Mind Control Convinces Cubans
a full proof way to uphold the Revolution’s pipe-dream
By Benjamin Noria
HAVANA TIMES – In Cuba, the Government uses mind control to alter the state of mind of its “citizens”. In this way, they can influence them, manipulate them and get them to dance to their own tune.
I say their own tune because in the Cuban Penal Code there are crimes set by our leaders’ fancies. It doesn’t matter if the alleged “criminal” activity doesn’t pose an actual threat to society.
What threat does talking badly about a leader pose to society? A leader who impoverished our nation, hasn’t controlled inflation and hasn’t increased production in 60 years. Badmouthing a government isn’t a crime in any country with a Rule of Law.
“Citizens”
Plus, I put citizens in quotation marks because having an absolute ruler in Cuba, misuses the term “citizen”. The proper term would be vassal. Somebody who worked for a feudal lord, who they owed for their protection in exchange for certain services.
Mind control is a matter of imitation and submission, as the Cuban government loathes intelligence. What’s more, there is a hate culture for intelligence and private enterprise.
Mass media, propaganda, and exemplary executions are used to make scapegoats out of anybody who dissents from those in power.
Fear is used and terror spread. They plant this in people’s minds, turning concepts around so they have a positive meaning to their benefit.
Rhetoric and persuasion are also employed in this national mind control strategy. Every speech broadcast has a somewhat bewitching effect on Cubans. The goal is to get the masses to forget they are in financial hardship, so they don’t think about politics.
Arguments don’t hold any weight in Cuba. Even Karl Marx’s own dialectics which he used in his doctrine and was good for overcoming the old to move towards the new, isn’t of any interest; dialectics which Cubans supposedly follow in their Marxist-Leninist lives.
The personality cult
A Cuban walks into any government office or company, and there are only photos of government leaders. They are the only pictures allowed, inciting a personality cult. This photo of the leader on the wall is as if to say: you must follow me. Yep, ladies and gentlemen, there’s no escape.
The supremacy of mind control hijacks vassal’s consciences to subject them to ideologues’ purposes, who have ruined so many lives with their fanaticism. Fanaticism of a socialism that comes naturally to us.
It’s unrealistic for a human being to give up their selfish interests and distribute everything in equal shares. It’s surreal that the State will supposedly disappear during the transition towards socialism. If the State disappears, then so does the District Attorney’s Office, Courts, etc., and there is no proof that people can live without coercion and duty.
How much sacrificed for a pipe-dream or utopia is difficult to list and forget. Mind control sells an unbeatable and invaluable picture of a life project that weakens the senses. It leaves Cubans susceptible to their own demise.
Good article. Depressing topic.
Everything that Mr. Noria has written is very evident obviously to the ordinary Cuban on the street but also to visitors who take the time to venture outside hotel resorts and socialize with ordinary Cubans, if possible.
Mr. Noria states there is a hate culture for intelligence and private enterprise. Again, perceptive and very true. This puts potential entrepreneurs like Maike: “Cuban Tattoo Art and the Challenges Ahead” (October 2, 2020 HT) in a precarious situation. This enthusiastic entrepreneur wants to establish a tattoo shop where he lives and he, and his colleagues the established tattoo artists, have been waiting over 3 years to legal register their craft.
Furthermore, Maike writes: “ …the decision makers, are taking their time to answer our demands.” We all know who the decision makers are, the Cuban government elites who practice mind control on a daily basis. The tattoo artists want to establish a Cuban Association of Tattoo and Perforation Artists (ACATP) group but, as Maike says, the legal hurdles are horrendous.
One begins to wonder why tattoo and perforation artistry is not legally recognized in Cuba and why it is taking so long to register a group of artists. Maike says: “ Tattoo art is in a legal limbo in our country.”
Art is art until it is no longer considered art particularly by a totalitarian regime. What would happen to a group of young men who decide to simply walk down a Havana street with artistic flags demonstrating clear disrespect to the Revolution, perhaps a few drawings of Revolutionary leaders in compromising poses?
How would the authorities, more specifically the Cuban Penal Code Police address this situation? We all know the youths would be arrested and severely punished even though as the article clearly states: “It doesn’t matter if the alleged “criminal” activity doesn’t pose an actual threat to society.” This so called artistic “art” is not in the Cuban lexicon nor realm.
Now, take that same artistic “art”, which if painted on a human body is translated into tattoo art. Same scene: youths with their tattooed bodies, during a warm summer day, walking down a Havana street with their arms plastered with Revolution derogatory tattoo artistry. The youths are simply expressing “art”, or so they think.
In a blink of an eye, out comes the Cuban Penal Code Police. The youths insist their tattoos do not pose an actual threat to Cuban society, what gives? As Mr. Noria writes: What threat does talking badly about a leader pose to society? Rather than “talking badly” about a leader instill “a bad tattoo” about a leader, what harm does it pose to society? Horrendous harm to the communist elites ideals is the perceived actual threat to their thinking.
I am sure the Cuban government elites do not see tattoo parlors or the proliferation of such free bodily art as being in line with Revolutionary ideals unless those tattoos can be censored and controlled. It is too risky, too cumbersome to control if there are many entrepreneurs wanting to practice this bodily painting.
So, if tattoos are no longer a form of art or bodily expression but perhaps, another possible form of control, Mr. Noria alludes the Cuban government is in the end only interested in subjecting citizens (vassals) to only “…ideologues’ purposes” to which I am sure the tattoo artists do not want to practice, and in the end is simply another form of complete mind and body control.
Who can argue with the truth ?
Great article Benjamin!
ED