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Comment by madeofpalk | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine these people are on a left-right scale. They seem to be perpendicular.

I've never met a DPRK supporter, but I have met Cuba supporters. They were white, non-Cuban, and leaning so far left I was surprised they could remain upright. (And I'm pretty far left myself by contemporary U.S. standards.)

I'm not a Cuba "supporter" but I do think that the quality of life in Cuba is not terrible, Western sources are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba, and that if we were serious about our opposition to authoritarianism internationally - Cuba would not be towards the top of our list compared to autocracies like Saudi Arabia.

This is very different from the DPRK.

I did not mean to draw a parallel between Cuba and NK with respect to the facts on the ground, merely with respect to the arguments that are advanced for them, which in both cases are based on the premise that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Everyone I have ever met who advanced that argument with respect to Cuba was on the political left. The political right has their own version of this argument, except that they focus their skepticism on "the mainstream media" rather than "Western sources" (but IMHO both of these phrases are clearly dog whistles without an actual referent other than, "any source that disagrees with my position.")

I feel like the "West" [0] is a pretty clear referent and is not synonymous with "any source that disagrees with my position." What is it a dog whistle for?

> conventional wisdom

Talk about unclear referents! I question the existence of a universal "conventional wisdom" on political issues like these.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

Yes, I don't disagree with that. But I will point out that the literature of the groups that advocate these positions could objectively be called "Western sources" since they originate in the West, but obviously those are not what the people who produce those sources mean when they say that e.g. "Western sources are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba."

It is actually very hard to characterize a reliable source in a way that does not exhibit any sort of cultural or political bias.

There are massive amounts of Cuba supporters outside of the Western world. From our point of view Cuba sucks, but for a lot of people the basic guarantees that Cuba gives and the lifestyle is actually not so bad at all. Their government also isn't much more corrupt than in the rest of the world.

I'm sure that, unsurprisingly, if you live in a majority white country, most Cuban supporters would be white and left-leaning. If you were a Cuban that supported the Cuban regime and were happy, why would you leave, taking on so much risk and expense?

> If you were a Cuban that supported the Cuban regime and were happy, why would you leave, taking on so much risk and expense?

I met a Cuban like that. Simply put, to make more money. He knew the nuances of their system and was thankful for the good parts and the opportunities he had, but at the end of the day knew that for him individually it was more convenient to leave when he had the chance. It's just something that doesn't work for everybody by necessity.

I think he had a relative abroad that sponsored some sort of student visa, and he just never went back.

I have a 10% rule. ~10-20% of any group is gonna be a little nutty about something. 10-20% of the population doesn't believe in the moon landing. Similar with the flat earth.

They've always existed, just have microphones now.

In South Korea, the most pro-north political parties are on the left. With the most extremely-pro-north being the extreme left.

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