When I was young, I used to pick up a lot of alternative history and political ideology from music, which can be a good and bad thing because whilst some of it was well-meaning, much of it was a load of idealistic bollocks by musicians who later depressed the shit out of you by sending their kids to London’s top fee paying schools.

The Clash were a great band to pick up snippets of history and politics from and whilst the road to enlightenment may not be to preach the gospel according to the late Joe Strummer, it was one of his songs (Washington Bullets) that spiked my interest in Castro, The Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Sandinistas, Pinochet and the cold blooded murders of Chileans at the Santiago Stadium.

The Bay of Pigs story is one that anti-capitalists love to tell as it was an utter humiliation for the CIA and the American administration, with almost comical efforts at propaganda (painting American planes in Cuban colours and pretending they were piloted by Castro defectors was an absolute corker) to save face.

Funded by the CIA the exiled playboy gentry of Cuba took a good beating, allowing Castro and Che Guevara legendary status as underdogs who the USA could not defeat.

To those exiled to the United States, Castro was an evil dictator but to many of the poor on the island, he was a saviour, with health and education policies that were the envy of the world. To be a poor Cuban under Castro was no bad thing, especially when the communist finance arrived from the USSR.

It had its downsides of course, one being the spectre of nuclear annihilation as Russian missiles crossed the atlantic in 1962 and by all accounts, if you messed Castro, it was curtains for you, with enough evidence of human rights abuse against him to dismiss his behaviour as merely western propaganda.

Protectionism and nationalism were key to Castro’s strength but he was a Marxist whilst someone like Trump or Farage for instance, are advocating the same or at least similar ideologies of nationalism from the far-right, as does Jeremy Corbyn from the Marxist end of the scale.

Corbyn was at best, luke warm towards staying in the EU and is generally edgy about globalisation, in particular TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) which Obama, Osborne and Cameron were so desperate to make happen.

If Socialists become Nationalists, then they are National Socialists, which in Germany means NAZI, an ideology you may have heard of…Moseley was in the Labour Party before becoming a National Socialist, so you can see how messy all this can get in the wrong hands.

Trump, a right-wing maniac by nearly all accounts, wants nothing to do with TTIP either…well he didn’t last time I checked but he does change his mind a lot, as we know. If he still does not want TTIP as I write, he is in agreement with me Jeremy Corbyn and a host of other lefties, yet we are told he is a raging capitalist?

Perhaps he doesn’t know what he is himself, apart from a racist, tax dodging misogynist, which is why he is such good mates with Farage, another nationalist and fervent racist, who should have been left alone as the pub bore rather than being allowed into politics.

I am going to hold my hands up here and confess to utter confusion which I fully accept, leaves me in line for looking utterly stupid. However, it appears to me that once someone feels they have to exact a policy that is pushing hard to the extreme left or right, they end up meeting in the same place…on death row or in the torture chamber.

Perhaps it is the Western version of nonlinear warfare (see below) a system of political control by confusion that is used in Russia? It is a fascinating and highly believable concept, so you should watch it.

Is the world entrenched in nonlinear warfare?

Communists and Nationalists have have historically lived by rule of fear and have killed millions to maintain their status, its there all over the history books if you don’t believe me, so being a centrist is surely the only way to behave in a civilised world. Not so, it seems; you get slaughtered for that attitude from both directions.

What can’t be denied is that Castro was a giant of 20th Century ideologies, standing up to the ‘Leaders of the Free World’ who have somehow ended up making a complete mess of everything they have touched since their heroics in both World Wars.

I do wonder how history will judge the USA. From being a country the world admired and respected, they descended into a capitalist superpower that piled into any nation that had a whiff of socialism about it and smashed it to pieces.

Regardless of whether targeted nations had a democratically elected government or not, the Americans steamed in, and what are they left with for all that blood and tears?

Donald Trump the Middle East in bits and the threat of a new Cold War.

What is Britain left with?

An unelectable Labour Party supported by people who actively despise anyone with a centrist view and a weird unelected woman (Theresa May) who lives in fear of right-wing loons and claims that God will create her a smooth path through Brexit.

Enlightenment seems an awfully long way off doesn’t it?

Whatever you thought of Castro (I have mixed feeling for the guy) he probably picked the right time to croak it and at 90, his supporters will express their glee that he died on his terms, and not those of the CIA.

I can’t help but laugh at that either to be honest.

‘And in the Bay of Pigs in 1961
Havana fought the playboy in the Cuban sun
For Castro is a color is a redder than red
Those Washington bullets want Castro dead
For Castro is the color
That will earn you a spray of lead’

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