By John Fund
Sunday, August 23, 2026
We all know that the Democratic Socialists of America
hate billionaires. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani says they shouldn’t
exist. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), the diva of the
Democratic Socialists, says: “You can’t earn a billion dollars. . . . You can get
market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people
less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that.” But there’s one
billionaire that the DSA does celebrate — the late Fidel Castro.
On the occasion of what would have been Castro’s 100th
birthday this month, the DSA praised him as “an organizer, a fighter, and stalwart
symbol of anti-imperialist struggle and self-determination,” while bizarrely
denouncing U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for supposedly committing
genocide against the Cuban people.
The DSA leadership has refused to walk away from its
statement of admiration for Cuba. Former Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos pressed DSA national co-chairs Ashik Siddique and Megan
Romer on whether they regard Cuba — as well as Venezuela and Nicaragua — as a
dictatorship. Neither would say so. Romer, in fact, claimed that “Cubans have
access to their democracy in a way that we do not.” She apparently believes
that the Cuban government is more democratic than the American. Siddique
invoked the familiar dodge of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, as if that is to
blame for Cuba’s problems rather than the fact that Castro was a committed Marxist.
Siddique added, “It’s hard for us to judge other countries being dictatorships
when we have Donald Trump as president.”
This kind of moral equivalency infuriates many moderate
Democrats. Florida Representative Jared Moskowitz, who defeated a DSA member in
a primary election this month, told CNN that he has many people in his district
who escaped socialism during the Mariel boatlift, a mass exodus of refugees
from Cuba in 1980. He says they find it inexplicable when they see the DSA
“embrace 100 years of Fidel Castro,” or when media commentators such as DSA
favorite Hasan Piker dress up as Mao Zedong and praise the Soviet Union.
Castro was a master at exploiting Cubans, ruling over
them with an iron fist for over half a century while 90 percent of the
population lived in extreme poverty. One of his bodyguards, Juan Reinaldo
Sánchez, who defected, wrote a tell-all book in 2016, The Double Life of
Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo. He detailed Castro’s 29 luxury homes, four yachts, and his
private island (Cayo Piedra), which featured a dolphinarium, a floating
restaurant, and a helipad.
Monica Showalter, who used to report on the world’s
wealthiest individuals for Forbes, says that in 2006, the magazine’s research listed Castro’s
wealth at $900 million and growing. His extended family now sits on cash
reserves of $18 billion, with many of its members living in Europe and the U.S.
She expresses contempt for the DSA’s take on billionaires, noting that the
organization views uber-entrepreneur Elon Musk as “the bad guy,” while Castro,
“who stole and hid his wealth is the hero.”
She adds:
They don’t hate billionaires at
all. They like them if what they do to become billionaires is steal from the
public, not serve the public. That is what they like: lionizing bandits while
raining hatred on anyone who produces things of value.
Is it possible for the DSA to go any farther down the
path of depravity to make excuses for dictatorships? Apparently, yes.
The Sunday Times reports that five high-ranking activists of the DSA visited
China last year on a trip organized by Chinese officials. Among their stops was
a parade attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un. Dee Knight, a DSA member who sits on its China working group,
reported that “Beijing buzzed with excitement” during the parade. He has also
been an apologist for China’s ruthless treatment of the Uyghur population.
Reportedly, after a previous visit to China, he insisted that he “found nothing
to support western accusations of slave labour.” According to the Times,
Alexander Reid Ross, a professor at Portland State University who studies
extremist politics, says of the DSA’s pro-China wing:
It looks like what they’re doing
is laundering an authoritarian state’s preferred narratives in exchange for VIP
treatment. In my view that opens up serious vulnerabilities regarding who
they’re working for and to what effect.
Is North Korea next on the hit parade of the DSA’s
favorite foreign tyrannies?
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