Washington Post Rebukes Fidel While It Hailed Pinochet in 2006

With the passing of Cuba’s epochal revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, ideologues in the mainstream media have surfaced to react. While mainstream U.S. media aided and abetted Fidel’s fascist predecessor’s rise, it now is pouncing on the opportunity to disparage the leader revered by Cubans, and millions across the globe.

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The Washington Post, in particular, published a disgraceful obituary Saturday deeming him as a “communist dictator.” This, comes in stark contrast to its fawning editorial in the wake of Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet’s death in 2006 — the leader that was declared just last month as "the most violent and criminal ruler" in Chile’s history, by Chile’s lower house.

With a dismissive nod to the thousands killed and tortured under Pinochet’s regime, the 2006 obituary claims that he left “behind the most successful country in Latin America.” This, while a number of effects of his nefarious rule to this day include the costly privatization of pensions and education, one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the world, and a gargantuan military budget, among many others.

While Fidel survived 638 assassination attempts by the CIA, the Washington Post seemingly justifies them by writing “(Fidel’s) turbulent career ... (that) many enemies, including successive U.S. administrations, might gladly have ended more abruptly many years ago.”

It recognizes that Cuba has achieved paramount victories in the areas of health and education, but incorrectly states that this was much the same prior to Fidel’s rule. It also demonizes various social movements in Latin America that Fidel supported, that sought to fight right-wing despotism, by deeming them as “violent subversive movements.”

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In line with mainstream media coverage of Venezuela, The Washington Post’s editorial board also write disparagingly of Fidel’s camaraderie with former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, stating “(Fidel) helped steer Venezuela to economic and political catastrophe through his patronage of Hugo Chavez.”

As journalist and Marxist intellectual Vijay Prashad writes, for a network extending from Washington, D.C., to Miami's Little Havana, and then through the media outlets of the plutocracy, this was indeed one “that was predisposed to hating the Cuban experiment.”