Raul Castro’s Orwellian Rhetoric
Michael Orion Powell /
Cuban leader Raul Castro is a figure right out of the world of George Orwell’s political epic 1984. In that novel, Big Brother declared, through the propaganda subjected to the citizens of the future society of Oceania, that “freedom was slavery” and “war is peace.”
Castro has engaged in Orwellian rhetoric in his response to mounting criticism over the government’s treatment of dissidents who have gone on hunger strikes to protest their imprisonment. He denied that there was merit to the criticisms leveled regarding the treatment of political prisoners or the merits of their detainment, deeming such criticism as “a ferocious campaign” to bring the Cuban government into disrepute.