democracy, where people have more of a direct impact on policy. One of the ways that capitalism impedes the democratic process is by making it about competing parties, not about policy. Here's an example from Cuban state media.
It seems like ordinary citizens can nominate local delegates that are then screened by a commission run by the party. The elected (party approved) delegates then vote on policy. This system can certainly give an illusion of democracy but ultimately the party is curating all political discourse by only allowing for party approved delegates to become electable in addition to exerting absolute control over local media.
In more ideal circumstances, delegates would not be screened for party loyalty, such that if other (less ruling party favorable) perspectives became popular, a new coalition could eventually accumulate the political power to form an opposition party to the ruling one.
In other words, I think we should be skeptical towards the notion that a one party state can be 'democratic'.
Lmao this is just chauvinism. What gives you the right to decide or criticize the path of nations that have been under siege by US imperialism?
The PCC isn't a shadowy cabal running Cuba from the shadows, it's a mass worker org, with about 5% of the total population in it. As a socialist system, it needs to defend against outside influence, and of course a socialist system is going to limit capitalist press. It's ultimately a people-driven political system that surpasses bourgeois multiparty systems.
They are under constant aggression and embargoes from the genocidal US Empire, you have no leg to stand on.
The US bombed civilians from the sky for decades, tried to murder their head of state hundreds of times, sponsored mercenary invasions and to this day maintains a military blockade of supplies to the island.
At what point does material reality fit into your assessments?
You are completely in your mind palace spinning yarns about the outside world that only sound reasonable with zero context.
Anyone trying to push their viewpoint is propaganda, yes. Propaganda doesn't mean its wrong, climate activists are propagandists for a good cause, with good information.
Either way, you're comically wrong. Socialist countries like Cuba have far lower wealth disparity, and have better metrics when compared to capitalist peer countries. Cuba in particular has higher life expectancy than the US, even, thanks to comprehensive medical care based on prevention over profit. The socialist system increased life expectancy by a third, and over tripled literacy rates post-revolution. The people overwhelmingly support the system, and correctly blame the US Empire's blockade on them having to pay the highest import fees of any country due to shipping costs, when they could just get goods from Florida without a blockade.
You equate the systemic brutality and plunder of capitalism with the necessary defenses a worker-run system maintains. You claim you're used to capitalist propaganda, which is true, but you parrot it anyways when it comes to Cuba. The Cuban people replaced the fascist slaver colony under Batista with a socialist system run by and for the people. The US Empire was initially on hesitent terms, until Castro implemented land reform, giving the peasants the land the slavers held beforehand and nationalizing businesses. Then, the US Empire launched terrorist attacks like the Bay of Pigs.
When you just parrot claims equating socialist systems with capitalist ones in terms of how they serve the people, you just show ignorance on the subject matter. I urge you to actually read up on Cuba, which has an extremely positive reputation internationally outside of western, imperialist countries trying to turn it back into a sugar colony. Even western media reports on how Fidel Castro is a heroic figure in the global south. Don't pretend the international community all agrees with US Imperial propaganda.