Sunday, August 13, 2006

The Tyrant I Loved

The fevered protestations of the Cuban government to the contrary, everyone senses that Fidel Castro is on his way to somewhere hotter than Havana.

Alexandre Trudeau's essay about the friendship between his father and the Cuban tyrant could have run unedited in Granma, the Castro regime's propaganda paper:

Fidel may have been at first a political contact of my father's but their relationship was much more than that. It was extra-political.

Indeed, like my father, in private, Fidel is not a politician. He is more in the vein of a great adventurer or a great scientific mind. Fidel doesn't really do politics. He is a revolutionary.

He lives to learn and to put his knowledge in the service of the revolution. For Fidel, revolution is really a work of reason. In his view, revolution, when rigorously adopted, cannot fail to lead humanity towards ever greater justice, towards an ever more perfect social order.

Fidel is also the most curious man that I have ever met. He wants to know all there is to be known. He is famous for not sleeping, instead spending the night studying and learning.

He also knows what he doesn't know, and when he meets you he immediately seeks to identify what he might learn from you. Once he has ascertained an area of expertise that might be of interest, he begins with his questions. One after the other. He synthesizes information quickly and gets back to you with ever deeper and more complex questions, getting more and more excited as he illuminates, through his Socratic interrogation, new parcels of knowledge and understanding he might add to his own mental library.

His intellect is one of the most broad and complete that can be found. He is an expert on genetics, on automobile combustion engines, on stock markets. On everything.

Combined with a Herculean physique and extraordinary personal courage, this monumental intellect makes Fidel the giant that he is.


Leave aside this hagiographic nonsense for a moment; it is so exaggerated in its praise that it is obviously unbelievable.

Consider the more chilling conclusion to be drawn: Pierre Trudeau was attracted to Fidel Castro and the tyrannical society he built because he saw something of himself, and the country he wanted to remake, in Castro's Cuba.

Both men did indeed work destructive revolutions upon their country, although only Castro had the power to imprison and execute dissenters, and reduce his country to complete beggary.

Recent reports of Trudeau's youthful flirtation with nationalist fascism during the Second World War only underscore the nature of the man's attraction to authoritarian state-worship.

Imagine what he might have done to Canada, had Canada been a much more unstable country.

And look at the ideas he has imparted to his son.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The little Trudeau is going to give up all his wordly possessions and move to Cuba for a job in farming just to show how inspired he is by murderous dictators. Congratulations A(sshole) Trudeau!