By César Reynel Aguilera
Strange as it might seem, I grew up decades ago listening to stories about what is now happening in the United States.
I am the son of two Cuban communists.
In 1959, when Castro seized power, my father was secretary-general of the Socialist (or Communist) Youth at the University of Havana. My mother was one of the few people to belong to two insurrectionist groups. Besides being a cadre in the Socialist Youth, she was also a soldier in Castro’s Action and Sabotage cells. Those cells were a terrorist squad.
As a young boy in Cuba, I saw and lived the future of the United States.
I grew up listening to stories from my parents; my dad, especially, used to talk about how you could work “the masses” for “the cause.” They followed the communist recipe for how to promote social unrest and violence.
As I can attest, that formula was a key to the communist campaign that put Castro in power.
The first step is to achieve a certain degree of penetration in the targeted institutions or social groups. At the University of Havana in the 1950s, the communists made easy work of it with their militants, both open and secret, in all departments.
When the necessary penetration is achieved, the only remaining task is to watch for an opportune moment and then attack in line with a strategy we can call the seven d’s.
- Detect or spot a situation that you can turn into a social problem and blame your target for it. It helps to have in hand a collection of scenarios—price hikes, racially charged conflict, big-power aggression, etc.
- Distort the situation to the point that it becomes repugnant to well-intentioned people. In any way you can, connect the situation to earlier incidents and thereby accuse your target of evil intentions. That way, the situation becomes a problem.
- Dissemble: exploit the issue by spreading half-lies, half-truths, or plain inventions in order to build up a perception of injustice and put feelings of stress on top of it. Use those feelings to manipulate the masses and get them to think the problem is general. This is how you turn a problem into a cause.
- Denounce: use the exaggerations and lies to blame your target group. You then propose to resolve things by eliminating the target group. In that way, the cause is turned into a solution.
- Divide or separate the masses into opposed groups: “good people” who want to just resolve the problem and “bad people” who don’t want to do anything about it. That way, the solution becomes a confrontation.
- Disconnect or burn any bridge that anyone might use to find a rational or negotiated solution. Make demands that cannot be fulfilled and create slogans to go with that. People must be called names; any effort to find common ground must be treated as an insult. In that manner, the confrontation becomes a revolution.
- Destroy. When you have created the necessary indignation, cry havoc and unleash the war dogs. The masses are urged to commit violence, while organizers pile up the victims and martyrs. The revolution is free to become the source of a new situation.
The moment the Black Lives Matter protests began, my inner alarm sounded because I saw that the organizers, in an almost identical way, were inciting the country to devour itself. That’s exactly what I saw while growing up in Cuba.
Strikingly, the Black Lives Matter movement had infiltrated society to a far greater degree than prior Marxist movements, whose infiltration was already impressive.
Sadly, the so-called Democratic Party has been penetrated to its core by the Marxist ideologues who also control the Black Lives Matter movement.
Whether from sincere belief or from irrational hatred of President Trump, many Democrat politicians have become ensnared by the seven d’s.
I say “sad” because, if history teaches us anything, it’s that those same political operators become the revolution’s first quarry. They are always the first people to disappear down the jaws of a successful Marxist revolution.
César Reynel Aguilera is a writer living in Montreal. Among his recent books is El soviet caribeño, a history of relations between the Castro regime and Soviet intelligence. César blogs at https://reynelaguilera.wordpress.com. He translated this essay from his own Spanish-language original.
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