RUSH: And we’ve got still to discuss Castro. Look, this is a teachable moment, a big-time teachable moment, the death of Fidel Castro and the way that death was treated by many, if not most, of the American media and the Democrat Party with a couple of noted exceptions, one of the exceptions being Pelosi.

But the most accurate take, the most accurate reaction, the most dead-on public statement about the death of Fidel Castro came from Trump. Obama’s was neutral. You know, Obama, Castro, that’s the kind of thing Obama, all these leftists, these Social Justice Warriors, they admire what they think Castro was trying to do. He had free health care for everyone. Never mind that nobody could access it. It’s just absurd. I can’t wait to share with you a story in the Washington Post about this. It’s sick. It is dangerous how wrong, how factually incorrect, how attitudinally, how ideologically wrong this is. It’s dangerous. It’d be one thing if it was from a kook, obscure conspiracy website, but this is in the Washington Post.

Did you hear what Brian Williams said? He said people in Cuba prefer donkey-drawn carts to automobiles. The people of Cuba prefer to be driven around by donkeys in carts rather than the 1950s and ’60s automobiles, which are the newest that you can find in Cuba. They prefer it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now to the Fidel Castro Stack. This, folks, is mind-boggling. When you stop and consider who Fidel Castro was. Fidel Castro imprisoned, tortured, killed, executed his own people for the crime of pursuing life, liberty and happiness. He conducted a 50-year war against human nature. The left, which includes Barack Obama, has romanticized what should be itemized, condemned, and defeated.

It’s been a tough few weeks for the left, and the death of Fidel Castro was apparently a tipping point for them to drive them even further insane. A man by the name of Carlos Eire is a professor of history and religious studies at Yale. He wrote in the Washington Post, “13 Facts About Fidel Castro.”

“He turned Cuba into a colony of the Soviet Union and nearly caused a nuclear holocaust,” the Cuban missile crisis. He wanted the missiles. He wanted Khrushchev to launch nuclear strikes against America.

“He sponsored terrorism wherever he could and allied himself with many of the worst dictators on earth.” Castro was not a dictator. He was a tyrant. He was a murderous thug tyrant.

“He was responsible for so many thousands of executions and disappearances in Cuba that a precise number is hard to reckon. He brooked no dissent and built concentration camps and prisons at an unprecedented rate, filling them to capacity, incarcerating a higher percentage of his own people than most other modern dictators, including Stalin.” And when his jails became filled to the brim, he simply released them and put them on boats and sent them out into the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

“He condoned and encouraged torture.” And you know how the left in this country reacted to what they thought was torture at Guantanamo Bay.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: “Fidel Castro forced nearly 20 percent of his people into exile, and prompted thousands to meet their deaths at sea, unseen and uncounted, while fleeing from him in crude vessels. He claimed all property for himself and his henchmen, strangled food production and impoverished the vast majority of his people.”

In 1959 the Castro revolution literally nationalized everything. The people were surprised. They expected Castro was gonna liberate them from tyranny, the tyranny that was Batista. And he did a double whammy. The wealthy, the middle class, he took everything. He took their homes. He took their land. I have friends here in south Florida who lost multimillion-dollar estates, property, and businesses, and they fled here. They’ve reestablished those businesses in many cases here in the United States, and they live to this day to get their property in Cuba back. And they have lived with that desire since 1959 and 1960. It’s one of the things that has fueled them.

“Fidel Castro outlawed private enterprise and labor unions, wiped out Cuba’s large middle class and turned Cubans into slaves of the state,” earning about two to three dollars a day. “He persecuted gay people and tried to eradicate religion.” This is one of the most amazing things. Cuba wants you to think that it is a gay paradise and gay Americans, militant gay, the leftist militant gay political operators in this country want you to believe that Cuba was a gay paradise. And it was not. Gay people were persecuted and executed the moment it was discovered they were gay. And Castro outlawed the church.

Now, one of the things that communists do — by the way, I’m gonna give you a little preview here. Angelo Codevilla is back. I was reading over the weekend a very, very, very, very long essay he wrote for the Claremont Review of Books. It’s essentially about political correctness. But in the process of writing about political correctness, he correctly identifies the stratagems and philosophies of communists. One of the things they do — for example, Soviet Union, China, Castro — they destroy all religion. They outlaw it.

They demolish churches. But they always leave a church here or there. They always allow a congregation here or there, and in fact in some cases they even have party members acting as dissidents. The purpose of this is so the population can see remnants of what the Regime is telling you is vile and filthy so that there is always work for the revolution to do. If they wiped out every church, then they would have nothing to rail against, so they keep a church or two in Havana open or maybe Santiago de Cuba. They always leave a vestige.

Same thing, they eradicate and execute homosexuals, but they always leave some in prominent positions to show that the Regime — in Castro’s case, he had a propaganda machine making it look like Cuba was a gay paradise. So he left some gays and put them in prominence, had rainbow flags around, but the vast majority of gay people in Cuba are not alive today. Communism is an evil thing, folks. It is an ugly, evil, vile, inhumane thing, and Castro was one of the world’s most dominant communists ever.

“He censored all means of expression and communication.” None of what I have just shared with you is arguable. Every bit of this Castro was, every bit of this Castro did and more. There was nothing redeemable about Fidel Castro. Castro was the ideal communist. The Soviet Union communism, Fidel Castro’s communism is all predicated on equality and sameness and prosperity run by the state. The only people who benefit are the leaders. They are the only people.

The struggle is always presented as ongoing, because there are always oppressors. It’s like Obama finding phantom opponents everywhere trying to stop him. It’s to keep people in line. It’s to keep people thinking that there still is that day in the future where the revolution might actually succeed and make them prosperous. In Castro’s case the illusion lasted for 60 years. And it was all an illusion. Cuba was a hellhole.

Now, all of this is undeniable, and yet, looking at media over the weekend and watching TV and radio, listening to leftists lament and lionize and celebrate this, it was just the most ungodly thing. And I’ve got an example here from the Washington Post that’s just beyond sickening. And I’m gonna name the people that wrote it: Dom Phillips and Joshua Partlow.

“On every stage where a Latin American leader launched into soaring oratory against the imperialists, Fidel Castro was present. In every lonely jungle hideout where guerrillas in olive-drab plotted their fight, Castro kept them company. In every country where revolutionaries and communists dreamed of creating a workers’ paradise, Castro was a guiding light. No single figure did more to define generations of Latin Americans who sought political upheaval than Castro.”

Listen to this next. This is what they loved about him. The American left in this country, the American Democrat Party, Hollywood leftists, these things coming next are what they loved about him. “His anti-American rants inspired followers in countries that also saw resources sucked away by local elites in cahoots with the mighty United States.”

So you see, there was this lone figure in Cuba inspiring other olive-clad, drabbed military junta type guys to rise up against the evil Satan that was the United States of America, which was sucking resources away from every Latin-American country by the elites. And so Castro stood alone protecting his people from the United States, which was stealing everything Cuba had, and his people believed it. But it’s unconscionable for the Washington Post to write this drivel.

“In nations with extreme inequality, governments took lessons from his state-run economic model. For modern-day strongmen looking for high-minded justifications to seize control of parliaments, courts and the media, he was the man.”

Yeah. “In nations with extreme inequality,” like the United States, not Cuba, no, no, no, like the United States, “governments took lessons from Castro’s state-run economic –” There was no economic model. There was no economy. “For modern-day strongmen looking for high-minded justifications to –” in other words, the existence of the United States justifies Castro seizing control of his island nation and subjugating his people and jailing them and executing them and imprisoning them. The existence of the United States justifies this, because we are the real imperialists.

This is in the Washington Post. “These days, many Latin American countries’ political and economic ties with Cuba have weakened because of painful recessions and voters’ rejection of leftist governments. Leftists in Latin America have little interest in armed revolution anymore. Still, Cuba’s influence in the region endures, both because of its advances in education and health care, and because of its example of fierce independence.”

Cuba’s influence in the region endures because of its advances? There aren’t any advances in education, and there were no advances in health care. And fierce independence? Fierce? There was no independence, liberty or freedom of even thought, in Cuba. “Some, like Castro, transitioned to political leadership and pressed for greater spending on the poor.” I mean, this gets sicker and sicker and sicker as it goes.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Listen to this last little reference here from this Washington Post story. I’m sorry, it might be the New York Times. It could be either one. There’s a newfangled reformatter of websites, and it doesn’t print every. Sometimes it doesn’t print the byline, sometimes it doesn’t print the website. And I neglected to make a note of it. It’s one of the two. But listen.

You all know the dire straits Venezuela is in. Venezuela is falling apart. Venezuela’s currency is so worthless you cannot keep a functional amount of it in your wallet. It would take too much. Venezuela has gone the way of every socialist, communist regime. It’s descended now into utter chaos. Nobody except the leaders has anything.

So listen to this. “Venezuela modeled itself after Castro’s Cuba. The Hugo Chavez government’s heavy subsidies for such things as milk and corn flour helped poor Venezuelans in times of high oil revenue but are difficult to sustain now that petroleum prices have slumped.”

So the only reason Venezuela’s in trouble is because its oil industry’s in trouble, and that’s because oil prices are down. Venezuela modeled itself after Cuba, modeled itself after Castro, and this Chavez guy was so wonderful, he subsidized milk and corn flour for poor Venezuelans. He had to because nobody could afford anything. There is nothing in Venezuela that’s worth recommending to anybody. There’s nothing about Cuba, other than cigars, worth recommending to anybody. And yet the American left is enamored.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And the last line of this piece in the Washington Post: “While Castro’s economic approach has lost popularity –” it never was popular. Castro personally is popular. And Snerdley just asked me, “Why? What is it about Castro that American leftists and worldwide leftists personally love?” You know, charisma’s a tough thing to explain. Clearly he had charisma, but I’ll tell you what I think it is. I think he hated America. I think they loved him the way he stood up and pointed fingers at every American president and outlasted them.

I think that he garnered all this support via his hatred of this country, which they share. The people we are talking about — it’s in this Washington Post story. Every problem Cuba had was the fault of the imperialists in the United States denying Cuba what poor Fidel was desperately trying to bring, prosperity. I mean, it’s so intellectually vacant that it defies common sense explanation. It has to be something emotional, the attachment people have to Castro. I mean, the idea that health care in Cuba is better than — and not one of them would ever send a relative, a child or themselves, to Cuba.

In fact, when Castro nearly died a number of years ago, you know what it was that killed him? He had a colon problem of some kind. I don’t know exactly what it was, and the solution to it was a colostomy bag. And he told the doctors, screw that, I’m not wearing a colostomy bag. You stitch up the colon. Well, it didn’t work and the poison in the colon got all through his body and his body was one giant infection. They had to call in a team of doctors from Spain to save him.

Cuban doctors hadn’t the slightest idea. Cuban doctors botched the whole thing, on his command. But I mean we get this romanticized notion that health care in Cuba is better than anywhere in the world and affordable, and it isn’t. It’s not better and it isn’t affordable. Nothing is affordable. It’s so bad in Cuba that Brian Williams told his viewers on MSNBC that Cuban citizens actually prefer being driven around in donkey carts rather than automobiles. Andrea Mitchell is practically crying over the death of Fidel Castro.

Folks, I’m telling you the attachment has to be his anti-Americanism, his hatred for America has to be the glue, the link, in addition to whatever other charismatic qualities that Fidel Castro had, they’re undeniable. Che Guevara, too, how do you explain Che Guevara? Che Guevara was every bit the murdering terrorist that Castro was, and yet young college women run around wearing Che Guevara T-shirts because, to them, he was hip, he could have been a member of the Stones. Yeah, he looked so cool, he looked hip, looked like he could have been a rock star. And it defies logical explanation.

But this last sentence, “While Castro’s economic approach has lost popularity, Latin American countries remember him more for his focus on health care, education and better conditions for the poor.” You know, you ask yourself how to deal with this. Better conditions for the poor? Cuba is known, by people who know it truly, as a gigantic poverty-stricken island where those that have jobs earn no more than $4 a week. There were no better conditions for the poor. In fact, you want to hear some stats very quickly?

Let me give you some stats. “A study by the State Department’s Hugo Llorens and Kirby Smith shows, for example, that in infant mortality, literacy rates, per capita food consumption, passenger cars per capita, number of telephones, radios, televisions, and many other indicators, Cuba led [Latin America] when Castro took over on New Year’s Eve 1958.

“And today? Castro’s communism has not just left Cubans economically pauperized, but politically bereft. … Some 51,000 Cubans last year entered the United States, and this year’s figures will easily surpass that. The numbers of Cuban nationals fleeing Cuba have now quintupled since Obama took office, when it was less than 7,000 annually.”

In other words, when Castro took over, Cuba was an economic engine. Yeah, the dictator was a thug, Batista, but there was economic prosperity. After 10 short years of Castro, there was no leadership in any category whatsoever, and it was gonna continue to get worse for all 60 years of his rule, ’cause he simply took everything for himself and his henchmen. He literally commandeered everything.

His was one of the biggest giant scams ever run by a single person on a country. And he could have not have gotten away with it were it not for the assistance of other worldwide communists and leftist American sympathizers. It’s one of the most stunning things. This idea that conditions for the poor, better conditions for the poor is what Castro’s known for, it boggles the mind. But that’s what liberalism is. That’s who they are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look. It is a great myth that communists — and it’s because of the myth that is Marxism. It’s a great myth that communism is about upward mobility for the bourgeois, for the middle class, for the proletariat, for the hoi polloi. That’s a big myth. Communism, socialism is all a scam designed to keep people impoverished. Better to control them. It’s designed to enrich the leaders. It’s an oppressive, tyrannical form of human arrangement. And the lie is that it is the only way lower middle-class people can have upward mobility. It’s just absolute BS.

All this equality and sameness and equal rights and fairness, you go to any communist country, there’s none of that. And there never will be any of that. There’s never any of that in liberal societies. There’s always anger and misery and unhappiness because it’s a false promise that a bunch of dupes end up believing, and it never happens. The leftists succeed in blaming capitalists for the failure of Marxism, socialism, communism. It is just despicable.

The fact that this way of governance has not been dispatched forever is one of the enduring mysteries to me. The explanation obviously is psychological, and I intend to discover it. I intend to find out what it is. To me it’s unacceptable that people still find anything redeemable in it, even hope, because there is clearly none of that.