Identity Defined by Opposition

A paradox of Totalitarianism is that while trying to homogenize society defines it by oppositions. One of the core principles of socialism is that the individual has to be submerged in the collective. The formation of the individual from the first years at school is aimed at erasing personality traits and individual inclinations that doesn’t fit into the collective aims and the political purposes. This is a kind of utilitarianism in politics that have disastrous consequences for the individual. As we know, utilitarianism sees pursue of happiness and the avoidance of pain as the end of all human activities (Bentham). But when utilitarian doctrine is taken at the political level, happiness n society means the number of individuals in society who are happy, the bigger the number of them that are happy the more just a political system is. Problem with this doctrine is that discriminate the rights of minorities who doesn’t fall into the criteria for happiness of a given group, thus giving birth to all sort of human rights violations. Going back to my point about the homogenization  of society by totalitarian regimes, anything that doesn’t fall inside the homogenized happy group –the contented pigs of John Stuart Mill -- is excluded and converted into an enemy.
The conversion of ill-conformed individuals into enemies is just a part of a major necessity to construct identity st the national level in opposition to what is strange, out of norm and therefore dangerous. Fear is used to create image and spirit of an exterior enemy who is ever present and who is always ready to attack. During the 50 something years of the Cuban revolution, fear and war has always been present in a way or another, whether in the form of the embargo, Bay of Pigs, nuclear war, sabotages, killing attempts to Fidel Castro, the CIA, etc. Of course those fears are no unfounded, they are based in instances of truth, But when is concerned to propaganda, these fears are exploited to the level that war and state of exception become the way of life of a nation and a people. The life of a society revolves around the idea of external invasion and war.

When invasion and war doesn’t occur, and it hasn’t since Bay of Pigs, the prospect of war lose credibility and new enemies need to be created. The only way to fill this gap is by taking individuals from the ranks of inconformists of society and convert them into enemies. They are labeled and classified as gusanos –worms- or scum, terrorists, mercenaries and other names to  make clear that they are the enemy of the happiness of the group. By this opposition of us versus them group identity is created. The group of conformists identify with the Commander in Chief and the Revolution by way of symbolic association. Fidel Castro is the continuator of Jose Marti ideals; Jose Marti is the Cuban per excellence and therefore Fidel is the Cuban per excellence of the 20^th C. The Cuban flag is associated with Fidel and the Revolution that Castro started become one. Everything else that doesn’t fall into the categories of Fidel/Revolution is not a Cuban. Fidel and his idea of Revolution has usurped Cubaness; to be Cuban means to be Fidelist and Revolutionary.

Jacques Ellul talks about the need for a combination of individualism and collectivism in society for propaganda to be effective. Propaganda needs to catch the individual in isolation, abandoned to the forces of industrial and post-industrial society. But also need to be part of a collective so that the psychology of the group can have its effects on him. “The society that favors the development of society must be a society maintaining itself but at the same time taking on a new structure, that of the mass society” (Ellul 93). The Cuban revolution has taken care that the individual is left alone, out of an ineffective church and a disintegrated family. Children are raised with no religion in Cuba, which is a fundamental core of the doctrine of the formation  of the New Man since in classical Marxist doctrine religions is the opium of the people, a tool in the hands of the exploiters to keep the oppressed subjected to their condition. In order to raise in the ranks of Cuban official society you have to be first a young pionero –boy scout-, then a Communist youth and finally a full fledge Communist militant. A condition to go through all these stages is that you cannot be a religious person. Families therefore foster tha rearing of children without a religion and without church. Families are also broken apart, at least 45 days a year by the School at the Country or irrevocably by exile. In this condition of isolation and defenselessness the individual joins the organizations where he can find solace and strength, such as the Communist Youth Union, the Communist Party, the Committee of Defense of the Revolution, the Militias of Territorial Troops, the Obligatory Military Service, the Brigades of Rapid Response, the Brigades of Production and Effort, etc, etc. Once the individual join one of these organization, and is almost impossible that he would not join any of them, he will be subjected to the norms and rules of the group, its ideology and psychology, the individual dissolve in them and breaks apart, his private opinion rendered ineffectual by the public opinion of the organization that represents him. 

Concerning identity and nationalism things become more problematic for the Cuban government since the advent of the Internet and SMS. National frontiers are rendered increasingly obsolete due to the porosity brought about by communication, travel and trade. So far the reaction of the Cuban government regarding globalization has been to strengthen isolationalist measures such as requiring of visas to Cuban nationals to re-enter the country and permits to leave it. 

The oppositional lines enemy/friend becomes more difficult to maintain since the lines of kinship and camaraderie of Cuba’s younger generations are not based on ideology or politics but on age, interests, likes and common life experiences. It is not possible anymore to make believe that someone is an enemy just because has decided to move to the US, like it was in the past when emigrants were labeled with epithets and automatically rendered enemies of society in the public mind. The recognition of Cuban authorities of the difficulties of establishing and maintaining clear lines of separation along ideology and politics gets manifested in a recent video posted on the Web about a Cuban counter-intelligence officer giving a lecture about social networks and blogging by Cubans. In it the counter-intelligence officer recognizes how Internet access through satellite connection and WiFi has rendered impossible total propaganda and mind control. It is also impossible to render a youth an enemy for using the Internet to play games, watch entertainment shows or the news; but the mere act of accessing information other than the provided by the Cuban propaganda apparatus provoke a change in worldviews and thinking and therefore a more difficult to control subject.