Cuba’s Failed Communist Messiahs

In view of the brutal and hellish record of its failed communist messiahs, past and present, it is only right that the ideology and actions of the current government of Cuba be confronted and resisted by the U.S.

Fay Voshell | September 26, 2026

Historian Paul Johnson, author of Modern Times, described the 1930s as “the age of the heroic lie.” “Saintly mendacity” became its most prized virtue. Stalin’s Soviet Union was built on sanctified fabrications that characterized communist ideology and practice.

The creation of Stalin as a communist messianic figure was part of the “saintly mendacity.”

Johnson wrote that views of Stalin written in the years 1929-34 made strange reading. Enthusiastic supporters in media and political circles included H.G. Wells, who claimed “everybody trusts him.” The American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies, described the brutal dictator: “His brown eye is exceedingly wise and gentle. A child would like to sit on his lap and a dog would sidle up to him.” Chilean writer Pablo Neruda wrote he was “a good-natured man of principle.”

The adulatory posture of the 1930s clerisy comprised of academics, politicians, and the press toward communist thugs remained scarcely unchanged into the late 50s and 60s.

As author Matthew Blackwell points out in his essay “Devastation and Denial: Cambodia and the Academic Left,” the academic left of the 70s either evaded or completely refused to condemn the genocide committed by Pol Pot, who deeply admired Jean Paul Sartre’s philosophy of violence as a tool of change.

Blackwell points out “the French cognoscenti had become entranced by Stalinism after the Second World War. Here was a group of bright, erudite people ready to toler­ate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines.”

The clerisy’s elevation and support of a communist messianic strongman was also on full display when Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba. On January 19, 1959, Life magazine ran an article featuring Castro’s takeover of Cuba.

The article is titled, “Liberator’s Triumphal March.” It begins, “Down from the eastern hills where he had forged his big victory, Fidel Castro marched in tumultuous triumph through the towns and villages of........

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