Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Is LA Mayor Karen Bass Still a Communist
Roger Simon ^ | Jan 10, 2025 | Roger Simon

Posted on 01/10/2025 6:15:34 AM PST by george76

The struggle continues..

It’s worth asking whether LA’s Mayor Karen Bass is still a communist as we try to understand her odd, defensive behavior regarding the ongoing wildfires in her city, also her ill-timed trip to Ghana when the possibility of these fires was already predicted.

I recalled she was an admirer of Fidel Castro, but had forgotten how recent her fulsome praise was, less than a decade ago. From left-leaning Politico August 2020 :

“Rep. Karen Bass on Sunday walked back 2016 comments praising Cuban leader Fidel Castro, as scrutiny of her views toward the Communist government threatened her potential selection as former Vice President Joe Biden’s running mate.

“On ‘Fox News Sunday,’ the California Democrat faced questions about several visits to Cuba in the 1970s and a statement she released after Castro’s 2016 death saying, ‘the passing of the Comandante en Jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba.’

“Bass told Fox host Chris Wallace that her perspective ‘developed over time’ and that she now understood that the Castro government ‘was a brutal regime.’ Bass said she spoke with colleagues from Florida who raised concerns about her comments and that she ‘would not do that again, for sure.’”

Okay, we’re grownups here and I will admit that I at first thought Fidel was pretty cool too. I even went to hear him speak in Central Park. But I was still in high school then and it was 1960.

It wasn’t long, only a few years, that I realized he was a brutal dictator who, along with his buddy El Che, took his old comrades who varied in even minor ways from his party line and lined them up against a wall and shot them. I further learned he imprisoned homosexuals or sent them to re-education camps. This only ended around 2010 after Fidel had had years of criticism.

I saw his Cuba for myself in 1979 when I was a delegate to the First Festival of the New American Cinema or some such (can’t remember the exact name) and saw an island beautiful in nature but absolutely totalitarian in the way its regime treated its impoverished people. Havana itself was completely run down, its paranoid citizens spying on each other. My small group was delayed at the airport getting out and I well recall being scared that I would be trapped there, a feeling I later had in the Soviet Union.

This was obviously considerably before then Rep. Bass was still singing the praises of Fidel, her Comandante en Jefe who died a billionaire while his people languished in misery.

I knew people like her when I was living in Los Angeles during the 70s and 80s. Some of them, like now Mayor Bass, went to Cuba again and again, signifying their allegiance while ignoring or downplaying the “excesses.” They did the same with Mao. You have to break a few eggs and all that.. None of them that I recall called themselves communists explicitly but they really were at heart. Maybe they thought of it as a way to stay cool and young, but for many it was more than that. They were serious about it.

Some, I’m not going to name names to protect myself actually, rose to prominent positions in LA city politics, also in education. It was a good way to do it. Everybody winked. They were the people around something then called the Echo Park Food Conspiracy who would come up and clap me on the back, saying, “Roger, the struggle continues!”

Others, the wealthy Hollywood ones, were almost comically hypocritical. I knew the wife of a famous director, again I’m not naming names, a very nice bourgeois lady and not particularly a sexpot, who went to Cuba, was introduced to Castro at some reception and immediately swooned, kissing him full on the lips in adoration. This was told to me by the director himself who found it amusing.

I didn’t and I don’t. I look at myself in those days as a bit of a phony. I didn’t really believe any of the lefty stuff, not in a real way, but I was more a fly on the wall looking for material for my writing. Some of it appeared in the early Moses Wine mysteries.

But when I watch Karen Bass on television from Nashville—I don’t know her personally—I definitely recognize her as a character out of those days. It’s easy to imagine her having virtually no interest in the day-to-day activities of a mayor like making sure there’s enough water in the pumps or that brush is cleared, but only in “continuing the struggle by whatever means necessary.”

So that is what I see when watching the city where I lived for all but the last few years of my adult life go up in smoke. The struggle continues indeed.


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: 1983; 2005; 2010; 2015; 2016; affirmativeaction; alangross; barackobama; bass; bassby; castro; communist; communists; cuba; cubatrip; dariusanderson; darylgates; dei; deidemocrat; democrat; die; diversity; diversityhires; fidel; fidelcastro; foreignagent; gunrunning; gunsmuggling; johnkerry; karen; karenbass; la; ladies; lafires; lasmayor; losangeles; marxistsubversive; mayorbass; obama; terrorist; usaid; usaidcontractor; venceremosbrigade; vubatrips; woke
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-28 next last

1 posted on 01/10/2025 6:15:34 AM PST by george76
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: george76

Yes. Next stupid question.


2 posted on 01/10/2025 6:16:23 AM PST by Skywise
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: george76

Is the Pope a Commie?


3 posted on 01/10/2025 6:18:00 AM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: george76

She is a particularly nasty commie, but, is there anything other than nasty commies?

LA is getting everything they asked for, and deserve, good and hard.


4 posted on 01/10/2025 6:21:26 AM PST by brownsfan (It's going to take real, serious, hard times to wake the American public.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: george76

incompetentist


5 posted on 01/10/2025 6:23:41 AM PST by BigFreakinToad (All she is, is cackles in the wind.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: george76

She is really really not smart.


6 posted on 01/10/2025 6:24:30 AM PST by Yaelle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: george76

Bass was in Congress for 20 years, and was head of the Foreign relations subcommittee on Africa. She was also head of the Congressional Black Caucus for a period.

So the “Black Pride” and “Momma Africa” thing is her grift. It jives well with her prior worship of Castro and all things marxist. It’s all she knows.


7 posted on 01/10/2025 6:26:23 AM PST by PGR88
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Skywise

What was her business in Ghana anyway?
Mayors are usually not the persons, who represent the country.
To show up on inauguration of a president, to represent our county, it should be somebody like president, vice president, secretary of state, undersecretary of state, or (most likely in this case) ambassador.


8 posted on 01/10/2025 6:26:31 AM PST by AZJeep
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: george76

The enemies within are the most dangerous ones.


9 posted on 01/10/2025 6:26:47 AM PST by Vaduz
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: george76

Nah, probably just another clueless DEI Democrat.


10 posted on 01/10/2025 6:31:02 AM PST by antidemoncrat ( )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: AZJeep
"What was her business in Ghana anyway?"

Probably recruiting Ghanaians to flood the U.S. in ann illegal alien tsunami.

11 posted on 01/10/2025 6:33:12 AM PST by wildcard_redneck
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: AZJeep
"What was her business in Ghana anyway?"

Probably recruiting Ghanaians to flood the U.S. in ann illegal alien tsunami.

12 posted on 01/10/2025 6:40:36 AM PST by wildcard_redneck
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: AZJeep

My understanding of that is that the Biden admin got a bunch of diversity hires to go over there to represent the US, including some White House members.


13 posted on 01/10/2025 6:44:57 AM PST by Skywise
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: AZJeep
"What was her business in Ghana anyway?"

Probably checking on her stash. I think that's way so many of the federal folks were going to the Ukraine when the war there was just getting started....

14 posted on 01/10/2025 6:47:15 AM PST by unread (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the REPUBLIC..!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: All

Bass went to Ghana for the inauguration of their Marxist President. The party originally came to power through a coup.


15 posted on 01/10/2025 6:51:09 AM PST by TigerClaws
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: AZJeep

Biden chose her to go w/ a delegation of blacks on
the tax paid trip to a phony African “inauguration.”

Bass is so bad she was on demented Biden’s A-list for VP....Harris got the job.


How much aid does the US give to Ghana?
The United States is Ghana’s largest development partner. In the past year, bilateral support from Biden’s USAID totaled over $150 million dedicated to supporting health, economic growth and agriculture, education, governance, and more.Nov 14, 2024


16 posted on 01/10/2025 6:54:01 AM PST by Liz ((This then is how we should pray: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. ))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: george76

Don’t know about her being a Commie, but I DO know that she’s a dumbass.


17 posted on 01/10/2025 6:58:03 AM PST by Da Coyote
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: AZJeep

I understand that if you’re black and go to Ghana they will make you a citizen and give you a plot of land. Only qualification is you must be black.


18 posted on 01/10/2025 7:06:51 AM PST by subterfuge (I'm a pure-blood!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: george76

This a rhetorical question, right?


19 posted on 01/10/2025 7:41:26 AM PST by RedMonqey (!Trump, the once and future president!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: antidemoncrat

Why do you think the Democrats are so enamored with DEI? It’s how they get their communists in power.


20 posted on 01/10/2025 8:12:22 AM PST by dangus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-28 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson