Why a bloody dictator like Castro gets to the soft side of our brains

Killing a race disturbs us in a way killing a class does not. In strict terms of lives lost, though, the victims of communism easily outnumber the victims of Nazism

I NEVER thought I would begin a column with the words “in fairness to Gerry Adams”, but the Sinn Féin leader was rather restrained in response to news of Fidel Castro’s resignation.

He could have issued a defiant ‘Viva la Revolucion!’, but that would have been a hostage to fortune in the run-up to the Lisbon treaty referendum.

Poor Fidel. You give unstinting ideological support to the Northern struggle for four decades and what do you get in return? “Best wishes on your retirement. Kind regards, Gerry.” Sin é.

Still, in certain circles it’s not considered the done thing to refer to communist Cuba without mentioning the first-class education and health systems and their wonderful ballet dancers.

RTÉ did its duty. But the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa poses an interesting question: “Why is it that dictators of the left are not scorned in the same way as those of the right?”

Moreover, why is it that right-wingers like Franco or Indonesia’s General Suharto, who died in January, are referred to — rightly and without fail — as ‘dictators’, but the Castros of this world get away with euphemisms like ‘revolutionary’?

At the level of popular culture, the same asymmetry persists. Why is it you can drink in a bar called Pravda or a restaurant called Mao, but there are no drinking dens going by the name Gestapo or any Cafe Himmlers either, come to think of it?

Who would think of putting an Andy Warhol of Hitler on their wall or wear a T-shirt emblazoned with a swastika? Who wants a book on fascist architecture for Christmas? Why is communism vaguely chic but Nazism and all other rightist authoritarianisms are beyond the Pale?

Maybe it’s just because, in some irrational way, the Holocaust just feels worse than the Cultural Revolution or Stalin’s purges. Killing a race disturbs us in a way killing a class does not. In strict terms of lives lost, though, the victims of communism easily outnumber the victims of Nazism: roughly 77 million in China alone.

Stalin built a society on terror and extended it through conquest — but the USSR couldn’t feed itself and eventually collapsed in economic ruin. Surely the point is that no-one, left or right, can be trusted with unlimited power?

Some can’t — or won’t — see it that way. Recall if you will the apoplectic reaction to the party of that vile populist Joerg Haider joining the Austrian government. Some wanted sanctions against Vienna; others wanted them out of the EU altogether. Fair enough, you might say. But, at the same time, Europe’s chancelleries teem with former ‘sandalistas’— youngsters who volunteered to work on collectives in Cuba and Nicaragua. No fewer than half a dozen European commissioners are ex-communists, Peter Mandelson among them.

Left-wing dictators get a certain respect because of their words about improving the lot of the worker and the poor, their utopian pretensions. But when empowered, Marxism has failed just as surely as fascism. Perhaps the difference is, we know these people. Some of my best friends are ex-communists. No, really. We know their motives. We know their moral core.

Communism was originally a noble, emancipatory ideal of a better world equally open to all human beings. Nazism never was. But then, the road to hell is — and in this case, actually was — paved with good intentions.

To Marxists, in a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism and inequality, non-combatants would unfortunately get caught in the crossfire. There would be necessary enemy casualties: the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, ‘wreckers’, intellectuals, counter-revolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, the rich.

The truth is, however, that in the name of equality, the left-wing dictators have killed hundreds of millions of people and only produced economic misery, political backwardness and oppression. Their societies are still struggling to emerge from under the wreckage.

Still the false liberals persist. When former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet rolled up in Europe, he was showered with arrest warrants for crimes against humanity. Again, he wasn’t the most pleasant of characters, but his victims are estimated at around the 3,000 mark. One innocent murdered is one too many. But if we are talking comparisons, Pinochet’s total was a drop in the ocean beside Castro’s. Pinochet, you see, exiled his opponents. Castro took to scuttling his refugees’ boats so the sharks got them.

The idea that Castro’s Cuba was just comically misguided doesn’t stand up. This was the man who enthusiastically supported the crushing of the Prague Spring, calling the Czech dissidents ‘fascists’ and wanted those breaching the Berlin Wall shot.

But those cigars, those battle fatigues, that beard. Kinda cool, surely? Well, no actually. Death sentences for those who want to flee, prison sentences for dissidents, gags for the press, labour camps for gays, blacks as second-class citizens, trade unions banned, ruinous central planning, his support for a nuclear first strike against America, his opposition to any kind of reform, his four-hour long speeches, his personality cult. Fidel Castro was just Erich Honecker with nicer cocktails.

As for having to admire his longevity, when only 609 candidates are allowed to run for the National Assembly’s 609 seats, is it any wonder he clung on? True, he just about weathered the downfall of the USSR and survived any number of Inspector Clouseau-like CIA plots against his life, but let the Cuban people come to their own judgment? Hell no!

It was, sadly, rather predictable. All countries rally round their leaders when they are on a war footing. The US sanctions allowed him to escape blame for his mismanagement. It’s not communism that has reduced Cuba to this squalor, he could assure his people — it’s the ‘Yanqui’ embargo. The same excuse served to justify his totalitarianism. As he put it in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs debacle, “the revolution has no time for elections.”

SO, THE ruling caste will huddle around his brother Raul for a while, as senior communists seek to guarantee their privileges after the transition. Like their counterparts in eastern Europe, they will doubtless sell themselves party property at knock-down prices and emerge as the first millionaires of their newly capitalist country. But Cuba cannot escape its history or its geography. Sooner or later, the Holiday Inns and the Pizza Huts will arrive.

How quickly this happens depends on whether Washington has the gumption to lift its embargo.

Many US strategists privately concede America’s policy towards Cuba is counterproductive, but Florida — where all the exiles are holed up — is a swing state. Don’t expect radical departures from either Obama or Clinton, or McCain.

George Bush is another matter. He is quite well-got with Hispanics. His brother is no longer governor of Florida. He doesn’t need to worry about his anti-communist credentials either.

Come to think of it, he doesn’t need to worry about the voters at all. Here, in short, is a splendid opportunity to round off his presidency with an unequivocal foreign policy success.

If it took a Nixon to go to China, perhaps it will need a Bush to go to Havana. OK, you’re right: it does seem unlikely. I’m as delusional as Gerry Adams — maybe.