The New Dark Age

Good day, spectators,

Let’s crack on and first let’s define the word barbarism seeing though I’ve used it in the title. Barbarism is not merely an act of violence; it is the systematic infliction of suffering on a civilian population to achieve a political goal. It is the calculated denial of life’s basic necessities such as food, light, medicine or movement, with the intent to break a people’s spirit and erase their sovereignty. And for 67 years, the United States has been committing this crime against the people of Cuba. Now, as I write this in early 2026, the Empire has tightened the noose to the point of strangulation.

The pretext is the all too familiar and transparent lie: Cuba’s government is a threat.

The truth on the other hand, is the unshakable reality that has driven every sanction, every sabotage attempt, and every assassination plot since 1959: Cuba is a threat only to an idea. It is a threat to the imperial doctrine that a small, poor nation in America’s ‘backyard’ must not be allowed to choose socialism, to provide free healthcare and education, and homes to live without the permission of Washington.

For this sin of self-determination, the crime of building a society where capital is not god, Cuba has been punished with the most enduring economic siege in modern history. This is not an ‘embargo’, which I consider to be a sterile, political term. It is a total blockade, designed to constrict and cripple. It is enforced by a plethora of laws with names like the Helms-Burton Act, which terrorises foreign companies from trading with the Island and allows the US to seize ships in international waters. Its goal, as US politician Robert Torricelli once admitted, was to…

And wreck havoc it has. The blockade is estimated to cost Cuba over $20 million every single day. But the true cost is measured in human terms as in every country the Empire dislikes: in the empty pharmacy shelves where life-saving medicines should be; in the chronic power outages that plunge hospitals and homes into darkness; in the ‘inflation tax’ that erodes the value of a Cuban’s meagre wages.

the fuel blockade: strangulation by executive order.

In late January 2026, this decades-long crime entered its most savage phase. Donald Trump signed a new executive order declaring Cuba an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ and, crucially, vowing to impose aggressive tariffs on any country that dares to send it oil.

But this is not a simple sanction, it is a fuel blockade. Its purpose is to paralyse a whole nation. And Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel stated as much. ‘They wish to stop transportation, halt food production, cripple the healthcare system, and darken children’s schools.’

The US has followed through on its threats already by seizing oil tankers bound for Cuba in the Caribbean.

The timing is cynically precise. This escalation followed the US-orchestrated kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. Venezuela, Cuba’s key ally and oil supplier for years, was forced under duress to cut off all fuel and funds to Havana. Trump boasting of this triumph:

The objective is as transparent as it is insidious, they wish to induce the total systemic collapse they have ‘predicted’ (fabricated) for sixty years. White House mouthpiece Karoline Leavitt gleefully pronounced the Cuban government ‘on its last leg’. They are the arsonist, pouring petrol on a house and then announcing the fire as proof the house was poorly built.

the crime of resilience.

What makes this crime uniquely barbaric is the target. Cuba is not a failed state; it is a resilient society that has built a civilisation of care in the face of unrelenting aggression.

And on that topic, whilst the US denies its own citizens basic healthcare, Cuba guarantees it free for all, resulting in an infant mortality rate that has rivalled or bettered that of the United States. When New York’s firefighters fell ill after 9/11, it was Cuban doctors who treated them because they couldn’t afford it in the US. Whilst the Empire exports bombs, Cuba exports doctors, having saved millions of lives worldwide with its medical missions.

This resilience is forged in collective memory. Older Cubans remember the ‘Special Period’ of the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union meant losing 85% of their trade overnight. They survived on rations, turned parks into urban farms, and kept their society intact. The current crisis is a grim sequel, but the will to resist is untainted. Today, you can see videos of the peoples’ president Díaz-Canel leading rallies, not with promises of plenty or quick fixes, but with a call for disciplined endurance and a turn to the sun, quite literally…

Faced with an oil blockade, Cuba is racing to build solar parks, with a goal of generating 24% of its power from renewables by 2030. If the Empire can shut off the oil, Cuba will harvest the sun. This is the ultimate defiance: not just to survive the blockade, but to use it as a catalyst and moment to build a future beyond the reach of the wretched US.

But the Empire is not content to simply strangle and wait. In early February, a refinery fire broke out at one of Cuba’s fuel facilities (notably the first such incident in years). What a remarkable coincidence that it should occur precisely when the US has cut off all oil and gas supplies. The timing is so perfect it barely requires comment. When sabotage is the empire’s signature move, every ‘accident’ becomes suspect.

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Yet even as the flames rose, the Cubans rose with them. In response to the intensifying crisis, millions took to the streets in the ‘Marcha de las Antorchadas’ (the March of the Torches). They walked through the night, torches held high, in a brilliant show of national unity and defiance. President Díaz-Canel led from the front, surrounded by his people, walking amongst them with no fear, no security cordon separating leader from citizen.

Imagine any American president doing that. You can’t, because the relationship between the US government and its people is fundamentally different. It is one of fear and distance, not solidarity.

This is what resistance looks like when it is rooted in something deeper than individual survival, when it is a collective commitment to a shared future and a refusal to let the empire dictate the terms of existence.

the deafening silence of the ‘anti-imperialists’.

And here we arrive at the most disgraceful element of this crime: the complicity of silence.

Where is all the outrage? Where are the streets filled with protesters chanting for Cuba as we did for Palestine? I’ve noticed many of the same Americans who rightly condemn the genocide in Gaza, who wear Che Guevara t-shirts and fetishise revolutionary aesthetics, are largely mute as the Cuban revolution is slowly, deliberately strangled on their doorstep.

This is the hypocrisy of geographical morality. Solidarity, for far too many, is a performance reserved for conflicts that are photogenic and distant, not for the slow, bureaucratic violence of a blockade that has lasted longer than most of its commentators have been alive.

But solidarity is not a fashion. It is a duty. It is recognising that the same Empire that drops bombs on Gaza is the one denying fuel to Cuban hospitals. That the same logic of domination that seeks to erase Palestine aims to extinguish the light in Havana.

Cuba has explicitly called for international solidarity. Small groups in Europe have answered, projecting ‘Hands off Cuba!’ on the European Commission. Mexico, defying US threats, has sent navy ships with over 800 tonnes of food. China is not only helping build solar infrastructure but also sending thousands of tonnes of food to alleviate the immediate crisis. And in a direct challenge to Washington’s threats, Russia has stepped up, pledging to provide fossil fuels to Cuba to help break the chokehold regardless of consequences. But this is a drop in the ocean against the tide of imperial pressure.

The demand is simple, moral, and backed by 187 out of 193 United Nations member states who vote annually to condemn this blockade: end it. Now. Lift every sanction. Stop seizing tankers. Let Cuba breathe, let it trade and grow, let its people live without the weight of an Empire on their necks.

To stand for Palestine is to stand for Cuba, is to stand for Venezuela and Iran and any other countries unfairly bullied. To be anti-imperialist is to be consistent. The crime against Cuba is one of the oldest and clearest in the ledger. Our silence is our complicity. Our voice is our weapon. Use it.

Every time you turn on a light with the flick of a switch, remember there is a whole nation being pushed into darkness for the crime of choosing its own path.

Oh and Epstein hated Cuba and was terrified of Fidel Castro, just saying.