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New York City’s Next Mayor: A Stealth Socialist Who Loved Sandinista Nicaragua and Castro’s Cuba
Pajamas Media ^ | 09/25/2013 | Ron Radosh

Posted on 09/25/2013 9:13:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

We used to call young Americans who went to Sandinista Nicaragua in the ’80s “Sandalistas,” a name of derision meant to mock the sandal-wearing leftists looking to help Daniel Ortega build the socialist future in Central America. As we all know, what was going on was a fight for freedom against the Marxist-Leninists, which included most of the Sandinista leadership, by those who wanted to defeat their attempt to build a second Cuba in this hemisphere.

Bill de Blasio, who most likely will be the next mayor of New York, is not just a simple run-of-the mill “progressive.” The New York Times just published a major story on his background, timed to run after the the New York City primary, which was likely the real election. (Rudy Giuliani’s victory on the Republican ticket was an anomaly, and the working-class voters whose ballots put him in no longer live in the areas from which he got the necessary votes.) Had voters known about de Blasio’s background before the primary, he may have lost the critical number of votes for his victory.

Indeed, the Times tells us of a whitewash: “References to his early activism have been omitted from his campaign Web site.”

No wonder. The story by Javier C. Hernandez reveals de Blasio was a far-left socialist who worked with an outfit called The Quixote Center. But he was not simply tilting at windmills; he visited a Nicaragua on the road to communism, and came back with “a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.”

The Reagan administration was right in denouncing the Nicaraguan regime –which took power by a coup led by armed guerrillas — as a tyranny led by Communists. Hernandez writes: “Their liberal backers argued that … they were building a free society with broad access to education, land and health care.” The backers of Ortega’s coup were not liberals, but hardcore Marxists, socialists, and other anti-American members of the New Left. Soured on Cuba, they turned to Nicaragua as their new land of hope.

De Blasio told Hernandez: “My work was based on trying to create a more fair and inclusive world.” Like other blinded gullible leftists, he accepted the Marxist jargon peddled by the regime’s junta while ignoring that the Commandantes like Tomas Borge, Daniel Ortega, and the rest of the bunch were lining their own pockets with the most valuable properties. They were creating a wealthy nomenklatura modeled on Soviet lines which gave them access to the wealth and power no one else in the country could access. Led by Borge’s secret police, who were trained by the East German Stasi and quartered in a building with the sign reading “Sentinel of the People’s Happiness,” they crushed dissent, closed down the opposition newspaper La Prensa, and instituted major steps towards building a one-party system.

As the Times notes: “Mr. de Blasio became an ardent supporter of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries.” In 1990, he said publicly that his goal for America was “democratic socialism.”

As the New York Daily News reported, de Blasio took his 1991 honeymoon in Castro’s Cuba! I guess totalitarian Cuba is what he meant by “democratic socialism.”

De Blasio’s path to power reveals a local version of the path trod by Barack Obama — that of a “Long March through the Existing Institutions,” which is what the German New Left revolutionary leaders in the 1960s called the road to power. For the advanced capitalist countries, Mao’s Long March was not the way; rather, the path was political power by working through the existing political structure and moving to take over one of the mainstream dominant political parties.

In New York City, with his ally in the radical Working Families Party — affiliated with the former ACORN — de Blasio has shunned the real goal of socialism. Calling himself progressive, he has worked to create a majority to run New York that is anti-business and supports greater and greater entitlements. As Jonathan Tobin writes in Commentary, de Blasio’s “left-wing populism and hostility to both the business community and the police tactics that have helped fuel New York’s revival bode ill for the city’s future.”

It seems that our largest and most important city will, as Tobin puts it, be “lurching to the hard left.” The only good that can come out of this is if the business community and Wall Street quickly rescind their usual contributions to the Democratic contender, and consider contributing to the pro-business Republican candidate, former MTA chairman Joe Lhota.

If you doubt that de Blasio is a hard leftist, recall this is the New York Times saying “his time as a young activist was more influential in shaping his ideology than previously known.” Perhaps its publisher is worried about what a de Blasio victory might mean for the city and their own publication, which after all is a business trying to survive in a dwindling print media age.

De Blasio actually says that his desire is to have the rich pay more in taxes, and that government exists “to protect and enhance the lives of the poor.” He actually says this is to be done through redistribution of wealth instead of increasing productivity so all can benefit. This is inspired by his time in Nicaragua, where he says the Sandinistas, “in their own humble way, in this small country,” were “trying to figure out what would work better.”

Anyone who knows the history of that tragic country understands that they were running it to the ground, just as the Castro brothers have done in Cuba. Today, through ballot maneuvering and unsavory coalitions with wealthy interests, Daniel Ortega and his party rule as just another caudillo-type Latin American despotism, continually enriching themselves through corruption and misrule.

Like Barack Obama, de Blasio was a community organizer — not with the Alinsky-type groups, but with a religious “social justice” center that shipped millions of dollars in food, clothing, and supplies to the would-be Nicaraguan Communists. He was part of a group the Times article calls “a ragtag team of peace activists, Democrats, Marxists and anarchists” who did what they could to help the rapidly fading Sandinista cause. Their interest ended when, in an election forced on the Sandinistas by world pressure in 1989, Ortega lost and the dissenting liberal Violeta Chamorro, whose husband had edited La Prensa and was murdered by the pre-Sandinista dictator Anastasio Somoza, won handily in an election monitored by observers from around the world.

Jonathan Tobin is right. The New York City election cannot be won by refighting the wars of the 1980s. As he writes, the view of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations that supported the opponents of the Sandinistas proved to be right, and the groups that de Blasio worked with were “fronts for Communist killers.”

What does this bode for New York City? Its growth and decreasing crime rates and stability, put into place by Rudy Giuliani and to some extent by Michael Bloomberg, will come to an end when de Blasio takes office. Expect the dark and depressing years of the administration of David Dinkins, and the possibility that New York City will be on the road to becoming like Detroit.

So let me quote Jonathan Tobin’s wise words:

"To those who are either too young or too deluded by liberal propaganda to know better, the struggle against the socialism that de Blasio backed was the most important battle fought in the last half of the 20th century. Those who aimed at stopping socialism were not trying to hurt the poor; they were defending human rights against a political cause that sacrificed more than 100 million victims on the Marxist altar. The verdict of history was delivered as the Berlin Wall fell and the “socialist motherland” collapsed, and along with it much of the ideological house of cards that liberals had built as they sought to discredit or defeat anti-Communists. It says a lot about de Blasio’s commitment to that vicious political faith that even after the Iron Curtain fell and the peoples of captive Eastern Europe celebrated the defeat of the Communist cause that he would make a pilgrimage to one of its last strongholds in Cuba to celebrate his marriage."

Today, Bill de Blasio seems proud of his support for the Sandinistas. He has said nothing to indicate that he thinks he was wrong, and that the path they sought for Nicaragua was dangerous, futile, and was putting the country on the road to totalitarianism.

When I traveled to Nicaragua with the late Ed Koch in 1989, we watched a massive rally headlined by Daniel Ortega, and Koch said: “This reminds me of nothing other than the Nazi’s Nuremberg rallies.”

Koch understood the truth at the time; today in the 21st century, future Mayor Bill deBlasio does not.

Rudi Dutschke’s strategy of a “Long March Through the Existing Institutions” has paid off in New York. They have gained control of the Democratic Party machinery, and if they are successful, they will ruin the city. Let us hope that sane Democrats will vote Republican.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: New York
KEYWORDS: billdeblasio; nicaragua; sandinista
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1 posted on 09/25/2013 9:13:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

London had “Red” Ken....now NYC has “Red” Bill.


2 posted on 09/25/2013 9:14:12 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: dfwgator

There is an alternative who used to work with Rudy Giuliani and was with him when the win towers fell — Joe Lhota.

Unfortunately, most New Yorkers either don’t remember their own history or don’t know who Giuliani is or what he did.


3 posted on 09/25/2013 9:16:18 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

This could fit anyone with a “D” after their name.


4 posted on 09/25/2013 9:19:00 AM PDT by rlmorel (Silence: The New Hate Speech)
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To: SeekAndFind

Compared to this guy, Bloomberg is Barry Goldwater.


5 posted on 09/25/2013 9:20:06 AM PDT by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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To: SeekAndFind

All of this probably means De Blasio is in synch with the majority of inner city voters in this country.

He’s no different than Obama ideologically.


6 posted on 09/25/2013 9:21:09 AM PDT by Trapped Behind Enemy Lines
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To: SeekAndFind

So he is pretty much like our current Secretary of State. Kerry has him beat out on the conspiring with the enemy during a time of war.


7 posted on 09/25/2013 9:21:25 AM PDT by USNBandit (sarcasm engaged at all times)
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To: dfwgator

I predict a fresh influx of New Yorkers into the Metroplex, which is find so long as they leave their wicked leftist proclivities back yonder in that dystopian experiment.


8 posted on 09/25/2013 9:21:43 AM PDT by Dysart (If you like your country, you can keep it.)
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To: SeekAndFind
The Majority of Democrats are stealth Socialists being Progressives or Liberals. Right now they do not seem to like the United States nor the Rule of Law except when it gives them power.

Obamacare is their first big step into Socialism. It reduces Americans to a European Style economy (29 1/2 hour work week, less than 50 employees) and it is back door nationalization of Health care (with British Death Panel controls).

This includes Exempting themselves as Elites and those that support them (soon to exempt Unions as well as big businesses).

The Democrats will be unable to prevent themselves from lurching further into socialism or even into Communism as their voices from the Left will get all the presses attention from now on.

9 posted on 09/25/2013 9:22:49 AM PDT by sr4402
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To: SeekAndFind

He will do his best to take money from the producers and give it to the slackers.


10 posted on 09/25/2013 9:29:42 AM PDT by I want the USA back (Media: completely irresponsible traitors. Complicit in the destruction of our country.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Good. NYC deserves him.


11 posted on 09/25/2013 9:30:27 AM PDT by Zuben Elgenubi
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To: sr4402

The day the EBT Cards run out...Daniel Oretega will look like a genius....

The welfare system collapse is coming and when it does...the people will demand government intervention to control the savages..

Zombies will be real....


12 posted on 09/25/2013 9:32:51 AM PDT by Caliban (Politics is war conducted by other means...)
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To: SeekAndFind

Why “stealth?”

“Socialist” is no longer a stigma.


13 posted on 09/25/2013 9:33:06 AM PDT by Zuse
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To: SeekAndFind

One year of this communist and NYC will be Detroit.


14 posted on 09/25/2013 9:35:42 AM PDT by Dr. Thorne ("How long, O Lord, holy and true?" - Rev. 6:10)
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To: SeekAndFind

If NYC votes for him, then they deserve him.
Looking forward to a resurgence of crime and insolvency in NYC if this scumbag wins...


15 posted on 09/25/2013 9:40:38 AM PDT by Little Ray (How did I end up in this hand-basket, and why is it getting so hot?)
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To: SeekAndFind
A Stealth Socialist Who Loved Sandinista Nicaragua and Castro’s Cuba

If he's a "stealth" socialist, here's a picture of the Air Force's stealth bomber.


16 posted on 09/25/2013 9:40:54 AM PDT by KarlInOhio (Why is our military going to be used as Al Qaeda's air force in Syria?)
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To: Little Ray
Looking forward to a resurgence of crime and insolvency in NYC if this scumbag wins...

Get your popcorn ready.

17 posted on 09/25/2013 9:41:39 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: Caliban

NY City used to have a varied economy, but not any more. It lives and dies by Wall Street. It has become the world’s center of crony-capitalism with the corrupt triangle of the Fed, Wall Street’s To-Big-Too-Fail, and Gov’t Debt.

Putting handcuffs or eliminating the FED will not only solve the problem of an ever-expanding and all-powerful progressive state in DC, it will take down the power of leftist nests like NY City by quite a few notches.


18 posted on 09/25/2013 9:52:47 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: PGR88

If he goes ahead and raises taxes in the city..he will preside over the demise of NY as the financial capital of the world. The big bankers will be out of there fast.
Why anyone now pays NYC,NY and Federal taxes there now is a mystery to me.
Just hand the city over to the communists and the immigrants and let them sink.


19 posted on 09/25/2013 10:05:28 AM PDT by Oldexpat
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To: SeekAndFind

He’ll be perfect for NYC then.


20 posted on 09/25/2013 10:05:48 AM PDT by freedomfiter2 (Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.)
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