The government in Washington has launched a new attack against supporters of the Cuban Revolution in the U.S., alongside its oil blockade and escalating financial sanctions aimed at strangling the Cuban economy and suffocating the Cuban people. Their targeting of supporters of the Cuban Revolution strikes blows to the hard-won and sorely needed constitutional rights of free speech and association.
Fox News Digital reported the government has compiled a hit list of 145 organizations in what it dubbed the “pro-communist Cuba ecosystem,” political groups, including the Socialist Workers Party, a number of unions and others.
As part of expanding its dragnet against Cuba and anti-communist smear campaign, the State Department released a 100-page report July 20 entitled, “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” It claims Cuba is “uniquely dangerous,” dedicated to “the violent export of communism abroad.”
The document stands reality on its head, alleging, “for nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States.”
In fact, it’s the U.S. rulers who have waged an unending political and economic war against the Cuban Revolution, including an invasion of Cuba by counterrevolutionaries at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and several failed attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Today Washington is escalating this campaign, including military threats against the Cuban people.
The State Department’s anti-communist diatribe smears Cuba for backing “an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil.” It also accuses a number of leaders of the fight for Black rights of being Cuban agents, including Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams.
The State Department document takes special aim at five Cuban revolutionaries — Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González — who were framed up by Washington in 1998 and imprisoned for up to 16 years on “conspiracy” charges and allegations of spying against the U.S. They were also accused of being “unregistered foreign agents.”
In reality, they came to the U.S. to gather information for Havana on the plans of counterrevolutionary Cuban American groups, backed by Washington, with a long history of carrying out bombings, assassinations and other violence from the U.S. against Cuba, as well as against supporters of the Cuban Revolution inside the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
Washington reprised its frame-up of the Cuban Five April 23 when it indicted Cuban revolutionary leader Raúl Castro and five Cuban air force pilots for “conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals” in the shoot down of two planes flown by members of the notorious counterrevolutionary Brothers to the Rescue as they were invading Cuban airspace in 1996.
Government subpoenas
The House Ways and Means Committee issued subpoenas July 21 against three left-wing nonprofit organizations who have spoken out in defense of Cuba: the People’s Forum, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
House Committee Chair Jason Smith claims each received millions of dollars “from Neville Roy Singham and his wife, channeled through shell companies,” which according to Smith, “raises significant concerns regarding foreign influence over a tax-exempt organization.”
The State Department screed also fingers Singham, accusing him of running a “network” of funding trips to “hostile nations,” including Cuba.
The House Committee says it’s investigating whether existing laws governing tax-exempt organizations need to be tightened to restrict “foreign influence.” The allegations it makes against the three groups open them up to further probes under the reactionary Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Singham, a former member of the Maoist League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit and tech entrepreneur who made a fortune, is now based in China. A Manhattan federal grand jury was launched in June to investigate him for alleged financial crimes. All three organizations targeted by the latest House probe protest the government’s attacks on their First Amendment rights.
The move follows subpoenas issued in May by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to U.S. participants in the March “Nuestra América Convoy,” which had delivered 20 tons of humanitarian aid to Cuba.
State Department targets
The State Department report also targets 43 groups and individuals, including Ben Cohen, from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream; Mayors Zohran Mamdani and Karen Bass from New York and Los Angeles respectively; media figures like Amy Goodman and Hasan Piker; and organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America and the Amazon Labor Union.
And under the heading “Exporting Revolution,” the document falsely claims the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, founded in April 1960 to build opposition to Washington’s assaults on Cuba, was “funded by the new Castro regime.” Fair Play was actually funded by people in the U.S. dedicated to getting out the truth about the Cuban Revolution.
As far back as 1962 Fidel Castro answered “the accusation that Cuba wants to export its revolution.”
“Revolutions are not exported, they are made by the peoples,” he said. “What Cuba can give to the peoples, and has already given, is its example.” What the Cuban Revolution teaches, he said, is “that revolution is possible.”