Castro knew how to put on a show
We haven’t had many caring summits lately. Ten, twenty, thirty years ago hardly a summer went by when there wasn’t some blatantly overhyped rock- star- cum- celebrity festival given over to the defeat of the world’s most intractable problems. These were dedicated to the proposition that it was due only to the perfidy of politicians and diplomats, and the uncaring nature of capitalism, that the world suffered as it did from war, poverty, famine and disease.
Some deep- diving into the lyrics of John Lennon, supplemented by readings from the Peter, Paul and Mary songbook, produced the further insight that gathering a cloud of some of the world’s most famous and ludicrously wealthy First World troubadours, sprinkled with a handful of atrociously bad- mannered movie stars, to emote their little hearts out in front of a world television audience would, in an afternoon, rid the world of its perdurable scourges once and for all.
Rainforests would be saved, hunger would end, war be rejected, landmines evaporate and AIDS vanish. If only enough rock stars, led by St. Bono of Davos, could yodel hymns to world peace and brotherhood, in front of huge crowds of people pinned with the right colour ribbons, or candy-hued rubber bands on their wrists, the New Jerusalem was at hand. Loosing Sean Penn, diplomatist extraordinaire, on Iraq and Haiti as a kind of Ticketmaster Kissinger (this well before Mr. Penn’s more localized adventures with noted escapist El Chapo) was thought of as a supplementary, if likely redundant, effort.
These were magnificent and magnanimous gestures, some stars devoting an entire afternoon or evening to haul a whole continent out of misery, halt a pandemic, or rescue the biosphere. We all remember what the world was like before “We are the world, we are the children,” just as we tremble to think of where we’d be now, were it not for the salvationist efficacy of Do They Know it’s Christmas, this latter perhaps the greatest anthem to, and of, global harmony since Puff the Magic Dragon.
Naturally after healing the world, the great stars returned to their tours and tantrums, their mansions, yachts and posses, and of course to swelling their already tumid bank accounts.
The lesson all of us can take from these splendid efforts is how easily the world’s great dilemmas can be resolved if only the right people put on a good show. We could even see it as an updated application of the old movie staple, where a gang of cheerful urchins save the orphanage, or rescue Mom and Pop from the poorhouse by the clever expedient of one of their number landing on the idea of “Let’s put on a show.” Everyone’s favourite diminutive song- and- dance man Mickey Rooney pioneered this brilliantly facile shortcut to the Eden landscapes of social justice; the Geldofs and Penns, the Bonos and Stings just amped up the publicity and extended the stage.
What the modern world has l earned f rom t hese spectacles, and what all the dreary centuries past could not grasp, is perhaps the most powerful insight since the Golden Rule itself: it is not what you do that counts, it is showing how you feel. Piety expressed, in the most gaudy manner possible, by people most extravagantly removed from the problems addressed, is the greatest lever of social justice the mind of man has conceived. That is very easily co-ordinated with the second principle, which holds that if the right people say the right things it matters very little what actually they do.
Thus, what many people find perplexing, I determine as obvious. How could so many, over the many years that he held Cuba in bondage, and tied to the malignant, exhausted banner of communism, could Fidel Castro have claimed so many fans and worshippers in the Western democracies? It was surely not from what he did. Executions by fiat, repression of the press, surveillance on citizens, disappearances of loved ones, persecution of homosexuals and contempt for religion: these are not the practices to earn the praiseful flutterings of the Liberal heart. And yet they did, and Mr. Castro is mourned by some of the most sensitive souls of our time.
But he said t he right things. He derided capitalism. He deplored imperialism. He scorned the United States. He claimed he was for “the people.” He loved the people. That 20 per cent of “his” ( he owned them) people fled the Romania of the Caribbean didn’t shortcircuit the enthusiasm of his fans. That he so loved his people that for nearly 50 years they weren’t given one opportunity of a free election to register if they “loved” him, was not allowed to tell against him. That he overthrew a dictatorship with the promise of democratic representation, and then replicated with greyer tones the dictatorship he overthrew, does not shake the faith of his idolizers. That he was cruel, megalomaniacal, unjust and imperious — and hostage to a proven bankrupt ideology — has not dulled the shine of his halo in those who value show and talk over practice and reality.
The Castro theatrics — he put on a show — was enough to earn his place as a revolutionary hero. And even those who are most keen on every incidental flaw and temporary inequity in real democracies, because Castro did put on such a good show, were willing to offer tribute to a man whose government was institutionalized inequity, permanent repression, and a perfect antithesis to the very idea of social justice, however elastic the understanding of that dubious concept is allowed to be.