973: Why Do So Many Young Americans LOVE Socialism?

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Music.

Brian Nichols  0:06  
Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, hey there, folks, Brian Nichols here on another fun filled episode of The Brian Nichols Show, I am, as always, your humble host joining you from our lovely cardio miracle Studios here in sunny Eastern Indiana. The Brian Nichols Show is powered yes by the best heart health supplement in the world, cardio miracle. So if you want to go ahead and lower your resting heart rate, lower that blood pressure while improving your pump at the gym through the science and power of nitric oxide, stick around. We're going to talk about that more later in today's episode. But first, what happens when you are living under a socialist communist regime, and what tools do other governments have, outside of force to help, I don't know, move those countries away from socialism or communism, at the very least for the benefit of their people. Let's talk to someone who grew up in a world of socialism and communism, and today is joining us to discuss her article about why tariffs and sanctions could be a way to help push these Latin American country, specifically away from socialism and communism. Joining me here in The Brian Nichols Show is Gabi Blanco. Gabby, welcome

Speaker 1  1:27  
to the Brian show. How you doing? Hi, good. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Great to have you

Brian Nichols  1:31  
on the show. Gabby, I'm really looking forward to digging into your your article here today, which was, tariffs and sanctions are the long term solution for Latin America. But before we do that. Gabby, please do us a favor. Introduce yourself here to The Brian Nichols Show audience, and obviously, tell us a little bit more about your story and why your story really does map over to our article today and why you're so passionate about this, this idea of helping rid Latin America of socialism and communism. Of course,

Speaker 1  1:57  
I was born and raised in Havana, Cuba. I lived there until I was 24 so most of my you know, childhood, adolescence and and young adult life. I moved to the Cayman Islands at that age, and finally managed to come to the US in 2019 to join my my family, my dad and my siblings, after being apart for a decade. So that's the price that Cuban families have to pay in order to be able to leave. So I'm absolutely passionate about raising awareness with everyone else in the rest of the world when it comes to the effects of these policies have and restrictions have on the life of people and families. So now that I'm here in Austin, Texas, beautiful city. I've been blessed to work with a dissident project. It's a non profit organization that puts people like me that fled totalitarian regimes in touch with student audiences to just tell them what it's like to grow up in a country with socialism, communist policies, and what that looks like. We also work with young voices to bring these stories to people and hopefully prevent that from happening in other countries like the United States. So we are big advocates for individual freedoms and religious freedom and just protecting that because it can be taken away in a second.

Brian Nichols  3:16  
So before we dig into your article today, discussing how you're arguing we should help push these Latin American countries away from some of these very, very destructive ideas and policies. I would just love to first talk about what these policies actually look like from a true grassroots perspective, living there, experiencing it firsthand, because in America, a lot of folks who are proponents of this more socialist, communist way of living. I would dare say they're silly socialists or limousine liberals or crazy communists themselves, but they really they haven't had to live by the very policies that they themselves are promoting. It's it's very much in theory. And yet, there are folks just like you, Gabby and your family, who have grown up in areas where you're very much living the very life that a lot of these socialists and communists and progressives in America would love to live well so they think so let's set the stage here. What is life like when you're living in a socialist communist regime, and I guess, what's the real impact as an average everyday person there?

Speaker 1  4:20  
Right? So a great way of putting it is your life is never your own. From the moment that you are born, you're pretty much raised by the state. You spend more time at school than you do at home for a long time, religion was forbidden. If Christmas was banned for 30 years, Good Friday was banned for 50 years. Just to give you an idea exactly of how important it is for a communist state or dictatorship to be in absolute control of what people say and do and think so. You are restricted when it comes to travel. You are not allowed to invest freely or purchase what you need, up until recently, purchasing a home or a. Car was illegal in Cuba, so we pretty much had to grow up with, you know, food rationing systems and blackouts and no fuel. My family had bicycles as a means of transport to take us to school and go to work. So life is really, really tough, and that's the reason why families like mine would prefer to be apart for decades, some of them even longer than my family. In order to at least be able to eventually leave the country, you have to be pretty desperate to be able to do something like that, or go on a raft and go out at sea. So life, it's just it's never going to go anywhere. You know that you have nothing to look forward to if you stay in a place like Cuba until something changes, and that's what motivates people to leave. Then you get to countries like the United States, and you see firsthand the amount of sympathy that, especially the younger generation has for this idea that has been sold to them. And I believe Cuba and Castro did a did a good job, unfortunately, selling this utopia to the world that we have, you know, free education and free healthcare and food rationing for everyone, so no one goes hungry. And it's it's the opposite. We have no medicine. There's not an antibiotic to be found in Cuba, schools are terrible and falling apart. Every teacher, every good doctor, has left. There is no food, there is no fuel, and houses like infrastructure is crumbling in every sector. So the idea that they have over here that somehow that wealth redistribution that happened early in the revolution worked, it's absolutely ridiculous, and that's not the case, and that's why people like me who never really got involved in, let's say, politics or anything like that, come here and are so motivated to get in front of student audiences and in front of people and tell them, from our perspective and from our experience, what it's really like, and start to counter what everything that governments like mine put out there, which is not true.

Brian Nichols  7:03  
Well, governments like yours put out there. And frankly, governments like we had here in America. I'm old enough to remember when President Barack Obama went down to Cuba and basically was doing this PR tour on behalf of the Cuban Communist regime, saying, we're going to open up the doors to Cuba. We're gonna start to normalize relations. And with that, it was a tour around Cuba to make things look like, hey, they're not so bad. So the fact that your government was doing it, but then just the fact that our government was doing it as well, yeah, it doesn't give you the warm and fuzzies. So Gabby, I guess with that being said, there is obviously a big push here in America from more of our far left friends on the progressive left side of the aisle who I would dare say would very much embrace a communist, socialist type of policies here in America. And as a matter of fact, we've seen very much so in other areas, whether that's dei or ESG or trying to put caps on rent, or whatever that may be, you're starting to see a creeping of these policies from an American perspective. Now, you wrote an article over at, I think it was vis guard 24 keep me honest there. Yeah, there we go. Why is that not sharing here? Let me share this really quick share screen, magic of internet. There we go. So, yeah, the tariffs and sanctions are the long term solution for Latin America. You know, I look at this article and Gabby, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I'm a little nervous because I read your article. Is the idea of tariffs and sanctions, which they themselves are, in some ways, I say some ways, absolutely and always, they are government control, right? They are government pushing down different government edicts on the free market in order to to make a change in whether it's policy or culture or what have you. So is this a situation of trying to fight fire with fire? And if so, is there a risk that, you know, in the pursuit of trying to rid Latin America, of these socialist and communist types of policies that we actually end up making America a little bit more in line with that very thing we're trying to destroy.

Speaker 1  9:11  
Well, this article was first written in response to the Trump administration early March, I believe it was to put tariffs on Mexico and cancel Chevron's license to operate in Venezuela. So I'm one to obviously always try to stay away from government control whenever possible, because I know what that looks like and what what the end game can be. However, we are seeing the results of letting these policies go unchecked in the continent and continuing to let these dangerous alliances that have been going on for decades against the United States openly against the United States and their interests, and we're now seeing what that looks like with the rising crime rates and migration crisis and everything happening at the border and more drugs coming. And so unfortunately, yes, free trade is wonderful, as long as we can have it. However, there is a dangerous and even bigger threat to strengthening your opponents and financing the very countries that are working against you. Countries like Cuba, Venezuela have openly financed, you know, intelligence work here in the United States against US interests. They have financed guerlas all over Latin America to spread anti us sentiment and anti capitalist sentiment. They have sent criminals. Cuba has done this for decades. They have empty prisons and sent criminals over here. And every time there was a government like Obama and a president that was more lenient, they would just take that opportunity to create these big migration waves and continue sending people to put pressure on the US, you know, healthcare system and the US, social services and the US border Venezuela is not short behind we've already seen now and getting confirmation on how they are, also sending criminal and gang members over here, sponsored by the government. So free trade is an amazing tool, as long as you can have it. However, economic freedom is more than the ability of a country like I explained in the article to just trade freely. It's also it needs to be, it needs to be a two way street, and you, sadly, cannot continue sponsoring the work that is being done against you, because the United States has let that go unchecked for so long, and now you're seeing an increase of all of these issues. And it's time to target those. It's time to target the root cause, which is governments that refuse to cooperate with the United States and are actively working against the United States while also meeting the benefit of free trade with the US. And sadly, you cannot have both ways. As a Cuban, you were talking about Obama, we saw exactly what happened? A lot of Cubans were really hopeful when that visit happened, hoping that that was finally a time for both of our countries to get close and relations to get better. What ended up happening is restrictions were lifted in several ways. The Cuban Government pocketed all that money. They strengthened their military. What happened in the few years after Obama visited, we had almost twice as much as many political prisoners. Repression got a lot worse. Any exchange, cultural exchange that was meant to happen, or a free travel, it was only it was really one sided, so Cuban, so, so none of that benefit. It was really more for us tourists. So really, nothing good came from that. And it just goes to show that, unfortunately, you cannot negotiate with terrorists and you cannot enrich terrorists that are working against your country. It's never going to work. At least that was the point of my article, is to hopefully bring people to see that, yes, there are always going to be short term effects of economic sanctions and restrictions, and you're going to see an economic slowdown, especially in border states, and you're going to see higher prices. However, what you will see in the long run, if these dictatorships and countries that are enemies of the US continue to get stronger, continue to openly collaborate with China and Russia and Iran and the US is also enriching their pockets. The effects of that are going to be a lot worse in the long term, which is why the political considerations need to be taken when it comes to analyzing who we are going to trade freely with.

Brian Nichols  13:39  
So let me ask you this, because obviously, for what the past 50 years, Cuba has pretty much been just isolated from the rest of the continental United States. And a lot of that, I say a lot about is entirely due to the fact that the Castro regime has been embracing communism back during the Cold War, was very buddy buddy with the Soviet Union. So we see that the sanctions, we see, you know, the tariffs, call it what you will, for the the impact on the Cuban government, but the Cuban people, I would dare say, we're also struggling and suffering from that as well. So what's the what's the best alternative? Gabby, if you know, you guys were suffering from, you know, sanctions, and directly, the people were suffering from those sanctions for for decades, and opening up the the doors didn't make things better either. So it seems like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. So is there a middle ground here? I

Speaker 1  14:29  
don't think there's a middle ground with the dictatorship in Cuba, unfortunately, until they just have to go. And I think the restrictions from the United States have never been in place long enough in the in the same way, so that it puts constant pressure on them for a long time, some real change. So every time, like President Trump in his first term, he put restrictions in place, like more he actually was following all the embargo restrictions that we're supposed to have since the 60s. Because, as you may. Mentioned, not only did they collaborate with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, but they also stole an estimated 8 billion in today's market from people when they nationalized every company that they had Cuban and American citizens. And this is, these are the reasons for the embargo, and a lot of people to know that the Cuban government stole all of that without compensation. To this day, the embargo also has a very limited categories that it affects. So it doesn't include medicine, or it doesn't restrict medicine or medical supplies. It doesn't restrict food, it doesn't restrict communication. So a company could go tomorrow to mobile, could go tomorrow to Cuba, and, you know, set up a business, but Cuba won't let them. So the reasons Cubans cannot travel, invest, trade, is not because of the US. It's because of the Cuban government. Most of the chicken that comes into Cuba comes from the US. You know, luxury cars we have. We have all of that. For certain people, most of the beans come from the US. And so with countries like Obama lifting even more restrictions, what happens is it never sticks for long enough. So then you had Trump, and then you have Biden removing Cuba from the list of sponsors of terrorism and lifting more sanctions again, and then comes Trump and puts the sanctions back. So it's always this back and forth between republican and democratic governments over here, then it just never it just never sticks. What Cubans are hoping for is for an actual firm hands when it comes to the thieves and the kidnappers that have kidnapped our country. So no free trade with the dictatorship, no trade, if you can help it, and a firm hand so they can finally go. But it's not going to be enough if you do that for just the four years of Trump's presidency, and then somebody else comes and relaxes measures, so they know that too, so they just have to wait it out a little bit, and then it just goes back so

Brian Nichols  16:52  
well. And let's talk about that, Gabby, because and listen, this might be my my pessimism, I don't know, but that I my guts telling you that that's not going to change too often, because we see this in America. It very much is, you know, every four, eight or 12 years, you see some swing from the left to the right, from the right to the left, back and forth it goes. So I my guts telling me that this is going to be a constant, that you're going to have to and the Cuban people are going to have to grapple with that America. Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to be this steadfast. You know, well, from a policy standpoint, this steadfast ally in terms of helping get rid of the communist regime, and then maybe this is my American revolutionary blood still in my system here. But like, at what point do the Cuban folks have to say, hey, nobody's coming to save us, right America, they can't help us. We want them to help us, but they really can't unless it's boots on the ground. At what point does the Cuban people have to say, You know what, enough is enough, and actually stand up and physically fight back against the Castro regime? Well,

Speaker 1  18:03  
it's long overdue, and I absolutely agree it's no one else's place to come and save us, and no one else can do that. What we are hoping for is that at least the US is not contributing to keeping them in power any longer, like even We saw this with a US aid, they've donated millions to Cuba over the past decade, I think it's been like 128

Brian Nichols  18:24  
29 USA ID, the the slush fund that Doge was just ripping apart,

Speaker 1  18:28  
correct? So a lot of that money has also gone to organizations that are not supposed to be linked to the Cuban government. But of course, they are, because everything the dictatorship has its hands on everything. So what we're hoping to do with the trade restrictions and the embargo measures and the no more donations and financing is that at least the US stops financing or assisting in keeping them in power any longer, while also simultaneously doing the work over here to educate people, because this should not be a partisan issue. Unfortunately, it is. Unfortunately the American left today sympathizes with and they I haven't been here for long enough, but it looks like they have been kidnapped by complete communists and people with the same interest and the same Marxist ideology that took over my country. I'm not sure if this would have been the case 50 years ago. It shouldn't be no every party should agree that the longest standing dictatorship in the hemisphere and one of the longest in the world that is responsible for 10s of 1000s of executions and debts and migration crisis and economic columns and the destruction of a country, we should all agree that they need to go. No one should agree. No one should be financing that. No one should be supporting that. But here we are, so we are trying to do the work over here to at least, you know, future voters in America can take that into account when voting for these policies that continue just keeping them alive, keeping them in power. And that's what we do, what we can. But I agree the United States is not. Going to be able to to do what Cubans need to do themselves. So what? What do you think

Brian Nichols  20:05  
has been the reason that your, your average Cubano, has not gone through is that, is it Cubano? Am I being okay? So, like, what's stopping your average Cubano from actually going out and saying, you know, what? Heck with this? We're done. What like? Why? Why hasn't it happened yet? Gabby, I guess that's my question.

Speaker 1  20:25  
Well, for the longest time, Cuban was an island, and that really worked in the favor of Castro since the beginning, because it was easy to keep it isolated. We had no internet. We could not travel. Cubans could not leave the island, unless you were a high official who was authorized to leave. So for the longest time, they did sell to Cubans that it was a great place to live, and the people were just not fighting it. Now today, what's happened is we have no way of fighting. Unfortunately, Cubans have no guns. That's one of the first things Castro did. In the beginning. We had big, big wave of protests in 2021 on july 11, which was a historic event, because we didn't have anything similar for almost at the beginning of revolution, like the revolution, 10s of 1000s of Cubans took to the streets to demand freedom, and they had six months to defend themselves. So when the government comes out, you know, they shoot a few people. They through right now we have, like, over 1300 political prisoners and more each day. So it's just it's very hard to defend yourself or overthrow a government if you have nothing to defend yourself with. And Cuba doesn't even have any borders, so it's not like anyone can assist. You can't smuggle things, and it's not that easy. So that's why, in this particular case, economic pressure is such an important thing, and we are not just requesting that from the US, but for the from the rest of the world like Cuba, a lot of even Cuban allies, have started to realize that Cuba just defaults on its debts and never pays anything back, and it's just a terrible country to invest in or trade with. But up until now, they've been getting support from, you know, the European Union, and they've been getting support from all these countries. So we're hoping that that will stop, because it's the only way we have to push for change in a peaceful way that doesn't require direct intervention from any of these countries like the United States. So that's step one. Step one is just cutting that lifeline off, and just step two, slowly, Cubans are going to have to get bolder and somehow go for it. But without guns, it's a very scary it's very scary thing.

Brian Nichols  22:40  
Yeah, well, and I guess you know, as we go towards the tail end of the episode today, like this, is one thing, it is so hard for your average american to really to empathize, not from that they don't want to, but because the context is is so different from being an American citizen versus being a Cuban citizen and seeing what the average day in the life looks like like if you grew up in one type of a world, that's just what you know, right? Whenever an American goes to Europe or to the Middle East, and they're like, Whoa, this is how other people live, or they go to Japan or China, and they're like, whoa, they're doing this out here, it's so eye opening, because we are only limited to the confines of where you grew up, or your state you grew up in, or the country you live in. In this case, America. And I don't even know the number, I'm curious to know. It's probably in the high 60, probably 70% if not more, of Americans who've never left the continental United States, they live entirely from the moment they are born to the moment they die in the good old US of A and a lot of those folks, I would dare say, don't venture outside of their their states or their cities. I remember I lived in Philadelphia for just shy of a decade, and I was taking an Uber one time, and we were driving from North Philadelphia down to South Philadelphia, and as we were getting down towards South Philadelphia, the Uber driver says, you know, this is the the furthest I've actually ever been in Philly. And I go in Philly, huh? Yeah, that's pretty cool. He goes, Yeah, you know, we don't really get to venture out too much from North Philly. And I was like, Oh, well, you ever go on vacation anywhere like you ever, no, no. And I was like, Wait, so you've never left here like you've never, you've never gone north to the Scranton area. You've never crossed the bridge over to Jersey. You've never ventured over to, you know, to Delaware, down I 95 Nope. This is where I've been my entire life. This guy's like, his 40s, right? So for someone to spend 40 years literally in one city and never to see anything else. I get it like I understand why that becomes the status quo, that becomes your norm, and it is so hard to try and get somebody to see something for the first time when they're not even willing to take a step. I guess. So I say all that you know, I look at that one gentleman that was my Uber driver, and I want to draw the comparison to the rest of America. Like, if this is all you know, right, you're gonna have a very limited world view. You're gonna have a very narrow lens of what real life is versus what could be. And I guess I look at where your average Cuban is, I would pray that they start to fight back, whether that's starting to find allies, right, that we can start to, I don't know, arm the Cuban, the Cubans. I don't want to get involved in another regime change. But when you talk about the very real pain that your average Cuban has been living with for decades at this point, it does. It does lead to some type of like, I get it, I understand. And this is where you know, morally, in my own heart, I'm conflicted, because I want to help. I want to be able to help the Cubans fight back against the Castro regime. But at the same point in time, I don't want to be funding another war, and especially a war that is just, you know what, like, a couple miles south of Florida, right? So that's where I definitely get nervous. And I don't have all the answers, you know, Gabby for the show being 100% honest and candid. I don't want to present myself as I know all the answers, and I know how every lever, if we pull this lever, this is going to happen. But we have to have the conversation. So your article going back, you know, to what we were talking about today, at the end of the day, you're arguing that tariffs and sanctions are the long term solution for Latin America. So Gabby, I'm going to give you the final word today, make the argument for us, like, package it. Let this one be the viral article or the viral clip from the show. Right? Like, why should America and why should the rest of the world support sanctions and tariffs against the Cuban regime, and specifically, beyond that, the Latin American countries who embrace socialism and communism, the floor is

Speaker 1  26:54  
yours. Yeah, no one is trying to finance another war. War. I 100% agree. What we're hoping to do is get the world to realize that economic sanctions are one of the very few ways that countries have and even the citizens of those countries like myself have to push for change in a way that is not invasive, in a way that is not violence, and in a way that is hopefully permanent. I'm hoping that people will see that, yes, the short term effects will be there, but the long term effects will be so much greater for all of us, including American citizens. If these policies and these governments continue to be left unchecked, they have done enough damage to their own citizens, to the rest of the countries. Every single person that leaves is trying to come to the United States. Everyone has left it's coming to the United States. So this is the first country that is going to feel, and has been feeling the effects of these failed policies in other countries, and that's not going to change anytime soon. So it's time to stop funding the enemies of the United States. It's time to stop fun funding the people that are trying to destroy your own country. And there's nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing wrong with doing that. It's important to get in front of people. And I agree, people have a very limited worldview. If you haven't seen I always encourage whoever can travel if you think a country is doing better, if you think any of these policies has worked in any way, if you have an opportunity to save a little money, travel to Venezuela. It's harder to travel to Cuba, but you can. You can go to Colombia. You can go to Mexico, you can go to Venezuela, you can go to Nicaragua. See what that looks like, stay for a week, talk to people, and you will see, and it's important for Cubans, we we haven't done that in a long time, and we're hoping that that's starting to change. Get in front of people. Have the patience. Not everyone understands the situation. Not everyone understands that it is a good thing sometimes to restrict trade and restrict economic interactions with countries like this. It's not because we want our people to suffer, because if we did, if we didn't care, we would not be spending time doing this right? So that's that's my hope, that people see the importance of that and that we have the patience to continue educating Americans on why it's important to vote against these policies that continue providing a pipeline for these corrupt governments and dictators to stay in power. And at the end of the day, American children are the ones that are going to pay the price as well.

Brian Nichols  29:17  
So you know, Gabby, I made my slogan for the show back in 2018 educate, enlighten and inform. I think this is one of those episodes that a lot of folks are going to walk away eyes wide open, because, no, we don't want Cuba just to be known for the sandwiches, the cigars and the communism, right? We want the Cuban folks to be known as the freedom fighters. So you know, definitely folks like just, just get aware, and if you can get involved, right? You know, reach out to Gabby. We'll include all the links here in the the show notes. But with that being said, Gabby, I've really appreciated your perspective here on today's show. Now, with that being said, call to actions. Where can folks go ahead, support you, follow you, if they want. To continue the conversation. Hit us with it. Yes,

Speaker 1  30:02  
you can find me on Instagram and x under underscore, Gabby Blanco. And more importantly, you can find the dissident project as well under the same name. You can find our website, dissidentproject.org, you can find all of the dissidents that we have. We'll send one of your pick to school with no cost to you, just for us to get in front of students and tell them about our experiences and answer all of their questions and hopefully change a heart or two. Just plant those seeds for for those future voters and the people of the future. So that's that's where you can find us good

Brian Nichols  30:38  
stuff. Gabby, I've really appreciated you joining us here on the show. And folks, if you got some value from today's episode, or if you know some folks who need to hear today's episode, do me a favor. Please go ahead and give today's episode a share. When you do, please tag Gabby as well as yours truly. You can find me over on X, Instagram and Facebook, at B Nichols liberty, as for the show, you can find it on all your favorite podcasting platforms, Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, music, wherever it is you consume your podcast, or if you like to watch your favorite podcasts on the video versions, head over to YouTube, Rumble X and Facebook, where we upload the entire shows in its entirety over there, but also we do live stream the show On on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays over on Facebook, on rumble and on x. We changed the schedule a little bit. Gabby, it was Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but recently I joined the Lions of liberty network. So if I am now part of yes, the the entire team there of Brian McWilliams, John oder Matt and also newly edition Lou Perez, who is bringing some laughs to the lions of liberty networks. And my shows will be airing on Thursday evenings over on the lines of liberty feed. And then we do a one show every other week called politics like, you know, the ticks, the bugs, the blood suckers. Yeah, we do a show like that, where we will have a round table talk about some of the news of the week. So going over to the lions of liberty page. Hit that subscribe button, and of course, make sure you check out both The Brian Nichols Show and lines of liberty RSS feed so you don't you're not missing a single time we have a brand new show hitting the feeds with that being said. Gabby, any final words for the audience as we wrap things up today?

Speaker 1  32:15  
No, thank you for having me. And just stay vigilant. Protect your individual freedoms and just fight socialism in any shape or form. Here,

Brian Nichols  32:22  
here, fight, fight, fight. I'm channeling my inner Trump with that being said, Brian Nichols, signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Gabby Blanco. We'll see you next time. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai