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

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.

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