Apologist, fellow traveler or throwback to the 1960s–70s?

Bernie Sanders’ persistence in claiming his admiration for the “good” that the Cuban revolution brought to the island’s people is akin to the obsession that inflicted many Western academics and intellectuals that stretched from the 1930s well into the 1960s and 1970s.

Appeasing the Soviet Union was paramount. It was then de rigeur for the “leftist elite” to accept and even praise the claims that Moscow and Cuba made for their own accomplishments and reaffirm their own version of its history.

Even though Sanders condemned autocratic regimes in general, he insists that Castro nevertheless had some redeeming qualities. It reminds us of admirers of Stalin who claimed he constructed Moscow’s subway during WWII. It was similar to Hitler’s building the Autobahn and Mussolini’s getting Italy’s train’s back on schedule.

Even such claims have been debunked. North Korea’s Kim Il Jong’s fake achievements still remain the official story, at least domestically – one of the most preposterous being that Kim, aged 16, was able to organize the building of 20,000 new homes within six months to solve a crucial shortage of housing.

Let’s note that when Soviet fervour had dissipated among most of the of the Communist sympathizers by 1988, Sanders upon returning from a trip to Moscow gushed about the marvel that was Moscow’s Metro and Jarovslavl’s inexpensive theater tickets.

Even after Sanders was confronted with old footage of him defending Castro, he told 60 Minutes that he opposes authoritarian rule in Cuba, but “... you know it’s unfair to simply say ‘everything is bad’. You know when Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing, even though Castro had it?”

(Full story available via link below)