liberals feverishly crossing out the word slave and replacing it with the word worker "umm actually they get paid 5 cents an hour so it's not slavery sweaty 😤"
"Yes, my grandparents owned a clothing factory in Havana. Were there windows? No, but to say it was a sweat shop or that I'm a gusano is absurd and racist."
Italic emoji 😭
well they could have chosen to go work on the other plantation over there for the same wage, see, so they have free choice in their employment 😍 that means anything bad that happens to them is just their fault personally for not being entrepenurial enough 😌
*paid exclusively in company scrip, unusable outside of the plantation.
Just like in the southern US after the American Civil War, slavery was abolished and everyone lived in harmony with no problems whatsoever
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This is one of my favourite reminders to hit them with
It's the 21th century and the US still hasn't abolished slavery
Not just that, but after slavery was “abolished,” the US government allowed the traitors to regain power and enact discriminatory laws that were barely any different than chattel slavery. Which is basically what happened with Cuba
"Slavery was abolished in the US in 1865. There were no slaves in America in 2023."
I think it would be accurate to compare it to the same year as OP because sharecroppers were still working at the same plantations as their ancestors
Reddit types really think this
We “freed the slaves” in 1863!”
Except that slavery is still legal here, and also the last illegal chattle slave (definitely not the last) was freed during fucking word war 2 or whatever
(Knowing better video about neoslavery if you want to learn more)
Fucking liberals earnestly believe when words are written on a page it makes them true, and that things opposed to the words are IMPOSSIBLE and against the laws of physics is so fucking frustrating
Until it comes to killing some poors or homeless despite what the words say, then it turns out they were only a suggestion
Try, "We're still fucking doing it" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/
Fucking liberals earnestly believe when words are written on a page it makes them true, and that things opposed to the words are IMPOSSIBLE and against the laws of physics is so fucking frustrating
These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves.
In all my years I've never heard anyone claim that Castro eliminated slavery (in the classical, non-wage sense anyway), and it never crossed my mind. The implication that Cuban workers weren't being exploited in an extremely capitalist, basically-slavery, hellhole though is obviously disingenuous.
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I never learned about Cuban revolution and chattel slavery. I learned it as getting the island out from the thumb of mafiosos and exploitative American interests. That was enough for me.
you see, we call the slaves something else now, so its ok to make them work long hours in inhuman conditions for not-nearly-enough pay.
I assume a member of the class of soulless parasitic nazis wrote this www.readsettlers.org
"Castro freed the slaves" is a bad agitprop point for exactly this reason: it's not true on the face of it. Best case, you get into a semantic argument about what "slavery" means, which derails the conversation. Worst case, whoever reads your agitprop googles "when was slavery abolished in Cuba" and thinks you don't know what you're talking about.
I gotta disagree. "Castro freed the slaves" is a great line, precisely because Cuba was awash in these abysmal sugar plantations a century after the Spaniards nominally ended the practice.
Best case, you illuminate how legalist readings of history are hollow. Worst case, you force your debatebro to defend the abhorrent labor practices that created the groundswell of opposition to the Batista regime. Throw in a "Even the CIA couldn't stomach Batista, by the time he was forced off the island" and "When Castro visited New York City in the 50s, he was hailed as a hero." Remind people of their history.
At his absolute worst, you could accuse Castro of being an LBJ-style reformer, ending the Jim Crow conditions of Cuba and liberating the island from a tyrannical military dictatorship. At the best, he positioned the island to move from an oversized agricultural backwater into a modern bio-technology world leader. Cuba in the 21st century is outpacing the US in terms of medical R&D, with none of the Silicon Valley inputs. It is an island of miracles.
Tbh I always just buttress it with the Frederick Douglas quote about wage slavery still being slavery. Libs never have a response to Frederick Douglas, it's great.
The difference is a wage worker's boss can't cut off your foot if you leave. There are plenty of points of comparison between maximally exploitative wage work and slavery, but to say there's really no difference at all is silly.
And now -- as I mentioned -- the conversation has shifted to the semantics of slavery vs. wage work under terrible conditions. We're not talking about Cuba at all, or we're getting into hyperspecifics about the conditions of Batista-era plantations. It makes far more sense to stick to:
- Batista was brutal and repressive even in the eyes of contemporary U.S. politicians
- Castro led a popular revolution
- Revolutionary Cuba is far better than what came before, despite constant U.S. attacks and sanctions
I was arguing with a Cuban “refugee” on reddit today and asked how many slaves his ancestors owned in Cuba. His answer? “I don’t know.” Totally normal answer to the question.
Slavery was abolished by the british in their African colonies yet numerous forms of slavery persisted. And they also replaced it with other forms of mobilization, like forced labour and compulsive proletarization. So, slavery abolishment means little when in reality it's not always carried out, especially when a lot of now "modern workers" found themselves being former slaves, with no other option other than subjecting themselves to continued exploitation.
Lol like liberals read history. "Reading history" means repeating what you heard someone else say who you assume reads history. I don't have to actually waste my time learning if I just repeat the opinions of people who have certain accreditations and pedigrees of learning. Life is so fucking simple
these same people would say there are no slaves in america today, their opinions are compost and they should be too
Plantations and slavery aren't 1 to 1.
