Red-baiting and regime change

Cuba, a country enduring a devastating economic crisis with 20-plus hours of blackouts a day, has apparently played an instrumental role in “turning America against itself” through a “sprawling influence and espionage network.”

According to the State Department, Cuba is responsible, at least in part, for the Black Panthers, the National Lawyers Guild, Black Lives Matter, George Floyd “riots,” the Democratic Socialists of America, Angela Davis, university activism, anti-ICE organizers, Antifa, Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass…the list goes on.

And yes, Belly of the Beast is also mentioned as being part of this vast Communist conspiracy for our role in helping Hasan Piker shoot a documentary while he was in Cuba.

According to the report, Cuba’s “subversive” influence has even reached mainstream liberal politicians like Barack Obama and institutions like Harvard University.

“The Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Read”

The report seems to embrace its McCarthyite parallels, citing “blacklists, McCarthy-era investigations and prosecutions, and a slate of anti-communist laws” as having effectively crushed the Communist Party by 1959. The historical background reads less like a cautionary tale and more like a blueprint for an impending crackdown.

Speaking on the House floor after returning from a trip to the island, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) called the report “the stupidest, most fantastical, most biased thing” he’s ever read.

The report is an absurd hodgepodge of distorted history and sweeping, conspiratorial conclusions. But its political implications are real.

The report serves two purposes:

1. Justify repression at home. The report casts protest movements, journalists, academics, solidarity organizations and activists in the United States not as independent actors, but rather products or instruments of a hostile foreign government. It thus provides a pretext for repression in the United States, making it easier to smear, discredit, persecute and silence critical voices.

2. Justify regime change in Cuba. The report says Cuba has tried to attack the United States from within, turning “Americans into instruments of their own nation’s undoing” by “persuading the children of the West to turn against their own inheritance.” By portraying Cuba as an existential threat — not just to U.S. security, but to U.S. society itself — the Trump administration further strengthens its case for economic warfare and military intervention.

“A Disgrace and a Danger”

Former U.S. diplomat Orna Blum wrote on her Substack that multiple sources at the State Department told her the report did not go through the “standard tracking process” by which documents like this get assigned, drafted and cleared for publication. According to Blum, the departure from the normal review process indicates that the report was likely written by political appointees at the State Department and National Security Council (both run by Marco Rubio).

“Career diplomats are floored — by the sloppy writing, by the attempted history lecture, and most of all by how undisguised the attempt is to make a foreign policy report into an election-season blacklist,” writes Blum.

One former top official told Blum the report is a “disgrace and a danger.”

This article was first published by Belly of the Beast.