Upstream - Cuba Ep 9: Conjuring up the Red Menace w/ Charisse Burden-Stelly

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

In this episode we're joined by Charisse Burden-Stelly for a conversation on Cuba and the long history of US red scares through the lens of the US Department of State's recent report on Cuba: "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism." Charisse Burden-Stelly is an associate professor of African American studies at Wayne State University, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, Movement Builders, and the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective. She's the author of Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States.  The conversation opens with an outline of the US State Department report as well as the related "National Security Presidential Memorandum 7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence"—more commonly referred to as NSPM-7. We go through the report and examine some of its contents and some of the claims it makes and then explore what the purpose of this report is, asking: why Cuba, and why now? Dr. CBS then introduces her thesis in Black Scare / Red Scare, looking at how anti-Blackness and anticommunism are combined by the repressive state apparatus to conjure up a red/Black menace, tying that thesis directly to the State Department report. We explore the actual history of cultural exchange between Black radicals and activists in the U.S. and Cuba, going on to highlight the deep hypocricy within the report in terms of the U.S.'s attemps to sabotoage and terrorize Cuba since 1959. We then zoom out and explore Dr. CBS's argument in Black Scare / Red Scare that anticommunism cannot be viewed as a limited phenomenon that pops up every so often, but rather, that it must be understood as a mode of governance in the United States that is ongoing and pervasive. We close looking at what this current red scare means for the left and what solidarity within the left and by the left for the victims of capitalism and imperialism can look like.  Further resources: Reading "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism" through Black Scare/Red Scare, Part I, Charisse Burden-Stelly Black Scare / Red Scare, Charisse Burden-Stelly Related episodes: Listen to our ongoing series on Cuba Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly Black Scare / Red Scare w/ Charisse Burden Stelly The Roots of Race & Class in the U.S. with Dr. Gerald Horne The Political Economy of Jazz w/ Geralde Horn Our ongoing series on Iran Our ongoing series on Venezuela Our ongoing series on China Capitalist Realism w/ Carlee Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media (Michael Parenti Reading) How Fascism Works (Michael Parenti Reading) Intermission music: "2001 Blowback" by John Davis Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone. Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Hi everyone. Just a quick note before we jump into today's episode. After hearing some feedback from you, we want to clear up something just so there's no confusion. The episodes in our series are not intended to be listened to in any particular order. So, for example, this is episode nine of our Cuba series, but it is also designed to be listened to as a standalone. So feel free to jump right in with whatever episode sounds most interesting to you in any of our series. The U.S. has to narrate itself as a liberal democracy with particular rights and liberties. And so anti-communism is a way to call into question who is deserving of and who can be denied those rights and liberties simply based on beliefs. And this provides organic, if you will, check on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, due process and protection against self-incrimination.

So it is a sort of stopgap. It's a way to attenuate, along with race, it's a way to attenuate who actually has a full expression of rights. You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you.

I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. Anti-communism cannot be viewed as a limited phenomenon that pops up every so often. But rather, it must be understood as a mode of governance in the United States that is both ongoing and pervasive. Case in point, the July 20th State Department report on Cuba titled Cuba, the capital of 21st century communism. Far from being a novel document or a new tactic, this report only demonstrates how Red Scares are part of the fabric of U.S. society, a tradition that goes back well over a century.

In this episode, we're joined by Cherise Burden Steli for a conversation exploring anti-communism and red scares through the lens of the July 20th State Department report on Cuba, titled Cuba, the capital of 21st century communism. Cherise Burdenstelli is an associate professor of African-American studies at Wayne State University, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, movement builders, and the anti-imperialist scholars collective.

She's also the author of Black Scare, Red Scare, theorizing capitalist racism in the United States. And before we get started, Upstream is entirely listener-funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants, just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We could not keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes and stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through this support, you'll be helping us keep upstream sustainable and helping

to keep this whole project going. Post-capitalist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Cherise Burden Stelly. Sherise, it is wonderful to have you back on the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah, it's been a little while, I think, since we had you on for our conversation, both you and with D. Musa Springer on Walter Rodney in his work, which was a really great conversation. And then before that, in like late 2023, we had you on for the first time to discuss your book Black Scare, Red Scare, which will be a central part of our conversation as well today. But just in case somebody missed those shows or, I don't know, may not be familiar with your work for some reason. I'm wondering if you could just start with a brief introduction, just if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you do. Yeah, so I am an associate professor of African American studies at Wayne State University. I am a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, community movement builders,

and the anti-imperialist scholars collective. I do work around. kind of the black radical tradition, as it's called, in the 20th century primarily. And my first book primarily focused on the intersections of anti-black racial oppression and anti-communism between World War I and the early Cold War. My current book project is on mutual comradeship, which is sort of ethical, epistemological, and political practice of radical black people during the era of McCarthy. atheism. I'm also working on another project, critiquing the use of the cast, analytic as applied to black people in the United States. Yeah, so that's some background. Awesome, awesome. That all sounds really, really fascinating. And yeah, maybe we can have you back on when your book is published to speak about it. So today, we will be focusing on, I guess, a few different overlapping topics, right? We're going to be talking about Cuba. the recent State Department report on Cuba, and then more broadly, like I just mentioned,

your work around anti-communism and the work that you outlined in Black Scare, Red Scare, and how that applies to our current moment. So I thought it would be helpful to start with the 100-page report that was just put out by the State Department on July 20th. And then also the National Security Presidential Memorandum Number 7, that's a mouthful. It's just called an SPM 7, which was titled Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence. So those two, that memorandum and that report kind of came out simultaneously. For someone who may have no idea what we're talking about right now, maybe if you could just lay out what the report and the memorandum are and anything that you think might be helpful for us in terms of

getting a grasp of what these documents are before we kind of dive more deeply into everything. Yeah, so NSPM 7 was issued on, I believe, September 25th, 2025, and is a sort of presidential memorandum, sort of akin to an executive order. And it basically is providing a framework through which various aspects of the executive branch can work together to kind of create an anti-terrorism joint test. task force in order to target Antifa, basically, Antifa, as they pronounce it, and other, basically organizations that are ostensibly anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-Christian, because those are groups, people who have those ideologies ostensibly are more prone to support the overthrow of the U.S. government. And then they're also targeting organizations, movement individuals who support, quote, extremism on migration, race, and gender. And so effectively, they're creating the framework for a drag net against persons who are

organizing for progressive change writ large. So this particular memorandum calls for the investigation of domestic terrorism through the construction of a national joint terrorism task force, effectively the creation of new black list on which organizations can be designated terrorist organizations. And what's important is that this is kind of a collaboration between the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Attorney General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So all of these different sort of policing and law enforcement entities. And they're meant to work together, again,

to use every tool in their toolkit, but to also innovate tools and ways to identify so-called domestic terrorists in order to basically crush dissent. And then this NSPM 7 was issued in response to the murder of Charlie Kirk. So NSPM 7 is really a scaffolding. for the Cuba report, which came out July 20th, 2026. And this particular document has many of the same targets, but is using sort of Cuba as the centrifugal force or the catalyst for the so-called domestic terrorist movements and organizations, as well as a sort of nexus point between

the enemies of the USA. And so Cuba becomes. a sort of container or a catch-all for the evil of anti-American and un-American ideas and actions. So those are broadly what those two things are. Yeah, thank you so much. That's super helpful. And this episode is part of our Cuba series. So we will be focusing a little bit more on the report. But of course, like you said, it's basically like the scaffolding, the NSPM 7 memorandum

is the scaffolding for this report. So it may be brought up as well, too, in the conversation. But I wanted to start with your recent substack piece. And if anyone out there is not subscribed to Dr. CBS's substack, it's a great place to get all sorts of excellent writing and information. So I'll throw a link to that in the show notes. Part of it, I think you made it available for free. But in that piece, you drew connections between your book,

Black Scare, Redskar and this State Department report. And I want to spend some time on that piece, actually. So one of the most wild premises or assertions in this report is that Cuba has targeted the United States, that somehow the United States is the victim in the relationship between Cuba and the United States, which I think to anybody who knows, like, even a fraction of that history, and we outline it in a lot of detail in this series and previous episodes, it's an assertion that really does violence to reality. And I think that we can assume that the report's authors, if there were actual authors, and if this was not just like all AI, we can assume that they know this, right?

They know that a lot of what they're putting into this report is not evidence-based and is inaccurate information. So with making that assumption, what are the intent? of this report, right? It's not to document history. So can you tell us what you believe the purpose of this report, right? Like, what is the intention behind it? And more broadly speaking, what role do these red scares, which we seem to be entering into a new phase of one right now? What role do those play in U.S. society more broadly? Yeah. So to start with the purpose of this Cuba document, which by the is titled Cuba, the capital of 21st century communism. And so I have identified just sort of several

functions of the report. The first is to paint a long history of Cuban anti-American action. So the report really focuses on the period immediately subsequent to the Cuban Revolution. So what they're calling the new left. So this kind of 1960s and 1970s moment as the sort of origin of this anti-American sentiment that influenced not only by Marxism, Leninism, but specifically what they're calling Castroism, which is a combination of like third worldism and Marxism, Leninism. And so it's important that they're starting there and not in earlier periods with the Communist Party, because basically what they're arguing is that McCarthyism wiped out the so-called old left, right? That was more focused.

on class and unionism, etc. Whereas the Cuban subversion is more focused on third worldism, black liberation, and also this idea of internal colonies. So it's meant to first draw this sort of long history of Cuban subversion. Second is to tie Cuba to all enemies from without. So in the sort of last part of the report, they talk about Cuba's relationship with Russia, China, Iran, and non-state actors, specifically the axis of resistance, to sort of show that Cuba has linkages to all of these states that ostensibly menace the existence of the United States. And thirdly, to also tie Cuba to the enemies from within in the past and in the future. So they talk a lot about the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, and the Republic of New Africa,

as well as the Weather Underbrown and Students for Democratic Society in the 60s and 70s and paying a basically unbroken lineage through to Antifa, anti-ice protests, the student Intifada, and the George Floyd uprisings. And so essentially they're making the argument that Cuba is the tie between enemies from without and enemies from within. And this is to legitimate the genocidal blockade against Cuba that is currently happening. So not only the decades-long embargo, but the recent fuel block A that is having devastating economic and social consequences on the Cuban population, but then also as a pretext for what I believe to be a relatively imminent ground invasion. We know that Southcom, for example,

is already amassing troops and technology in Trinidad and around in the Caribbean Sea. another function is to discredit so-called foreign-inspired organizations, individuals, and movements. And this is where we get, excuse me, to be the focus on organizations like the People's Forum, the Vincent M.O's Brigades, Black Alliance for Peace, Code Pink, etc. But then it also is meant to discredit so-called fellow travel organizations, which is where the DSA comes in. So they're making a distinction between DSA and the so-called foreign and inspired organizations. They're arguing that DSA support for Cuba is homegrown. And whereas it's not a directive, so to speak, from the so-called Cuban regime, it represents the infiltration of

this extremist ideology into mainstream politics. And so I think that they're doing this to sow discord amongst the left, but also to cast an even wider net. Two more. One is to criminalize all forms of fight back. So lawfare being one, which is why they target the National Lawyers Guild, alternatives to private capital, which is why they denigrate nonprofit organizations and legitimate the further sort of decimation of that sector, social movements, obviously, to paint organizers, activists, and militants as criminals. And then also the money. So they go after IFCO, which is, I never get this right, International Federation of Church Organizations or something like this, which is a fiscal sponsor for many of the organizations, and the money is the way

that the subversive activities control board was able to shut down many organizations in the era of McCarthyism, for example, organizations like the Council of African Affairs, the Civil Rights Congress, et cetera. And this is particularly important because recently BT News and the People's Forum got subpoenaed before the House Ways and Means Committee and are asked to turn over financial documents and other internal forms of communication, which is a key tactic in creating a sort of dragnet. And then the final purpose of the report is an attack on higher education. So there's a section of the report that talks about different forms of Cuban espionage. Two of those three forms are set to be concentrated in higher education. And I believe that they do this because part of

what the Trump regime has been doing is painting higher education as this hotbed of radicalism, linking the student in Tevada, for example, to DEI, to radical extreme ideas, and have they've been using kind of two tools to basically dismantle higher education, one of which is defunding, and the second of which is the establishment of all of these very conservative right-wing think tanks across higher-ed colleges and universities. And so all of those things are wrapped up in this very sloppy, very historically inaccurate discourse, but the point is not to be accurate. The point is to sort of of so fear and to make these spurious connections that allow or that sort of give rationale for the forms of disciplining that have happens in those that are to come. Reminds me a little bit that education part of the 1975 trilateral report where the trilateral commission basically, which was put together to figure out what was going on with all of the sort of unrest and stuff that was happening in the 60s. and they realized that there was too much education happening among young people and decided that

what needed to happen was less education because people were becoming too smart and too well aware of like what was happening in the world. So like a lot of stuff that we're seeing right now and a lot of stuff in this report, it's really just sort of reheated and recycled. I think you mentioned in the essay actually you said stale wine in a new bottle or something like that. So None of this is really new. It's just kind of always been involving. And that's a theme of red scare, black scare that we'll get into, which is that these red scares and anti-communism isn't sort of something that can be isolated to a specific period of

U.S. history like McCarthyism or something like that, but that it's ongoing. I wanted to bring a passage in actually from a book that I was reading recently. It's a book by Tashon Latner on the Cuban Revolution. in America and kind of looking at how the Cuban Revolution influenced activists and activism in the United States and all of that kind of stuff. We're hopefully going to actually have him on later on in this Cuba series. But the quote that I came across is from a U.S. Senator, which I thought was really interesting because it's from over 50 years ago. But that quote could have been uttered today by anybody, any kind of senator or any sort of lawmaker in Congress.

And so this guy's name is James O. Eastland, and he was a segregationist senator from Mississippi, and this is from 1970. He's speaking on the Senate floor, and he says, quote, We intend to light the shadows that surround this vicious operation, to drive from the shadows the missiles in human form, which have been fashioned on that communist island and fired at America. We want people to be aware of the direct chain, which reaches from Cuba into our cities, our campuses, our conventions, our lives, and which threatens the life of this republic." And quote.

And when I say that this quote could have been, you know, by a sitting U.S. senator right now or president, I don't mean in terms of like the quality of the literary prose, for example. I think the slough that they're serving us now is a lot less dressed up. But this quote was in reference to the Venseraimos Brigade, which you brought up earlier, in organization that's still around and they lead trips to Cuba. So this just goes to show that the U.S. government has long alleged that Cuba has been behind U.S. left organizations, has been sort of influencing them in some way, shape, or form. This has been happening since the earliest days of the Cuban Revolution. And yeah, so the CIA and State Department, they've said things like that

Cuba is providing revolutionaries with arms training. They've been making allegations. that they're training U.S. activists as spies, radicalizing them, of course, and there's a whole bunch of allegations that come with this, and there's always little of any evidence. So what I want to understand is why do you think, and you talked about this a little bit up top, but why do you believe that Cuba is targeted again now with such similar allegations? Well, an interesting Convergence, this quote is from 1970. Interestingly enough, in June of 1970, June 13th, Richard Nixon convened something called the President's Commission on Campus Unrest or the Scranting Commission, and they ultimately produced something called the Scranton report, which was meant to

analyze campus unrest, right? There was Black Studies movements or Black Student movements that were happening, anti-Vietnam War, anti-RLTC, all sorts of uprisings that were happening across campus. Ultimately, one of the things that this report led to was the creation of campus police. Now, I mentioned that convergence because likewise, we just recently had a student in Safada coupled with this full court press on Cuba. And so there's something about campuses that is really important here, especially because part of what the Cuba report says is that Cuba is trying to turn U.S. citizens against their birthright, against Western civilization. And students are really, they really have a lot of consternation about students, not only college

students, but also K through 12, which is why there is this attack on curriculum education. So that's just something to note. But I think that Cuba's being targeted again now for a couple of reasons. And this is just, these are just educated guesses based on my research. One is because the U.S. is getting its butt kicked in Iran. And that coupled with their success in Venezuela, capturing a sovereign president and now being able to to loot their oil means that on the one hand, the regime wants to take attention off of the losses in Southwest Asia and the Gulf states and capitalize on this win, not only in Venezuela, but also in Ecuador recently, there's these actions and also these bombings in the Caribbean Sea. So there's this sort of idea that the U.S.

is taking back its so-called backyard, right? Through the Donroo doctrine as it's ridiculously being called. And so I think that Cuba is sort of the final chip or the final domino to fall, as it were. And one might argue that the attack on Venezuela was a direct sort of tactical assault on Cuba because of the relationship around fuel and oil between Cuba and Venezuela. Cuba has also also has the capacity in a sort of in a small way to refine Venezuelan oil. The U.S. cannot refine Venezuelan oil. Only really China has the capacity. to do that en masse. And so perhaps there is something to be said about reoccupying the Cuban island to increase

that capacity so that the U.S. can continue to loot these forms of oil that it itself cannot currently process. That is conjecture, but it's probably true. And then shout out to Lil Tankie from Inner City Left for a conversation we had along those lines. So there's that. And then it's also to stamp out any possibility. of socialism in the Western Hemisphere. So Cuba and Haiti have been the two biggest existential

threats to the racial capitalist project of the United States, Cuba because it was a island of enslaved Africans who won their liberation in Cuba because it is an island of plurality, formerly enslaved Africans. There's a lot of black people in Cuba. We cannot forget that. But who had a successful socialist revolution 80 miles off the shore of the United States? States. And finally, I believe the Trump regime is wholly a kleptocracy. I think that Trump's number one objective is to loot the government for everything that it has. He doesn't care about any of this stuff. He has surrounded himself by people who have their own pet projects. And I believe that Cuba is Rubio's pet project because he is the Arch Gusano. His family was dispossessed

or whatever during the Cuban Revolution. And he has had to be in his bonnet for. Cuba ever since. And given that Trump is busy looting and doing whatever he's doing, this gives Rubio Free reign to really have a full court press on Cuba. So I think that those are some of the reasons as to why now, coupled with increasing militancy on various fronts around ICE, around the rise in, you know, white nationalist revanchism, around the, you know, generalized and is a ration that is happening. And so the report is tying this pet project in Cuba to other forms of protest here to be able to kill like one bird with two stones, as we sarcastically say. Yeah. So like I mentioned a little bit briefly earlier, one of the central, if not the central

components of your book Black Scare, Red Scare, is how like racialized subjects, like in this case, like black activists and communists in the United States, how they play a central role in the way that the state generates these red scares, basically by utilizing both anti-blackness and anti-communism together. So this tactic is definitely also present in this report. And specifically in the chapter that you write about in your substack piece, the chapter titled Racial Revolution, pretty explicit, it, where it asserts that Cuba is actually responsible in many ways for the black power movement, for example, and the report claims that, quote, and you quote this in your substacks, I'm basically pulling this from there. Throughout both the 20th and the 21st century,

the regime has sought to cultivate a fifth column of American black extremists through appeals to international racial solidarity, framing both Cubans and African-Americans. as oppressed third world peoples arrayed against the common enemy of white America. So basically, I'm going to ask you to analyze this a little bit, but it's stripping a lot of people of agency, right, and saying that this is all a foreign plot, right? So maybe you can talk a little bit about this part of the report and maybe just start with like what it gets wrong with this premise. And then we can go on from there and talk a little bit more about this.

What's interesting, right, is that part of what it's arguing is that Cuba is putting forth this racial internationalism, but indeed, in fact, and Stokely Carmichael is mentioned in this piece as a particularly important actor. But when Kwameh Terey went to Cuba in 1966, he was disillusioned somewhat with Castro saying he did not understand the racial question. Whether or not one agrees with Tare's assessment, what is true is that Cuba was not pushing a racial international third worldism is about anti-imperialism. And so the first mistake or the first kind of move that this report is making is to reduce internationalism or this iteration of internationalism to a race reductionist perspective to kind of drawing on debates that are actually happening about so-called id-paw and whether race matters to like our friends on the left as Gerald Horn calls them. So that's one inaccuracy.

Secondly is like the attribution or the reduction of black nationalism to the 1960s black power moment to Stokely Carr, Michael, and to the student nonviolent coordinating committee. There's a very long history of black nationalism. Part of what I write about in my book, for example, is about Marcus Garvey in the 1920s, who is one of the sort of probably the most effective and most important black nationalists in Pan Africanists. He certainly had the largest movement ever of that type. But we also can go back, you know, in my I did it, This is America Project, I had Henry Hyland Garnett, and that his piece was from like the 1850s. He's talking about he is considered an early black nationalist. And so this idea that a single individual organization and historical moment is the

progenitor of black nationalist consciousness is fallacious as well, the idea that the analytic of internal colonialism or domestic cops, is from Cuba discourse or ideology. We have to understand internal colonialism as a development of the Black Belt thesis, which was not, you know, codified in 1928, but was being theorized in the early 1920s. This idea that Cuba is the impetus for black people's internationalism. If we read the body of work of Gerald Horn, one knows that black people, whether it's aligning with the British or aligning or supporting the Japanese, or aligning with Ethiopians against the incursion of the Ethiopians in 1935, black internationalism has a very, very long history.

Black people aligning with the Haitian revolution and some immigrating to Haiti in the early 1800s. This idea that black people's internationalism doesn't come from their historical and material conditions and their own analysis and assessment and political acumen, but must come from some outside source is racist. It's a very long trope. It's historically inaccurate. But this is not to diminish the important role of Cuban internationalism. It is very important. Cuba did support and train militants from all over the African diaspora. Cuba was very integral to the liberation struggles in Southern Africa. Cuba has been very important through its medical diplomacy and supporting communities throughout the Caribbean. And so Cuba's internationalism is important, but the internationalism of the African

diaspora can't be reduced to Cuba. And finally, there's a conflation in there of black, tendencies. There's some paragraph that's like whether it's black Marxism, Pan-Africanism, black nationalism, or whatever, it's basically saying that these are all the same things, which comes from this idea that there's some black intellectual tradition and political ideology, objectives, and differences in perspective don't matter when they actually do. So there's many, much more I can say. But this to me, I think that this was a report written by Claude and these types of mistakes represent the ways that data is scraped by these LLMs. And it's also interesting.

I haven't looked systematically, but it seems to me that the references are from secondary sources from 2022 and before. And as we know, 2022 was when a lawsuit was filed against these LLMs. And so I don't think that they have books from later periods. And so that also would be a further impetus. But anyway, the way that these things are narrated, it seems like it's coming from particular sources and not humans. But anyway.

You're listening to an upstream conversation with Cherise Burden-Steely. We'll be right back. That was 2001 blowback by John Davis from his new album, I Saw Sonora Hypnotized. Now back to our conversation. with Cherise Burden Steli. The report also tries to make connections between, like, Cuban intelligence and more modern-day movements like Black Lives Matter or the George Floyd uprising, for example. And it's not quite clear, I think, if Rubio at all are alleging that Cuba literally infiltrated

protest or that it's just like a vaguely, they're kind of behind the scenes, a broader subversion campaign against the U.S. again using this connection between anti-communism and anti-blackness. I wanted to go back to what you were saying, though, because, yeah, the truth is that many black radicals did travel to Cuba in the 20th century to learn about Cuba, to gain inspiration from Black Panther leaders to Kwame Ture, as you mentioned, and Kwame Tierra had some, like, skepticism about the Cuban project when he first arrived, because precisely, as you said, the racial question was not one that was front and center at that time in Cuba. And there are still delegations, of course, and other efforts like the Neuestra Flotilla that take Americans to Cuba for a wide

variety of reasons, right? For cultural exchange reasons to aid delivery and that kind of thing. Cuba also offered exile to many politically persecuted black Americans, like Asada Shakur is probably the best known example for that. And it's still, Cuba still very much serves for many on the left here as like a sort of a signpost, right, on the road to building socialism, like a beacon to look at. But going back to this history of the relationship between Cuba's leadership and black radicals, you talked a little bit about what that actually looked like and that Cuba was not actively trying to recruit people as spies, right? There's not really any evidence for that or that it wasn't trying to sow discord in the U.S. In fact, a lot of the times

the Cuban leadership that were hosting, the people that were coming to Cuba from the United States were like trying to tone down some of the ideas that these people had because Cuba very much did not want to enter into armed conflict with the United States, right? I'm wondering if there's anything in there that you wanted to like reflect on or talk about in what I just shared. Yeah, I mean, I think that Cuba is in support of self-determination. And I think that, think that Cuba was a site through which black folks could continue to develop their own consciousness and ideas or refined in some ways their ideas about revolutionary nationalism, socialism, imperialism, internationalism, and the like. And so Cuba did provide various forms out,

you know, just say various forms of material support for various forms of struggle. It is true, but they are a sovereign nation. And it's just the height of hypocrisy for the United States, who is always training, who was actually training terrorists and subverses in so many other global South nations to attempt to pay Cuba as this bastion of terrorism. When we know that organizations like ISIS

are literally U.S. made cells. And I think that Cuban discourse and ideology and also the project of socialism was very helpful in sharpening and understanding of U.S. imperialism and what U.S. imperialism is, how it responds to forms of self-determination like the Cuban Revolution. And I think, you know, solidarity is not espionage, but to the U.S. government, right, any acceptance of ideas that challenges how the U.S. narrates itself is considered to be subversive. It's considered to be subversive. It's considered to be like a threat to national security, especially if there is a state backing it, especially if that state

is considered to be an enemy of the U.S. because, you know, people go into Israel and doing birthright isn't considered a form of subversion, right? People having particular loyalties to Israel and also U.S. citizenship is not considered a form of subversion. Zionist imperialism is a form of subversion, or excuse me, Zionist internationalism, but the third world internationalism is. And so it's not the practice itself, It's the ideology, which is why the report ends with those just crazy paragraphs about it. It's not the material reality. It is not the material. Don't let the poverty of the island fool you.

It is the ideology. It is the ability to basically seed that ideology, especially amongst the blacks and other dissidents that makes it particularly dangerous. But, you know, cultural exchange, internationalism is only a crime. in certain contexts. It is only a crime when the U.S. feels like its hegemony is being challenged. And so that's why Cuba's being targeted. Yeah. And I just want to underscore too, like the, when you talked about the hypocrisy of the United States in terms of, and we keep seeing this over and over again, and it's kind of become a cliche at this point to say that every accusation is a confession, But it's because it's so true, right?

Like from Operation Mongoos to literally the Bay of Pigs invasion to all sorts of different underhanded ways that the United, I mean, the U.S. literally tried to assassinate Fidel Castro hundreds of times, you know. So it's just staggering this level of hypocrisy. And anybody, like I said at the top, who knows a fraction of the history can just realize that how much violence this does to reality. But there's a passage from the report that I wanted to read because it's especially wild to me. It's actually on the landing page on the website.

I don't know if it's actually in the report or not, but it says, quote, Cuba's assault on the United States was never at root, a quarrel over economic policy or sovereignty or even ownership of a particular territory. It was a revolution against Western civilization itself, waged in part via the novel and insidious method of persuading the children of the West, to turn against their own inheritance. And you alluded to this language a little bit earlier, but I mean,

this could have been pulled right out of like a KKK recruitment pamphlet, right? And I think here we see a little bit of Stephen Miller's influence maybe on this report. But there's a number of directions that I kind of want to analyze this quote from. And I think it's kind of like grimly amusing how they spill so much ink in the report alleging that it was in fact Cuba. that radicalized black Americans, for example, or anybody in the United States who is, as you said, a friend of the left,

and not the material conditions of America itself, right? And that they kind of, then they say that, specifically about black Americans, and then they turn around and say, they put this like 14 words white supremacist language at the very front of the report. And so it's kind of like ironic, to say the least. But yeah, I'm wondering if you,

can talk about this language and what the reports authors quote unquote are trying to do here. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that obviously black Americans are not the children of the West that they're talking about. I think that, you know, there again, the potential or imminent fifth column within the United States. But I think that this relates to also the assault on DEI, right? And so they don't mention DEI in here, but this is precisely the argument about, why diversity, equity, and inclusion is so dangerous and why that there is like this full court press against particular types of curricula in K through 12. It's because it's making white children uncomfortable and white children feel like their whiteness is a problem. And, you know, America is bad

because it had enslaved Africans and genocided indigenous folks, which is sort of empirical fact. but it is raising, you know, it causes critical thinking amongst white people, amongst the white majority is related to this whole replacement theory, right? Because there's a population replacement theory. But then there's also something about like, what if all of these white people don't want to be, they disinherit, right? Literally disinherit whiteness as a genocidal racist project and take up socialism or some other, you know, counter-hedgeimates. project. I think that that's a real fear. And that is, it points to, you know, the, the attempt to paint socialism or any anti-capitalism as fundamentally anti-West. Like, there's no Western,

even though, you know, Marx is German, but ostensibly, like communism is inherently opposed to Western civilization, which it is in a manner of speaking, right? Insofar as Western civilization, is the cause of imperialism and colonialism and so much ill in the world. But more than that, it's meant to paint those who have any ideas that are not liberal. If liberal democracy is not the farthest left that you go, then you are against the West. And the West, not as an abstraction, but the West as, like, people. Like, you hate white people. You want to murder them and you want to, like, subject them to the treatment that historically

racialized and colonized people have been treated. I think that that is what sort of latent, there. And then you want to dispossess them. You want to take all their shit, right? We'll take their property. We'll take their guns. Everything that the U.S. perpetually fearmongers about, I think, is packed in that particular statement. One thing I wanted to ask you about, too, is like this idea that Cuba is the aggressor. Did you have anything that you wanted to say about that in terms of, like, you know, we talked a little bit about this, like, hypocrisy. And, yeah, if there's any examples or anything that you want to draw out here in terms of how erroneous this idea of

Cuba being the aggressor is? I mean, it is only if Cuba's very existence is aggression that this idea can be true. And for the United States, that is the case, right? That Cuba simply existing and flourishing on its own terms is aggressively anti. Never mind that the Cubans, I'm sure, would be perfectly happy to mind their own business, thank you very much. And to operate like any other sovereign state, you know, it has the right to have diplomatic relationships and trade relationships with whomever they want. And only because the United States sees itself as the police of the world as the only power

and legitimate authority in the world does it think that another country being self-determining is objectively and inherently aggression against itself? And that's the perniciousness of this anti-communist logic. It's not only that this thing is bad or wrong or unethical or whatever the things are that they say about communism, but also that it simply cannot exist. It cannot exist because it is not only about lifting up its own perspective, but also crushing the perspective of capitalism and the West. Now, to be sure, one must be anti-imperialist to be a communist or socialist, but it is only the United States that feels like for its project to be successful. It has to wipe out every single other thing. That is a Western construct, right?

now more of these global south countries are talking about multipolarity. But to the United States, because it only wants one, you know, right, there is no alternative. What one ring to rule them all? It cannot accommodate that. And so I hate the term existence is resistance. But in the case of Cuba, it's almost true, right? That's just the very existence of this tiny socialist island. And it's persistent.

Its refusal to simply capitulate is a form of resistance. And resistance for this state is aggression. Yeah, no, that really resonates. I think, firstly, because I just rewatch the Lord of the Rings movie. So I appreciate the reference. But mostly because China wants multipolarity, right? It doesn't want to be hegemonic. It's not approaching that status.

And I don't believe that anything that the PRC has done demonstrates that it wants to be hegemonic. Cuba just wants sovereignty and it wants the United States to let it breathe, right? It doesn't want to become hegemonic. And it's so fascinating how you illustrated how the United States is the only state here that believes for some reason or another, perhaps historically this is just the way it's always been. I mean, and I guess you could make the argument that it has done this from the moment. of its inception before its inception that it needs to crush anything else that is not subservient to it or does not serve its interests it needs to crush them and yeah it's just like when you put it that starkly it's it's just really such a profound thing to wrap your head around because like you said

not only is the united states getting its ass kicked in iran it is beginning to lose some of its hegemony, right? And so, and we've discussed this time and time again in all of our different series. This is, maybe you could even say this is the underlying thread that just keeps coming up, is that everything that we're witnessing right now is an empire in decline that is declining internally and its influence and its hegemony are waning right now. And everything that it does ultimately comes back to this, what it sees is this threat, which is China, right? China's rising economic power, not hegemony, but just becoming more powerful to the point where it can now serve to some degree, to some degree. And of course, there are many things that don't align with this

analogy, but to some degree, the role that the Soviet Union played in terms of like a counterbalance to the United States. So yeah, that's just kind of some thoughts I had in terms of what you were saying. Well, China, you know, interestingly enough, China's assent funding. and pushed by the U.S. was in direct response to the Soviet Union, right? And now, you know, the U.S. is being hoisted on its own partard. It was attempting to take advantage of the sign of Soviet split. You know, many people know this history. And now, you know, as Gerald Horn put the China is in the passing lane. And the U.S. really is refusing to go the way of every other empire in history, which is, you know, all empires decline. And I think the U.S. really is refusing.

the U.S. in some ways would rather destroy the world and everybody in it than to give up what it believes to be like unilateral power. It's easier for them to recognize the end of the world than the end of, to use the capitalist realism, quote, the end of capitalism, or in this case, the end of their hegemony. Just a couple more things I want to ask you before we close. So you argue in Black Scare, Retscare, that anti-communism is a mode of governance for the U.S. and not a phenomenon that should be understood as limited to certain periods, right? Like the McCarthy period or the Red Scare or whatever it is like the first Red Scare

or the second Red Scare. The amount of resources that the United States has put towards crushing communism over the past century or communist adjacent movements for sovereignty is really, really staggering. And I don't think that it's hyperbole. I really say this genuinely to say that preventing communism or anything that resembles it from succeeding could be seen as the defining characteristic of the United States. So I'd love it if you could talk a little bit about Black Scare, Red Scare, for anybody who may have missed our episode with you now, it's been almost three years, which we had that conversation. If you can talk a little bit about anti-communism as a mode of governance and give us a sense of how that connects to this current moment.

Yeah, so first and foremost, anti-communist, the U.S. has to narrate itself as a liberal democracy with particular rights and liberties. And so anti-communism is a way to call into question who is deserving of and who can be denied those rights and liberties simply based on beliefs. And this provides of organic, if you will, right, check on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, due process and protection against self-increliance. So it is a sort of stopgap. It's a way to attenuate, along with race, it's a way to attenuate who actually has a full expression of rights. And we see this, for example, with the Prairie Land Nine and people getting decades in prison for possessing literature, for example. But they're radicals, right? And then they have the terrorist enhancement. So terrorism is just a, we went from sort of communist to extremists to terrorists. But it's the same. But it's the same. And then they have the terrorist enhancement. And then they're It's a centrifugal logic. And then you have the subpoenas, again, that I talked about earlier, of BT News and the People's Forum, right? They are compelled to turn over this evidence, right? That is, you know, illegal search and seizure, all kinds of stuff, right? So the rights of people are attenuated if they're deemed to be radical because radicalism is deemed to be like a threat to the state. And so I talk about anti-communism as a mode of governance that's sort of administered by all three branches of the federal government that fuses public authority.

societal self-regulation. Now, I get a little bit irritated with calling this particular moment McCarthyism because of this focus on the three branches of government and who is sort of at the helm. And McCarthyism, it was a legislative branch. But now, as we talked about, it's really the executive branch who is at the sort of helm of this particular red scare. And people might be like, so what, this doesn't matter. Things matter in terms of tactics and strategies and having a real assessment of what's happening. But all three branches of government tend to participate. And the purpose is to penalize, regulate censure, and criminalize ideas and beliefs that challenge racial oppression, economic inequality, and class antagonism by labeling them communist. And what's really important

about anti-communist rule is that ideas become actions. Ideas become actions. And again, this is how, you know, I write about Angela Hernden in my book, who was charged with insurrection in Georgia for possessing communist literature. The Prairland Nine, you know, one of the persons was moving pamphlets and also charged with terrorism and given, I think, 30 years. And again, this is where ideas are actions, right? You don't actually have to be doing anything. Your ideas are enough.

And this is also why in that Cuba document, they say that it is the ideology that is the real threat, not necessarily any type of material support. So public authority, so remember I talked about public authority and societal self-regulation. Public authority are things like legislation, court rulings, presidential executive orders like the NSPM 7, security initiatives by government agencies, and all of these federal and state congressional committees. And so what we've been talking about the NSPM 7 and the Cuba document are forms of public authority. It is, these are things that are put out by the U.S. government for the purpose of imposing or sort of codifying anti-communism in its public practice. And so these politics take place interorganizational. So that means between like the federal, state, and local governments, corporations and private firms as well as civil society. So I'm going to give the example of ICE because the U.S. government has said that anti-ice protests are communists because they're in this document, are communist inspired, right?

So we see this partnership by, for example, local police forces aiding these ICE. escapades, ICE missions, but then also helping to capture protesters and criminalize them. And then we see these corporations providing free food and free room and board to ICE agents. And then also citizens supporting ICE and aiding them in various ways, right, by turning people in, calling ICE on them, et cetera. And so this is how we see this network working together. And then, so okay, I go on to talk about sort of policy and polity. won't go too deeply into that. But just suffice it to say that one of the ways that this anti-communist network also operates is by, for example, creating narratives and discourses. So one example of this is like

the, you know, on the one hand, the state paying all of these influencers on the one hand to like be pro-Israel or whatever, right, even be pro-ice. But then deplatforming those who are pro-Palestine or who are critical of government policy and practice. And also not only be platforming them, but indicting them. And so again, this is a way for the state to infuse its authority and an alternative to the legal architecture. But then there's societal self-regulation, which is how we discipline ourselves because of fear,

because we are afraid that our ideas, actions, and affiliations will be construed as communist or adjacent enough to communism whereby we will be criminalized. And so here's where you see people being purged from, organizations, landlords not renting to people with particular political persuasions. You know, you see book publishers not willing to publish these ideas, the media working alongside the state to criminalize ideas. And then us taking up those ideas and spreading them ourselves.

And so societal self-regulation becomes important because it's how in our day-to-day lives, actions, and beliefs, we internalize and then externalize, anti-communism in just everyday quotidian ways. And so that is what anti-communism as a mode of governance is. It effectively is to describe, again, as you said, it's not just these containers of hysteria, like the 1919-19-20 moment or the 1939 to 1940 moment or the 1947 to 1949 and 1951 of 54. That's not what

anti-communism is. Anti-communism is a broad framework that has these upticks in red scare throughout history. And one, you know, we can argue that we're in a current red scare. And so I prefer that terminology to saying like this is the new McCarthyism

or McCarthyism 2.0. Because it's not, it is a red scare, but it's not operating through the architecture of McCarthyism yet. And indeed and in fact, part of the reason why a lot of this is being codified through the executive branch is because the U.S. government wants to be able to go around the legislative branch. I believe that the executive, you know, if we take this fascism analysis seriously, then the legislative branch actually wants

to supersede the courts and the sort of legal arm of the state. And so I think that that's important because this means that this red scare is through like fiat and dictum. It's not through law, but also that the laws are already there, basically what's being called for in SPM 7 is just a different type of enforcement. So hopefully that's not too technical, but part of just what we need to understand is that I'll end here. Like the other reason that this push for AI is so important is the speed and rapidity with which this propaganda can be put out now, right? Which is pretty unique to this moment. It might have taken months or even a year to put together one of these government documents, But now, so on the 20th or something, this Cuba report was put out. A couple of days later, this Smithsonian report was put out about, like, activist history. And so there's just a deluge of this propaganda. It's a, was it shock and awe. And so that coupled with the very low literacy and critical media literacy and critical thinking rates among our population calls into question, if this particular red scare will be even more effective,

when it comes to societal self-regulation. And these are things that we really need to take seriously and think about because if that is the case, if societal self-regulation is all the more effective, then we don't need as many stool pigeons. We like to bed jacket everybody. Well, if we're doing pig work as private citizens, none of that is necessary, right?

Societal self-regulation coupled with AI could be a real disaster if we are not. not organized, if we're not aware of it and organized against it. I want to pick up on this thread of self-discipline to close us out in just one second, but the first thing I wanted to just pull out and underscore from what you were just saying is also that this project, not only is it all branches of government and many different aspects of society, it's also bipartisan, right? And I think one of the most recent things I want to use it to illustrate this is the multi-millionaire Colorado governor Jared Polis,

I think his net worth is like $300 or $400 million or something like that, who made all of these public statements recently about, you know, socialism being bad. And he said something like, I just care deeply about our state and I don't want socialists to destroy it. Very similar language to what the Marco Rubio's of the world are saying. the senator that I quoted at the top and Nixon, et cetera. And of course, Jared Polis is a Democrat, right? So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the bipartisan aspect of this. And I don't know, the role that the Democrats play in all of this, right? Because right now, a lot of Democrats are condemning this report. You know what I mean? And at the same time,

we know that traditionally, when it comes down to it, liberal, will side with the right. They will side with fascists. I mean, this is played out historically, but also in our present. They will side with fascism before they side with socialism or communism. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that aspect of it before I ask you the last question. Yeah, I mean, there's a saying like, you know, scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds, basically, that liberalism is like fascism like. But so McCarthy was a Republican, but Harry S. Truman was a Democrat. And it is 1947 under Harry S. Truman that the Cold War really kicks off and that we have the restart of loyalty oaths and the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations.

It is true that Truman vetoed the Internal Security Act of 1950, but Congress overrode the veto. However, if you read the veto, it is not that Truman is against anti-communism, is it that he believes it goes too far. And that is pretty much indicative of a sort of liberal anti-communism. They're not against, it's not that they support communists or think communists deserve any rights or freedom of speech. They just don't want to be characterized as such. Whereas Republicans or right-wing folks want to sort of go all the way and get anybody who could even be confused with a communist, liberals tend to be, because they themselves who have some progressive ideas don't want to be caught up in that dragnet, they're not against the architecture. They're

against its misapplication. And that is a problem because the function of anti-communism has always been beyond actual communists, right? That is the whole function of the architecture. That's a function of it as a mode of governance. And, you know, the Democrats are condemning this report, but not a few of them came out against their own DSA party members saying, you know, we are not socialists, neither the DSA, but they don't care. Right, we are not socialist. We are capitalists and sort of trying to, you know, drop kick the sort of left flank of their own party. And so again, they condemn what they see to be quote unquote excess or absurdity, but they don't condemn the project as such because they have said similar things about Venezuela, about Iran, about

other self-determining nations. And so, and the inertness of the, the Democrats have done nothing. They've done nothing to stop this sort of onslaught of fascistic policy and practice except for tweet and tell us that this is bad. We fucking know your job is to stop this. Your job is to fight your colleagues to make something better happen. But of course, their actual job, these are elected influencers after all. Their actual job is to serve their donors. And yeah, the last thing I'll say on this piece is that every single Democrat voted to confirm Marco Rubio. So if there could not be a more telling illustration of how the Democratic party and the liberals in general speak out of both sides of their mouth, I don't think we could

find a more relevant example of that. So just to close this report and, you know, other red scare crackdowns on leftist organizations. Like you mentioned this idea of self-discipline, like they do, they're intended to and they do literally make people scared, right? Like that's the point of these scares. And it may lead to people questioning, traveling, or, you know, their social media usage or other elements of everyday life, which I think is, you know, part of the architecture, as you said. Do you think that this is warranted? in some sense right now? And like what is a wise response to this report

and this general trend in your opinion? We will be as safe, we as just people will be as safe and as effective in direct relationship to our level of organization. And I think the right wing sort of proves this they are highly organized, highly every, they're battling on every single front. And so we've just been out. And this has been a sort of long game. So I think that is a better

focus is how do we get to a level of organization and quickly to be able to enjoy the rights were guaranteed by the Constitution, but also to continue. you to fight for a world in which people can live a dignified life and in which even the possibility of these sort of death-dealing, war-mongering, ecology-destroying monsters cannot be in power anymore. Because the truth of the matter is if in one administration, if one administration can bring in fascism, that means the seeds have been sown by other administrations and other administrations, right? We like to think of this as Trumpism. It is not Trumpism. This has been a right-word shift from Clinton and Obama, especially the Obama era, onward. And so I think that people should do

whatever makes them feel safe. But what we need to avoid is, one, punching left, even if that is not your ideology. It is not helpful to you or anyone else to celebrate anybody's repression. Second, align with organizations who are ideologically consistent and who have consistently taken the right line, even when it's hard. I would say Black Alliance or Peace is one of these organizations. You do not have to be a communist, as I always say, but you cannot be an anti-communist because we see what the function of anti-communism is. And you don't have to be a communist, but you must be anti-capitalist because it is when capitalism reaches these types of crises, this is when this tends to be when like the noose titan, so to speak.

And so we have to continue to disidentify with this American project, not because we're influenced by Cuba, but because we are influenced by the suffering of people that we love and people that we're responsible to. And so we should do whatever, our safety should not come out of, expense of others. It should not come at the expense of legitimating repressive conditions that destroy the lives of others. And so I think that that is what we need to be considering when we're making these types of choices. And we're always going to be safer. We're always going to be

more effective. And we're always going to at least, at the very least be clear, have a clear understanding of what's happening when we take an anti-imperialist, anti-capist position and join organizations and surround ourselves with people who also have not only that belief system, but who are committed to working toward that to the best of their ability. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Cherise Burden-Stelly, an associate professor of African-American studies at Wayne State University, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, Movement Builders, and the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective. She's also the author of Black Scare, Red Scare, Theorizing,

capitalist racism in the United States. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to John Davis of Folk Implosion for the Intermission Music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants, just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon.

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