Editor's Note:

In this brief on the malevolent use of exiles, their weaponisation by the US power elites, Yasha Levine focuses on a rather ignored aspect of US politics and propaganda, long employed by the empire to serve its narratives and objectives. The diaspora of reactionaries has many streams in the American brew: reactionaries from Eastern Europe, as old as "White Russians" yearning for a return of the tsar; German fascists imported in the wake of WW2 to bolster America's global effort against the Soviets; Cuban gusanos, always given preferential treatment by the Deep State, clever people this, these hardcore reactionaries who have used and been used by the Deep State; the defeated collaborators fleeing Vietnam and possibly somejust retribution; and more recently the Venezuelan rich, plus other elites who naturally feel safe on American soil. All of these people constitute an extra layer of ultra conservative anti-communism in the US, as if we needed imports of this sort, such posture reinforced by a rabid know-nothing pro-Americanism given their alliances, mutual class outlooks, and other historical ties. As Yasha indicates, they are always on tap, ready to serve the empire in its criminal stunts, no matter how filthy these may be from a moral standpoint.

A notable example of what Levine is talking about, the easy and often voluntary weaponisation of reactionary exiles, happened almost 20 years ago, when Elian Gonzalez, a 5-year-old Cuban child, was found floating on an inner tube off the Florida coast in November 1999. As reported by TeleSUR:

His mother and other Cubans accompanying the boy died on route from the island 90 miles to the south, Elian's father had not been told of the voyage. The right-wing Cuban community in Miami took advantage of his case to try to further their counter-revolutionary agenda, as his great-uncle's family tried to keep him in the United States. The tug of war quickly became a cause celebre, discussed around the globe.

However, the whole scheme backfired when U.S. and international opinion instead insisted Elian be returned to his father in Cuba. An international campaign launched by Fidel and the Cuban people eventually led to U.S. immigration agents having to seize the boy at gunpoint from the Miami home where he was being held hostage.

He was returned to Cuba to a big welcome on June 28, 2000. It was a major blow to the counter-revolutionaries in Miami as well as to the U.S. aggressive policy toward Cuba."

—PG.