Cracked.com's anti-Cuba propaganda
Cracked.com's anti-Cuba propaganda
We spoke to those who lived under Fidel Castro's rule. Here's what we learned.
You're probably familiar with Cracked.com, the epic listicle site that was popular a decade ago and now mainly exists to promote paid content. In their heyday, they made many of the standard "lol look at how evil North Korea is" articles, but what stood out more to me was this article, 6 Ugly Facts Of Life In Communist Cuba, which wasw ritten with input from some gusanos and reads like US state department propaganda.
Most of the article is literally anecdotes from these people, which are the standard "Castro bad" crap, but one is notably ridiculous:
One day, my sister came home and exclaimed, 'Fidel is better than Jesus!' In school they had asked the kindergartners to close their eyes and pray to Jesus for ice cream. When they opened their eyes -- nothing. Then they closed their eyes again and prayed to Fidel for ice cream, and ... surprise! Ice cream cups on their desks!
Wow, such a plausible story! How could Fidel deceive the children like this?
The few sections that are actually sourced aren't any better:
It's hard to say how many people Castro's new regime gunned down (evil dictators being notoriously spotty record-keepers), but the butcher's bill was probably around 30,000.
This links to the 1995-ass website of some rando Italian-American writer called Piero Scaruffi, who cites The Black Book of Communism among others. A very credible source, I'm sure.
He got lucky: Thanks to Operation Pedro Pan, a joint venture between the Swiss embassy and the Catholic Church to spirit children to America, he secured permission to leave ... alone. "So I came to the U.S. without my parents and lived in a refugee camp in Florida."
No criticism of Operation Pedro Pan? At all? Alright!
You left out the best part:
"In Cuba, we were upper-middle-class," Vivian said. "My grandfather was a bank vice president; my father worked for another bank and also wrote comedy sketches. We lived with extended family in a chic apartment. My sister and I had our own room; my brother had his own; we had a maid who lived in a small room behind the kitchen. She was a Spaniard and blind in one eye. I was a little scared of her."
It's always some variation of "I exploited human beings and the evil gommulists stopped me from doing that and now I'm sad" lol
lmao even
Beyond parody.
Is it not?
This is so ridiculous and it being from Cracked makes me feel like we're eating the Onion.
Tbf, those children would not have had ice cream without Fidel. Particularly free ice cream. Getting ice cream to happen for everybody in Cuba was a huge endeavour for Castro, as he believed every person in Cuba deserved at least that luxury.
I think ice cream is just the nice little treat on top of something much more important. Making it accessible means widespread electrification and refrigeration. Two things absolutely critical for a modern society.
Those kids would not have been in school without Fidel.
Cracked.com more like Crackkker.com amarite fellas
They also included Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" in an article about songs with dark hidden messages
"This Land Is Your Land" is, for lack of a better term, a song about communism. The opening lines are a bit of a giveaway, but only if you know the background: "This land is your land/This land is my land." OK, well, that doesn't have to be referring to the idea of public ownership of all property. Maybe "The invisible hand of the free market will dictate who is the rightful owner of this land" just didn't fit into the rhyme scheme.
Wow, I never would've figured out that Jimi Hendrix's Star-Spangled Banner wasn't meant to be a straight-laced anthem!
Thanks for telling me about that hidden message, Cracked!edit: 99 Luftballons had a ”hidden message”, unless of course you were one of the millions of people who spoke German, in which case it wasn't hidden at all. Must've been a good gig getting paid to write this.
One day, my sister came home and exclaimed, 'Fidel is better than Jesus!' In school they had asked the kindergartners to close their eyes and pray to Jesus for ice cream. When they opened their eyes -- nothing. Then they closed their eyes again and prayed to Fidel for ice cream, and ... surprise! Ice cream cups on their desks!
Can't argue with those results
if jesus didn't want the kids to become communists he should have produced the ice cream
that part is so fucking funny
that's it, imma start praying to Fidel before every set at the gym
Update: it worked.
evil dictators being notoriously spotty record-keepers
Ignore evil dictator Stalin's soviet archives
Aren’t we always being told how the Nazis were meticulously documenting everything?
Well yes, I'm quite confident they will.
Libs will just tell you that's fabricated anyway and can't be trusted because it's Soviet
Except for when they want to say communists are like nazis, then we're suddenly meticulous record keepers and that's a sign of evil.
Or the massive archives of the third Reich. Fuckers tried to burn as much as possible and what's left still shows a meticolous documentation of their actions.
The Quorators got a partnership with Cracked for like 3 months then got fired for supporting Palestine and clogging the Cracked office’s toilet
You'd be surprised how many Cracked alumni show up in media.
Soren Bowie writes for American Dad! now (which I think is actually the most tolerable Seth show, probably because it's currently just absurdist humour and not random jabs at minorities like Family Guy)
Dan O'Brien writes for Last Week Tonight, which is lib but did help "radicalize" at least one person I know from radical centrism so I'll forgive the show for being lib
Doctor Mister Cody Johnson has a show on Youtube about how bad feral boars are with Katy Stoll
Robert Evans is now a famous fed
Cracked, home of the fact.
Fidel is better than Jesus!
Yes.
Never seen Jesus redistributing any land or persecuting plantation owners
Ah Cracked, where Robert Fedvans cut his teeth before making it big as a podcaster grifting baby leftists.
Don’t forget bellingcat
bellingcracked
Praying to Fidel works though, I prayed for him to persecute plantation owners and it came true
Then they closed their eyes again and prayed to Fidel for ice cream, and … surprise! Ice cream cups on their desks!
TBF I could easily see Fidel being a dairymancer. Dude loved him some milk.
There was already a post about this
I see Robert Fedvans is back
wait, the music critic piero scaruffi? haven't heard that guy's name in years.
edit: looked him up, it seems like he writes about a lot more than just music, i guess he's a big time silicon valley head. back in the day people used to post about him a lot on music forums. the main thing i remember of his was a screed about how the beatles sucked and would not be remembered in the future, had a line basically saying that just because they were the most popular doesn't mean they were the best.
I remember seeing that Ice Cream thing in a really shitty anti communist PSA we watched on hextube lmao
Piero Scaruffi
Holy shit lmao that's a name I haven't thought of since like 2010. Old /mu/ heads might remember that
I never thought there'd be a Cracked article more obnoxious than their usual slop of "What if George Washington teamed up with freaking Batman!!!1
" but here we areIt works if you read it as 100% sarcasm
Way to stand up for the integrity of comedy, Vivian's dad! By contrast, we once got a sternly worded letter from a brand of laundry detergent and rolled over like a well-trained dog.
The fact that so many books still name the Beatles as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success. The Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worthy of being saved.
Whoa, I remember this site and article, both
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Wdym "like" US state department propaganda?
