An opinion piece was published on the NBC News website responding to Bernie Sanders’ recent comments in an interview saying that Castro’s literacy program in Cuba was a good thing.
This piece makes some great points. It is important to discuss how education, while seeming benevolent and virtuous on its surface, can – like most things – be weaponized. In this case, as a tool for propaganda.
It is also important to study what happens under ill societies, be it any form of oppression, surveillance, or other police state activities. However, these conversations will always be stunted, and misleading propaganda will always be thrown into the mix. These studies would quickly be painted as dangerous or irrelevant for obvious, nefarious reasons.
What this article gets wrong, however, is that it falls into the traps of the all-too-common talking point of confusing socialism with democratic socialism. Communism does not equal Socialism which does not equal Democratic Socialism. Bernie is a capitalist and a democratic socialist – not a socialist, as many would have one believe for similar obvious, nefarious reasons.
Furthermore, this is only a topic of discussion because the question was posed to Bernie during an interview for similar obvious, nefarious reasons. They want the awe-induced ratings for advertisement revenue and they want to continue to confuse people about a platform that is designed to realign what our taxes are used for – not to induce bread lines or gulags.
Many people get scared off by the term Democratic Socialism thanks to Cold War-era us-vs-them propaganda. Bernie tries to compare his ideology to that of the Scandinavian countries, but that may fail due to most Americans having no connection to the region. Perhaps a better comparison would be to call Bernie an FDR Democrat. FDR’s New Deal helped to bring millions of Americans out of poverty and implemented regulations that kept Americans safe in the workplace and in public – quite the opposite from the charges that are being levied against Bernie’s ideology.
And keep in mind that Obama, who is not viewed as an extremist by anyone outside of the Fox News echo chamber, has made similar comments on Cuba, and was the one to take actions to try to ease and improve relations between the two nations. If Bernie’s comments are extreme and Obama’s comments and actions are not, then something is askew in how we are measuring these actors and their acts.
All this said, I want to stress again that the author of this opinion piece does illuminate some great points about the purposes of Cuba’s literacy program. That subject deserves more conversation. The tired, misleading talking points about Bernie being a radical socialist who is going to destroy American life absolutely do not deserve more conversation.