The Ideologues of the Soft Coup: Open Society in Cuba and the Counter-Revolutionary Articulation
Javier Gómez Sánchez – January 5, 2021
The special broadcast of Cuban Television on November 28 marked a change in terms of the public exposure by the media system of the Cuban State of the US intentions to finance and organize a new counterrevolution to provoke a soft coup in Cuba. .
It was followed by broadcasts from the Roundtable, segments on the NTV, information programs, articles in Granma and Cubadebate, as well as a follow-up in various institutional media. Never before has the operation of this new counterrevolution, the intentional use of social networks and digital media, as well as acts of terrorist vandalism and their links, articulated for the destabilization of Cuban society, been exposed to the people in this way.
The creation of a Cuban neo counterrevolution dates back to the early 2000s, specifically on May 14, 2004, at a meeting of CIA officers held at the residence of one of the officials of the then Office of Interests of the United States in Havana, when the idea of giving the traditional counterrevolution until then financed and used in Cuba a secondary role was raised for the first time, taking into account its notorious loss of prestige, and creating a counterrevolution with a new face and discourse .
The content of that meeting and the plans of the Central Intelligence Agency that were presented in it, are known thanks to the testimonies of the writer and journalist Raúl Capote, present at the meeting, whom the CIA recruited to promote the cultural war in Cuba , and that later he would really reveal himself as an agent of the Cuban State Security.
This new counterrevolution had to find its human resources among people, mainly young people, who had professional and social ties with the very Cuban institutions that it is trying to overthrow, this would guarantee a certain ¨prestige¨ and affinity with sectors, which, although they are demographically minority within the Cuban population, exercise an important social influence as generators of ideology: Journalists, academics and artists.
In the same way, recruit, train and put various bloggers to work on their objectives, who were identified in Cuba from a “cartography” of the Cuban blogosphere, as the universe of personal or group web pages on the Internet is called. an identification work carried out in 2011 by Ted Henken, ¨ scholar¨ of the Cuban digital issue sent from the United States, and which of course did not include truly revolutionary bloggers, concentrating his work on those whose ambiguity could make them prone to acceptance repeated invitations to events in embassies and abroad – of increasingly evident intention -, initially in Europe and then in the United States itself, scholarships in European or American universities, such as Harvard and Columbia,to create or maintain political and digital media projects in Cuba from funds received as part of these.
At the same time, work was done on converting a small group of people who responded to their interests from the academic and intellectual sectors into media figures. These would be in charge of being ideologues for the organization of a counterrevolution “of the left” in Cuba, -being really a disguised right- with a social democratic, anti-communist and anti-fidelista platform, but that initially did not act openly against socialism or against the Revolution , neither against the State, nor the Communist Party of Cuba and other political organizations.
What US President Barack Obama did years later in his speech for the announcement of diplomatic relations with Cuba on December 17, 2014, was simply to express what had already been assumed by the CIA itself at that meeting in May 2004: The The use of a hard and aggressive line against Cuba had failed, and it was necessary to seek the achievement of the objectives by other methods.
This is once again explicit in the Presidential Directive signed some time later by President Obama, in which the intention to work with Cuban civil society is known. The use of the term, for the first time, by an American president raises the question: With which civil society? Obviously it was not about the existing public organizations and institutions in Cuba, but about virtual civil society, understand the neo counterrevolution, which had been promoted on the Internet and social networks, initially in parallel with Cuban social organizations, and then already openly opposed to these, as part of the strategy in place since 2004.
For this, the US plans, in addition to funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID, put Cuba on the list of countries in which the international financial entity Open Society Foundations, created by billionaire George Soros, operates. , which is dedicated to the organization of group projects that use social and human rights causes to work for the overthrow of governments and regime changes, under the romantic name of “color revolutions”. With experience in Eastern European countries such as Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and also used in the so-called Arab Springs and against leftist processes in Latin America. The Open Society does not act alone, but rather as part of the United States’ international interference agenda.
They would also work with the Venezuelan counterrevolution, where they created the PROVEA project, which the Bolivarian media lucidly denounced.
In the case of Cuba, in 2014 they organized the so-called ¨laboratory of ideas¨ Cuba Posible, a website with funding from the Open Society and other US entities, under the camouflage of the debate and the exercise of popular criticism promoted by the Cuban Government itself as part of the drafting and implementation of the Guidelines and the updating of the economic model. Also taking advantage of the atmosphere of relaxation and rapprochement at that time between the island and the United States, organizing various events inside and outside of Cuba.
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Cuba Posible, structured through ¨programs¨ by thematic groups, such as the so-called Ágora and Fraternidad, would be dedicated to attracting Cuban intellectuals interested in historical, legislative, and diplomatic issues, as well as people related to social causes such as racism. , feminism, gender equality, sexual rights, and animal protection, with the intention of generating a state of opinion in these sectors contrary to the PCC, favorable to the multi-party system and convenient to the strategy of the United States. One of the executives of Cuba Posible told Reuters that his objectives were to promote “a transitional change to a multi-party Cuba.”
Its members, both in their personal ties and in their rhetoric, had to stay away from the most aggressive counterrevolution, and at the same time project a distancing from ¨oficialismo¨, from institutions and organizations related to the ideology of the Revolution. Regarding this, they would dedicate themselves to sowing the idea of the existence of “Stalinist” and “conservative” sectors, which supposedly hinder the transformations from within the leadership of the Party itself and the Government, as well as the normalization of relations between Cuba and the States. United. Reinforce the narrative about “a sector fearful of losing power”, and mix this with the very criticism that in Cuba is legitimately made against the bureaucracy, technocracy, and corruption. Link it in minds to any ideological defense of the Revolution,
This would allow them to be promoted as the “third option”, an area of ideological center, distanced both from the aggressive “extreme right” of Miami, and from the fidelista thought of the Cuban Revolution which is considered as an “extreme left”. The main international media – in addition to Radio and TV Martí – would support them, as they did, calling them “new political force” and supporting their development.
In this sense, the aggressiveness of the Donald Trump government period, and the positioning of a discourse against the Revolution by media actors with all repulsive intentions, have been part of the plans and not an accident within them. Enhancing a counterrevolution that is presented as irrational and disgusting, with respect to which the neo counterrevolution could present itself as an alternative, so that it would be seen by Cubans as something preferable. The plans outline that Cuba ends up accepting, in the face of the other’s aggressiveness, that counterrevolution that speaks of ¨dialogue¨ and ¨tolerance¨, and that they be given more space in front of the institutions. It is not about two different strategies, it is about a single strategy that uses one to make the other shine. The sponsors and organizers are the same. US agencies function independently of the ups and downs of electoral politics in that country. Rather, they take advantage of these.
President Díaz-Canel has affirmed it before the National Assembly: “The“ laboratory leaders ”appear to distance themselves from the violent ones, they will disguise themselves as peaceful political negotiators and will try to impose their agendas, betting on the social outbreak if their demands are not met. . ”
To articulate the new counterrevolution, and give it media capacity on the Internet, a system of digital media was organized, falsely presented as “independent”, directed towards these sectors, taking advantage of the gaps in the institutional media. In this way, this system of Cuban-American digital publications (Cuban personnel – American financing) was able to dominate and induce, through a systematic poisoning of audiences, on issues such as the process to reach legality for independent cinema, or Decree 349 for Culture, objectives in which the almost non-existent institutional public communication on these allowed them to be a media walk.
However, they could not do the same with the Constitutional Reform, which was given strong coverage by the Cuban press and for which those digital media would also have needed to be able to impact a large part of the population. Faced with a dam that was too big for them, they limited themselves to saying that there was apathy in the population, which was proven false by the high rate of turnout and approval of the Constitution.
During this period, the work of the members of Cuba Posible included the drafting and presentation on its website of a constitutional text that eliminated the PCC and socialism. The referendum popular vote of 86 percent swept away those intentions.
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From the first moment, several Cuban revolutionary intellectuals warned about the counterrevolutionary intention of ¨centrism¨ and the true objectives of the new digital press dedicated to its cultivation, which include US media with press accreditations in Cuba. But these same media were quick to present the simple use of the term as a ¨paranoia¨, demonizing the word and those who dared to use it were quickly attacked and demonized through media lynch mobs. The objective of these lynchings, which continue to occur and have been extended in recent days to journalists from the Cuban Television Information System, continues to be that no one else dares to denounce the imperialist strategy that supports the neo counterrevolution.
In 2019, the members of the Cuba Posible project themselves announced their disintegration, claiming that the environment of diplomatic retreat of the Trump government made its operation very difficult. In reality, during the years 2017 and 2018 the intentions of Cuba Posible never managed to attract truly renowned Cuban intellectuals. They failed to create an environment contrary to the Constitutional Reform, and their disguised right-wing counterrevolutionary character was intensely denounced in the networks by revolutionaries who were not intimidated by the lynchings.
Since 2017, several of its members separated from Cuba Posible – either by personal initiative or by instructions not to “burn them” – when foreign financing and intentions became increasingly evident. Americans learn very quickly and draw lessons, so there is no doubt that they have decided to deconcentrate the forces of the new counterrevolution to preserve the ¨ideological frameworks¨ that they had formed in a project that was already beginning to have a growing public discredit as your link to Open Society becomes apparent. After its formal dissolution, its members continued working in a coordinated manner and today they are the ideologues and articulators who try to keep active the soft coup attempt of last November.
If something has the Anglo-Saxon pragmatic mentality, it is a sense of productivity over time. More when it comes to investments. At the aforementioned meeting in 2004, the maturity period for this neo counterrevolution to be functional was calculated at about 15 years. Right at the moment we meet.
This maturity should translate into the fact that this new counterrevolution, intensively cultivated in the form of isolated sectors or bubbles in social networks, could begin to carry out convocation actions outside the virtual space, that is, in the streets in the form of demonstrations. That she was ready to take advantage of any situation that could lead to them, and make them become part of these, unconsciously, really honest people who do not share real intentions at all, driven by sensitivity and dissatisfaction with issues such as censorship in art, tolerance to a diverse thought, the rights of the LGBTIQ community, the protection of animal welfare, gender violence.
The “independent” digital media would be equally ready to create the conditions of accumulation and manipulation, magnify the calls, and promote the events through the media.
To a large extent, the maturity to which the CIA officers gathered in the distant meeting of 2004 aspired consists in the moment in which a significant part of these sectors, even today without connection to one another, can be mobilized, not towards events of their own theme, but towards a common mass concentration. A situation particular enough to mobilize them, but at the same time general and abstract enough so that it can be promoted as a defense of the right to “think differently” or to “freedom of thought”, tolerance, etc, and in this way to create an initially peaceful, attractive and promotional environment in a mix between festive and rebellious, which manages to add a greater number of diverse people, no matter if they are oblivious to the true intentions.
The next objective would be the episodes of violence induced in the place with all intention, between those summoned and the police authorities present who could lose control of the situation, -Here are the videos, promoted by the same digital media in charge of exacerbating the tension in real time, with the voices of individuals in the Mincult, they instigated to transfer the police at all costs with shouts of ¨! They have the weapons, not us! ¨- the possible and tragic resulting episodes, which fortunately did not achieve that were produced, they would serve to summon subsequent mobilizations, not for the original reason, but “against the repression” that occurred, and then another “against violence”, and another, and another and so on, until the protesters themselves lose their sense of original reason for their protest, and the authorities the clarity of why they are manifesting – if it has not happened from the first moment – in a process similar to that which occurred in the concentration It is from Maidan Square in Ukraine. It is the script of the color revolutions. The publication of the video by one of these digital media was undoubtedly a slip of its editors, perhaps intoxicated by the atmosphere of the moment.
It has been thanks to the information offered by the official media, that many people who initially shared some support for the claims of the so-called “San Isidro Movement”, – whose function in the Cuban script is to generate situations – under the idea that ¨ The one who complains is not a counterrevolutionary “or” a dialogue is needed “, then they were shocked when they saw who they pretended to be the beneficiaries. During the popular concentration of the Tángana in the Trillo Park, as well as by chat, I was able to talk with several of the good people who went to the Ministry of Culture moved by those ideas, but really, in light of all the information offered later, felt that their true place as conscientious and critical people, It was by supporting the Revolution that was defended in the Trillo and not the counterrevolution that was tried to legitimize before Cuban society when the events of the Mincult began in support of those who were on a false hunger strike in San Isidro, which has become more than clear was a show hosted and encouraged by the United States government and its embassy in Cuba. More than 10 publications on his official Facebook and the videos presented confirm this.
Without information in the media, that awareness would not have been possible. It has been that exposure of the truth on TV and in the Cuban press, which has caused that only the incorrigibly counterrevolutionaries remain defending the farce, but also the irredeemably shameless.
But the new counterrevolution had become used to the fact that the official Cuban media never spoke of it.
That is why when information on the involvement and performance of individuals, funded projects and counterrevolutionary digital media begins to be broadcast, they went into great alarm. Especially those who have worked for years to articulate this new counterrevolution. They claim and present themselves as victims because the NTV exposed the true character, already exposed without any camouflage, of a former university professor proclaimed by it as his participant and legal adviser, and the Granma newspaper published the photo of the smiling faces an event Cuba Posible at the New York headquarters of the Open Society.
In recent days they have started a legal attempt, trying to use the very Constitution against which they worked, to demand before the justice institutions that Cuban Television and the NTV stop broadcasting information, that the Granma newspaper and other press media, as well such as the pages and video channels of Cuban institutions, remove from the internet the articles, comments and programs where they are exposed. It is to be imagined that they also include Telesur in the claim. They allege an alleged violation of their personal dignity, and that the presentation of documents and images produced by themselves that link them to events of the counterrevolution is a “defamation”.
But what did they think? That the media of the Revolution were going to stand idly by for the good of him and his American sponsors?
It is not the first time that they manifest their intention to annul the communication capacity of the revolutionary media, already in 2018, in the constitutional text that they wanted to present they spoke of prohibiting Cuban political organizations from having public media. In other words, the PCC would have to close Granma and the UJC cancel Juventud Rebelde, the CTC the Trabajadores newspaper. In their ideal Cuba, the FMC, the AHS, the FEU, would be prohibited from having publications. In short, it would not be necessary, in his ideal Cuba those organizations would not exist.
Nor is it the first time that as part of the imported script that they try to reproduce in Cuba, documents with apparent calls for justice are used to attract signatures, even from people who may believe that they are acting in good faith and not to maintain the soft coup strategy that as the President said, “it is still active”. The intention of a legal claim and the construction of an identity that we have seen in these days against the Cuban media, recalls the so-called Letter 77, a document promoted by the Czech anti-communists that demanded that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia ¨respect human rights¨ and give space to their activities during the 1980s. According to an investigation by American journalist Wayne Madsen, reproduced by Russia Today, George Soros, creator of Open Society, financed the generating group of Letter 77, as a group with intellectual coverage organized against the Czechoslovak government, something similar to Cuba Posible. Later, the group became Fundación Carta 77 with the same funding from Open Society, along with funds from the NED and other CIA covers. At the same time, the funds financed acts of terrorism such as attacks against the headquarters of the Czech Communist Party, a situation in which the members of Carta 77 had to present themselves as the “preferable” alternative. Too similar to the script they are trying to reproduce today in Cuba? At the same time, the funds financed acts of terrorism such as attacks against the headquarters of the Czech Communist Party, a situation in which the members of Carta 77 had to present themselves as the “preferable” alternative. Too similar to the script they are trying to reproduce today in Cuba? At the same time, the funds financed acts of terrorism such as attacks against the headquarters of the Czech Communist Party, a situation in which the members of Carta 77 had to present themselves as the “preferable” alternative. Too similar to the script they are trying to reproduce today in Cuba?
The collection of signatures against the institutional media, could deceive and make some person of good will believe that it really is a simple request for the right to respect people’s image. Nothing could be further from the truth, it is promoted by the same people who have kept silent, when they have not been happy and participated, in the daily lynchings of the Miami media machinery against Cuban intellectuals, artists and journalists who do not share their ideas. In reality, it is the continuation, in intellectual disguise, of the lynchings against journalists from Cuban Television that we have seen in these days.
It is important that people know this so that they cannot be deceived or manipulated. That is the joint and no other, that we have seen these days. That of an old imported script with new actors, this time in a tropical setting and against the Cuban Revolution, taking advantage of an extremely difficult health and economic moment, with a staging that already has the cast complete. What they are looking for now to defend and justify their play, whose scenography is falling apart more and more, is a list of extras and extras that cover up the real protagonists.
In Video, Round Table:
Featured image: File Photo.
Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
