638.

That is the number of times Fidel Castro faced assassination attempts; with the vast majority of those being backed by the United States.

Let’s remember that pre-Castro Cuba was far from a place of freedom, it was a former slave colony, where white Cubans stole their wealth, and prospered under a corrupt regime, violently oppressing many others. Specifically, black Cubans.

Castro’s biggest crime was not his human rights abuses, as the United States time after time after time seems to have no qualms with supporting brutal and ruthless dictators if they serve “American interests.” In fact, the United States has supported and placed far more brutal dictators than Castro. No, his great crime was not bowing down to American power and American corporate interests.

Not to mention, the United States has its own history of political repression. Just look at how the FBI handled the Civil Rights and Black Power movements through its COINTELPRO program. It led to assassinations, political imprisonment, and the drug war which decimated black America.

This nation was also built off genocide and brutally backed corporate interests against unionization. This nation built the largest, most complex, prison state in the entire world – breaking up millions of families and destroying millions of lives. Not just those that are incarcerated, but their family’s lives, as well.

Many of the people that love to yell how brutal a dictator Castro was, as they place him on the mountain top of the likes of Stalin and Hitler, fail to look at our own nation’s human rights abuses, and fail to look at the far more brutal dictators we have and continue to prop up. They turn a blind eye to our horror and blood-soaked history books as they point and scream bloody murder.

Under Reagan, over 200,000 people died by regimes that the United States backed. Castro is estimated to have killed over 10,000 Cuban political dissenters and thousands more that invaded Cuban beaches during the Bay of Pigs. Not that those deaths aren’t tragic, but it’s to point out the hypocrisy within our selective outrage; as this nation has no moral ground to stand on and judge others’ human rights abuses. And we continue, even to this day and to this moment, to kill thousands upon thousands of civilians in our own “war on terror.”

Castro’s legacy is complicated, and, yes, his political repression was terrible, but it came from a real threat. When your life is continually threatened, you will become paranoid, and he was rightly paranoid. And the political dissent in his nation was that of people that came from a line of oppression themselves. Not one of “freedom and justice.”

People also love to ignore the good he did as he resisted United States colonialism in Latin America. He provided Cuban people with literacy, housing, food, and healthcare … even as he faced an embargo by our nation that was attempting to starve the people of Cuba to weaken his regime.

None of this is excusing his behavior in those killings, but it’s to place it in context, especially as this nation, the United States, is the perpetrator of two of the most horrendous acts of human destruction in the history of mankind. Insidious American amnesia has caused many Americans to forget (or significantly downplay) the awful genocide of our indigenous populations. The annihilation was so complete that the death toll of how many millions is up to great debate and range from 20 to 100 million. Whilte some are celebrating Castro’s death, their insidious American amnesia lets them easily forget that this nation participated in chattel slavery that produced an estimated 5 million dead Africans. It produced generations upon generations of whippings, brandings, brutalization, castration, rape, torture, horror and fear. It ripped apart millions of families and caused degradation and death in conditions that would make Adolph Hitler blush.

On top of this all, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese people who didn’t look like us to impress the Soviets. We participated in thousands of lynchings, torture in the name of “freedom,” of all the brutal dictators that we still support to this day.

The United States has no moral ground to stand on, as we’ve yet to face up to our own sins and haven’t even tried to make up for them.

“The distinction of the greatest purveyors of violence, blood, and brutality belong to other leaders and other nations, and that group, unfortunately, includes our own United States of America. So instead of pointing outwards, let’s search our soul. Let’s confront our sins. Because at this moment, as we see a President who has committed numerous human rights violence on his way out, we are bringing in one who has openly spoke about committing many more horrors to humanity.”

All of these atrocities to mankind I have named came under the flags of democracy and “freedom.” But just like the white Cubans, it was freedom for only select individuals, with a certain hue to their skin.

Democracy is not morally superior to any other form of governance, the voices of the “people” can be just as destructive. It’s about the path of the government the path and choices its people make. How well do they support and look out for one another and how does unbridled greed and lust for power and privilege push the agenda?

Under “freedom” most people didn’t have a voice in how this government served them for most of our history. So “freedom” is a lie.

I want a nation where my humanity is fully seen, where people don’t have to fight every day tooth and nail to survive, where we provide for those with less, and where housing, healthcare, education, food, and water are guaranteed. You know, things that cover the basic necessities of life possible. So, as of right now, I have no freedom. Many of us have no freedom, as we are working, fighting, striving to survive until we die.

These are not entitlements, but human rights. They are rights that you deserve because you exist, because we have the capability to guarantee them. Somehow, we’ve just convinced ourselves that it is wrong to do so. We live under a system where one must earn the right to be given the dignity of being human. The fact is that all poor people – poor white, black, Latin@ – deserve these rights. They all work hard to survive, and nothing is wrong with them because they are not wealthy.

Many of those impoverished work harder than any others in this nation, but we chastise them for being poor. No matter your race, class, gender, sexuality, you deserve the right of full human dignity and you deserve the right to not have it stripped away.

For as long as this nation has been around, we’ve had elections of false choice, of wealthy versus wealthy. Of a plutocracy or a kleptocracy that we are heading into now. Is that honestly democracy when you are presented a false choice, cloaked under the idea of “freedom”?

This nation initially fought for freedom – freedom of white men from the rule of other white men. Freedom to rule and oppress non-white men. The lie of America – the lie of Western Civilization – is that of freedom. “Free doom” – we convince ourselves we are free, when we are enslaved to the wealthy, enslaved to property, enslaved to material being, enslaved working to death hoping to work ourselves to the freedom afforded by a select few.

We convince ourselves of freedom of speech: we can criticize, unless we are a threat to the social order …see the Civil Rights movement. See Black Lives Matter movement. How was being beaten for marching freedom of speech? King, Malcolm, Hampton…freedom of what?

We are a prison state, freedom of what?

White people have convinced themselves they are free and that this nation is land of the free, yet most truly lack access to the basic necessities of life in a way that provides them with the capability to self-determine their own life.

See, this world is complicated. There are no good guys. There are no bad guys. There are nations and people serving their own self-interest, or what they believe are in their own self-interest.

Yes, his repression of political dissent was a terrible thing. But let’s not act like the dissent was representation of some great good. They represented a history of colonialism, slavery, and the present day neo-colonialism. There’s a good reason why the revolution happened in the first place. That we cannot forget. The cause is just as important at what effect, as history is nothing but cause and effect over and over again.

So let’s be honest, Castro committed some horrendous acts. But he was not an outlier in this world, or even in the Americas. In the large picture of the blood of “innocents” killed by a state or an individual, Castro’s Cuba is honestly but a footnote. And he can’t hold a candle to the what the United States has done and supported.

The distinction of the greatest purveyors of violence, blood, and brutality belong to other leaders and other nations, and that group, unfortunately, includes our own United States of America. So instead of pointing outwards, let’s search our soul. Let’s confront our sins. Because at this moment, as we see a President who has committed numerous human rights violence on his way out, we are bringing in one who has openly spoke about committing many more horrors to humanity.