Bernie, for all his sincerity, also shows an abundance of misplaced admiration for states that ultimately no one supported, not even hardened socialists. Once upon a time, Bernie even had good things to say about Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan socialism, until their failures became too glaring to overlook.
In 1985, Bernie praised Castro: “Everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world . . . all the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro. They forgot that he educated their kids, gave them healthcare, totally transformed the society.”1
Bernie famously honeymooned in Moscow under Soviet communism and had many good things to say about a host of communist regimes, from Nicaragua to El Salvador to Cuba.2
When Nicaraguan socialist Daniel Ortega came to the United States, he made sure to have time for a seventy-five-minute one-on-one visit with the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Bernie Sanders.
David Unsworth reports that “so close was the relationship with Nicaragua that Sanders enthusiastically accepted an invitation by Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government in July 1985. The visit was financed by the Nicaraguan government, except the airfare, which Sanders paid for.”3
Even Bernie’s rhetoric once sounded like a good Marxist. Decades ago, Bernie was quoted as saying “the basic truth of politics is primarily class struggle” and that “democracy means public ownership of the major means of production.” It doesn’t get much more orthodox Marx than that.
When the Sandinistas used violence to come to power in Nicaragua, Bernie was their most prominent American supporter. Michael Moynihan at the Daily Beast quotes a Sanders biographer as saying Sanders “probably has done more than any other elected politician in the country to actively support the Sandinistas and their revolution.”4
Sanders himself describes with pride his visit to Nicaragua shortly after Ortega seized power, saying, “[B]elieve it or not, [I was] the highest ranking American official” at an event feting the Sandinista takeover.
Moynihan describes how Sanders, in 1985, “traveled to New York City to meet with Ortega just weeks after Nicaragua imposed a ‘state of emergency’ that resulted in mass arrests of regime critics and the shuttering of opposition newspapers and magazines.” Sanders tried to deflect when asked if he supported Ortega’s censorship. But, according to Moynihan, Sanders did finally acknowledge that “the Sandinistas’ brutal crackdown ‘makes sense to me.’”5
In 1988, Ortega was asked about his government’s economic policy. “Apparently it is not yet understood that we Sandinistas are socialist, that Nicaragua has been socialist since July 19, 1979.” When Ortega was asked about censoring the press, he responded: “They are more concerned when we temporarily close the newspaper La Prensa or Radio Catolica, or that we imprison those who break the law. This matters more to them than the life of a Nicaraguan child.”6
To justify his support for Ortega’s closing down opposition newspapers, Sanders responded: “If we look at our own history, I would ask American citizens to go back to World War II. Does anyone seriously think that President Roosevelt or the United States government [would have] allowed the American Nazi Party the right to demonstrate, or to get on radio and to say this is the way you should go about killing American citizens?”7 Actually, what makes America unique is that our belief in freedom of speech is so strong that we tolerate even disturbing and hateful speech.
Now, to give Bernie his due, the Sandinistas got rid of Somoza, a U.S.-supported dictator. Like Castro, who overthrew Batista, another U.S.-supported dictator. Like the Ayatollah Khomeini, who overthrew the last shah of Iran, another U.S.-supported dictator. I get it. I sympathize with any nation that wants to throw off the yoke of any superpower arrogant enough to invoke its pleasure on a subjugated people. But time and time again, the revolutionaries end up just as bad as the folks they conspired to overthrow.
I sympathize to a degree with Bernie supporting self-determination for Nicaragua, but I can’t abide a willful ignorance of the people’s republic of socialism that the peasants installed. I lose my patience when Bernie insists on supporting the calamity and dysfunction of socialism.
Perhaps the most entertaining Bernie-ism that Moynihan uncovered was Bernie’s response when asked about food lines in Ortega’s Nicaragua: “Sanders claimed that bread lines were a sign of a healthy economy, suggesting an equitable distribution of wealth: ‘It’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, that people are lining up for food. That is a good thing! In other countries people don’t line up for food: the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.’”8 Wonder if Bernie has stood in any food lines in Venezuela lately?
His statement is false to the point of absurdity. In the United States, with all of our income inequality, the poorest segment of our population is the most overweight. Ironically our problem is too much inexpensive food. The left, of course, has an answer for that—if only poor people had more access to fresh fruits and vegetables, we could lower our obesity rates, they say. Federal and state government programs, championed by Michelle Obama, were instituted to remedy “food deserts” so people could make better choices. Seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, the USDA’s report in its publication Amber Waves acknowledged the fact that being closer to grocery stores “has a limited impact on food choices” and “households and neighborhood resources, education and taste preferences may be more important determinants of food choice than store proximity.” In other words, the veggies are rotting on the shelves, but the Coke and Doritos are still flying out the door.9
But back to Bernie. It wasn’t just the Sandinistas in Nicaragua that drew Sanders’s support. Moynihan reports that “in 1989 Sanders traveled to Cuba on a trip organized by the Center for Cuban Studies, a pro-Castro group based in New York, hoping to come away with a ‘balanced’ picture of the communist dictatorship. The late, legendary Vermont journalist Peter Freyne sighed that Sanders ‘came back singing the praises of Fidel Castro.’”10
In 1985, Sanders complimented Castro because he “provided their children education, gave them health care, and totally transformed their society.”11
Socialism, however, didn’t work out for the Cubans or the Nicaraguans. By the late 1980s, Nicaragua’s GDP per capita declined to nearly one-third its 1977 level. Even today nearly a third of Nicaraguans live in extreme poverty.12
Moynihan reports that Sanders told the Burlington Free Press:
“I think there is tremendous ignorance in this country as to what is going on in Cuba.” [. . .] It’s a country with “deficiencies,” he acknowledged, but one that has made “enormous progress” in “improving the lives of poor people and working people.” When he returned to Burlington, Sanders excitedly reported that Cuba had “solved some very important problems” like hunger and homelessness. “I did not see a hungry child. I did not see any homeless people,” he told the Free Press. “Cuba today not only has free healthcare but very high quality healthcare.”13
I know many Cuban Americans who have seen the horrors of Cuban socialism firsthand and they find Bernie’s words utterly repugnant. One of them, who did not want to be named for fear of repercussions to family members remaining in Cuba, becomes emotional when talking about today’s socialists and their misplaced admiration for Castro.
When I hear of Bernie Sanders praising Castro, or see young people admiring Che Guevara, it makes me so angry. I think, how can you admire these criminals who killed thousands of people? People today are so uninformed about the horrors of socialism. I woke up one morning and the beautiful country I had known and loved was gone. The government had taken over all of the American and Cuban companies. Farmers were given twenty-four hours to leave their land.
You have to be Cuban to know the truth. My family members still live in Cuba today and without the dollars I send they would not have enough to eat. Every week the Cuban people are given a ration book that tells them how much food and what type of food they can get. The ration coupons usually run out by Wednesday. There is no meat or fish available right now, only chicken. With dollars you can buy just about anything, but with Cuban money there is very little available.
You might get a “free” education, but you have to study what the government tells you to study. And even then there is no money to be made. Doctors make between $25 and $50 a month. There are many professionals who drive taxis in Cuba because they are tipped more in dollars from tourists than they can make at their professional job. The last time I visited Cuba our taxi driver was educated as a mechanical engineer.
The Cubans who do not have relatives that send dollars have a terrible time. And free health care? That is a joke! I know people in Cuba who have died from conditions that are completely treatable here in the United States. There is very little medicine available to the Cuban people so I send my family their prescription medications, even simple things like Band-Aids.
The idea that there is equality in Cuba is a lie—the people struggle for their basic needs while the government officials and those in the armed services live like kings! No ration books for them!
The infrastructure is crumbling and the streets are filled with potholes—except in the tourist areas. The government makes sure to present an attractive face to the rest of the world, but the regular neighborhoods are in terrible shape.
On every block, there is a house with people who spy and report back to the government—they know who visits you, how much money you have, everything. The government controls everything and there is no freedom of speech or opinion. The Cuban people don’t know what is going on in Venezuela. They know only what the government wants them to know. Even the laws change from day to day, and something you can do today you might not be able to do tomorrow.