Reminds Me Of 1959

Oh, they were heady days!

The countries with colonial origins or colonial pasts had teamed up to defeat the Nazis and the Empire of Japan, so now it was safe to run out from behind British and French and Dutch skirts and sneer and make rude gestures at their parent tormenters. In the Third World the fashion became solidarity against any country with a colonial past.

With fascism (they always conveniently leave out the socialist part) defeated, Marx’s poison ideology found fertile ground in newly independent third world countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, since they had avoided much of the conflict or had been on its periphery.

They were flushed with confidence and socialist energy after the Bandung Conference of the so-called non-aligned countries of 1955, held in Indonesia. It was time to show the weary colonial powers how real socialism would reform the world, feed the hungry, and bring the collectivist nirvana to front and center. Bandung was about Asian and African nationalist ambitions, but there were many areas of the Western Hemisphere in Latin America and the Caribbean where socialist ferment was also giving off its tempting aroma of envy and justice to come.

In Africa, Ghana led the way with independence in 1957, followed by Guinea in 1959. Then a wave swept the former colonial areas of Africa. In 1960 alone, seventeen new African countries gained independence from the European powers, and still more followed. The excitement in the air was palpable.

In Latin America there was talk of revolution and of throwing off the colonial oppressors. In Cuba there was chaos and economic turmoil spreading in resistance to the dictatorial rule of Fulgencio Batista. He had been Cuba’s president from 1940-44, then again from 1952. Cuban revolutionaries painted him as a dictator and oppressor who had to be removed by any means necessary. This opposition had been spearheaded by guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra mountains led by a young lawyer named Fidel Castro. Castro was on the march! In the course of 1958 Castro’s efforts began to pay off as Batista’s support waned in much of the island country. By year’s end, Castro’s revolutionaries exerted control in some parts of the countryside. On January 1, 1959, Batista fled into exile. 

Three days later the first rebel column, led by the Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a fellow revolutionary, entered Havana. When Castro arrived the duo began to consolidate their power in the capital. Guevara, trained as a physician, became the trusted lieutenant and enforcer for Castro. In the first six months of Castro’s control, more than 600 people linked to Batista’s government had been rounded up and executed. Sound familiar?

Castro, the new symbol of rising socialism and revolution, had earlier called for free and fair elections, but these had to be postponed while the new rulers consolidated their control and their power. After their victory the Castro brothers began seizing lands of the rich, jacked up taxes, and took over exports and the management of the economy. Once they had secured control, they began to settle into a more comfortable life in Cuba. The Cuban people, in whose name they had taken over, would have to wait for justice or make their own.

Around the world there was praise for Castro and hope that more revolutions and uprisings would bring the bright socialist future. Less than two years later an ill-conceived invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, backed by the CIA, failed miserably. Sanctions began and the Castro brothers intensified their socialist work. Castro began to openly flout his socialist and communist sympathies while cozying up to Khrushchev and the communist Soviet Union. Socialist slogans turned into a bland police state. With the Soviets propping up his failed island country, the bright socialist future became an exercise in survival for the Cuban people. Across the third world, the other socialist experiments became repressive and shabby. As in Cuba, top level officials became wealthy so long as they stayed in control.

Now comes January 1, 2026. After a surprising political campaign by a little-known state senator from New York, the legacy news media crowed about their latest heroic socialist figure. There was excitement in the air. Zohran Mamdani, an unapologetic “democratic socialist” with little political experience but a disarming smile, was feeling as giddy as Fidel. He promised lots of free stuff. He was unstoppable. He downplayed the socialism aspect and went in for smiling political theater. He waded into the Atlantic in a suit. He ate every kind of ethnic food and went everywhere in a ‘man of the people’ outfit. He played down his Muslim background and many past statements. Many people cheered him for vague reasons, but other socialists like Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Cortez campaigned for him. After winning the Democrat primary and then the general election against odious Democrats in the solid blue five boroughs he said this out loud.

“We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” Read it again.

How odd it was to hear a politician declare that government was going to solve all the problems of New York and the country. It was hard to believe someone would say that and mean it, but he did and there was no retraction. It was as if no thought had ever been given to how the sprawling city had come to be in the mess it was in.

Seven weeks later he was poised to take the oath as mayor of New York City. He began to announce some choices for positions in city government. There was the fire chief who had never been a fire fighter. There was a transition team member who was a convicted felon. Other appointees before and after the inaugural raised eyebrows, to put it mildly.

Then the great day came. Sixty-seven years to the day after Batista had fled Cuba in 1959, Mamdani raised his hand, placed the other one on a copy of the Kuran, and became the mayor of New York City at 34 years of age. He had a relatively brief address for the adoring crowds, but it contained some memorable lines.

He had been elected, he said, as a democratic socialist and would govern as one. That didn’t really surprise anyone because he hasn’t shied away from the party label. The next line was the shocker:

“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

I could hardly believe I had heard him say it myself. Wait, what? There are so many ways to analyze that sentence. Indeed there may be cold, rarified air on the mountaintop of rugged individualism and achievement, but to insist that the whole concept of individualism must be replaced with the “warmth of collectivism” was stunning. The words might have just as easily come from Karl Marx or Lenin or Mao, and they often did.

As in 1959, the speech was all about the rosy future and the bad old days that had come before. Actually, there wasn’t much about the bad old days. It sufficed to say words like “corruption” and “dictator” and “rich landowners” a few times. After that most of the world press was baying on the trail of Batista and gazing adoringly at Castro. What he did didn’t actually matter. The intent was enough. He was young and idealistic, they said, much as they did about Mamdani.

Within hours of the swearing in, “housing justice” activist Cea Weaver, now paid by the taxpayers of New York to manage housing, resumed speaking the words of the true believers. There would have to be a redefinition of the word “private property” in the city. Lots of white folk and even some black folk would just have to learn to live within a system that was going to be much more just in the future. In the name of “fairness” the owners of property might just have to give it up. Socialism means everybody gets treated the same, especially those who have gotten ahead of the others.

Like Castro, Mamdani is not worried about the state having too much power because he and others like him will to wield it themselves. They’ll do it right this time, and therein lies the irony. They can be trusted because they’re true believers in the beauty of the socialist dream. They have an advantage because they will also decide for others what is right and what is fair. There have been several other true believers in the socialist idea, and even a few recent ones in this country. The most fervent socialist true believers are today reviled as among the most murderous tyrants in all of history. You’ve heard their names. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, and many wannabes. Millions died at their hands, but, as Lenin himself is supposed to have said, “If you want to make an omelet, you must be willing to break a few eggs.”

But don’t worry, the true believers don’t have to worry about little things like history because it’s written by old racist bourgeois enemies. Nobody listens to them anymore. It’s the new socialist dawn, and it’s going to be awesome.

Comrades! Buckle up for the glorious socialist future, and cue The Internationale!

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