In the years when fascism was on its peak, and also before and after the World War II Cuba was not directly attacked. At that time, we were the colony of the United States concealed under the image of an independent republic. We had a government that supported the Allies, but it had nothing to do with its beliefs or with its principles. Rather the external policy of this caricature of a republic followed without question that of its Northern master.

As for the masses, there was a profound anti-fascist sentiment that appeared mostly in the face of the dramatic fate of the Spanish Republic. There were many Cuban volunteers that fought against Francisco Franco's troops, who was supported by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. The famous writer Pablo de la Torriente Brau was one of the most recognizable Cuban volunteers. He lost his life fighting in Majadahonda, near Madrid.

During the 1950s the influence of anti-communist and anti-Soviet propaganda of the Cold War gathered momentum. This was a production of the Yankee's laboratories of McCarthyism. It was the United States' far-right tendencies — with visibly proto-fascist traits — that flooded the island.

Nowadays in Cuba there are no neo-fascist expressions. But, on the other hand, such trends sure are present among emigrants of Cuban origin who live in the state of Florida. The Trump’s policy of toughening the blockade against the Cuban Revolution comes from the bond between this Administration and the most reactionary tendencies of those emigrants. When they refer to our country and to their unrealistic plans to reverse the history of Cuba that have failed so many times, their spokesmen resort to a rhetoric that is fascist, vengeful and that belongs to fanatical anti-communism.

On the other hand, it is obvious that from a certain point fascism again began to grow in the US, Latin America and Europe.

Beginning with his 2016 electoral campaign Trump used a sort of aggressive political speech based on racist expressions directed against migrants and countries that belong to "inferior" races, and on the ultranationalist and messianic allegations against everything that, from his point of view, could cause damage to America’s greatness.

This proto-fascist projection of Trump worked in two directions. Outwards, it is an external policy charged with arrogance, disdain and racism, reliance on the use of force, on pressure, blackmailing and intimidation, and also on ignoring the basic concepts of multilaterism and all of the principles on which stands the UN. Inwards it is a policy with renewed McCarthyism, inciting fear of "others", intolerance and the fanatical reactions of the white supremacism.

When mass shootings take place in that country, the press always wonders what could have happened to the assassin or what mental illness he suffered from, in other words, what could justify his actions.

Because of legal traps against progressive leaders, the sinister role of Organization of American States and the United States, and manipulation of elections by dominant mass media and social networks, a radical shift towards the far-right wing occurred in some countries of Latin America.

At the same time, in Europe some groups with a reactionary, demagogic, anti-immigrant and xenophobic platform have benefited from the lack of legitimacy of traditional parties and the uncertainty in which many people live in the midst of the current crisis which is ethical, cultural, economic, of all kinds. A crisis that is related to the way of life and "happiness", to the broken paradigms of modernity, to the way of understanding the present and the future, and the way of looking back at the past. Those proto-fascist or clearly fascist movements gained resounding victories in the elections and obtained a notable number of seats in regional and national parliaments and even in European Parliament itself.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, announced in 2019 that the UN was preparing a strategy against "hate speech". He also in a general manner referred to "some political leaders [that] are bringing the hate-fueled ideas and language" of some recalcitrant groups. "Hateful and destructive views" are amplified "exponentially" through digital technology and extremists are gathering online, radicalizing new recruits, said the UN chief.

As for the question about the possibility of stopping the rise of fascist barbarism, I would like to recall those moments when the president George W. Bush said that he was going to launch a "global crusade against terrorism" after the 9/11 attacks. Later, in 2002, in West Point he said that the US Army "must be ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world". "Dark", he said, and nobody discussed the racist intention of that word.

In 2003 when he announced the invasion of Iraq while in Miami the intransigent groups of citizens of Cuban origin took it to the streets to shout "Iraq now, Cuba after".

In the same year at a congress dedicated to the 150^th anniversary of birth of Cuban national hero José Martí, Fidel Castro declared that "the great battle will unfold in the field of ideas and not in the field of weapons" and urged those who attended the event to work tirelessly in order to "spread ideas" and to "spread conscience".

This was the initiative of a famous intellectual Pablo González Casanova and other Mexican writers and academics. Immediately many prominent figures from Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and Africa joined this network.

As expected, this project wasmet with silence by the dominant mass media, but this was an important step in the organization of a wide anti-imperialist and anti-colonial front that was lucid and capable of breaching the tissue of lies and manipulations as well as of making its voice heard.

The Network’s agenda included all of the crucial topics in order to save humanity from extinction and from detrimental effects of the tools of domination created by the imperialism. Among them are matters from the fight to stop the environmental crisis to the boosting the counteroffensive in the media in favor of the truth and going through the fight for peace, sovereignty and international legitimacy.

I think that in these dangerous circumstances we have to reinforce the work of the Network In Defense of Humanity and of its group of national coordinators and to continue to expand its contacts.

This organization must deal with the effects of the cultural domination machine of the Yankee Empire which instills in people, especially in the young generation, demobilizing ideas. The messages of this Yankee machine are simple and they are repeated in a direct or an indirect manner: the neoliberal order cannot be transformed, utopias are ended once and for all, those who still fight for them are solitary idealists, "failed", alien to the real world; you have to enjoy the moment, have fun, continue to copy the "famous people", consume, always use brand clothes on any possible occasion, and you should leave politics to the politicians.

When we take a look at the so-called alternative media, websites, TV channels and radio, digital and printed outlets, popular movements that rose up against neoliberalism, we understand that there is an uncountable number of people who fight against fascism in the world today. The problem here has to do with the fact that they are unorganized. The role of the Network In Defense of Humanity and of other organizations is to work tirelessly to work together.

We, the Cuban people, feel a deep admiration for an extraordinary feat of the Soviet Union that was done 75 years ago. If Hitler’s forces had been able to break Soviet resistance and to prevent its counteroffensive, the Nazi reign would have been imposed in Europe and probably in the whole world. It is difficult to imagine the consequences of a fascist triumph.

The brotherhood between our two countries has strong historical ties. One of these ties has to do with the story of three young Cubans who took part in the Great Patriotic War and fought hand in hand with their Soviet comrades in order to save the humanity from Nazism.

Due to difficult political circumstances which their families faced in Cuba, these three Cubans went to the Interdom — the Ivanovo International Boarding School, nearby Moscow, when they were kids. When the World War II started, they joined the noble fight for the defense of the Motherland.

Aldo Vivó died in 1943 defending Leningrad, while his brother Aldo lived through the horrors of the siege of the city. Enrique Villar took part in the liberation of Poland and died in combat in 1944. His remains lie in a cemetery in Poland along with the bodies of his Russian comrades.

Historians, academics, journalists and the powerful Western cultural industry, in particular the one that is controlled by the US, have worked to distort the history in order to deny the feat of the USSR.

If we take a look at the itinerary of the American cultural industry, we will see that it built an idealized and messianic reading of the history of that country for the consumption and the indoctrination of its own people and it did it in order to use this distortion of history everywhere.

From the controversial 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and to the motion pictures that served to heal the Vietnam syndrome, the bloody itinerary of the US has been looking for the version of history adjusted to the interests of the system in cinema, series and videogames.

The conquest of the Far West is presented in epic and "civilizing" terms. The genocide of the aboriginal population, its forced displacement, the massacres of the whole communities were the horrors picked up by Hollywood and shown as clashes between evil natives and white "civilized" cowboys and soldiers. Imperialist attacks, from Mexico to Iraq, were blessed by the entertainment industry.

I already mentioned one of the slanders committed by this cultural industry: the treatment of the World War II and the victory over Nazism. They have tried to convince the American citizens and the rest of the world that the Yankees were the "saviors of the democratic world in the face of the fascist barbarity". By doing this they want to ignore in a shocking manner the decisive and eternally heroic role of the USSR.

The Yankees also concealed and continue to conceal important historical facts as for example the — intentional — delay in opening the Western Front against Hitler which was agreed by the Allies. Indeed, before he became the president of the US, and before ordering a ferocious nuclear strike against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Harry S. Truman, as a Senator from Missouri, showed signs of wickedness and lack of ethical sense. When Germany invaded the USSR, he proposed to the US Congress this despicable strategy: "If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible".

There is another question about this war that Hollywood never reveals: American companies did extremely profitable business with Nazis. Coca-Cola produced for them a refreshing drink Fanta that became very popular in the Hitler’s Germany. IBM took on selling tabulating machine which Nazis used to take a census and classify persons by their race and religion, in other words, to identify Jews and to send them to extermination. The German subsidiary of General Motors, the number one producer of military trucks for Hitler, used slaves from the concentration camps. Henry Ford received in 1938 the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honor Nazi Germany could give to any foreigner.

There are two positions that neo-fascism has for the historical memory: to bet on "oblivion" and to promote collective amnesia so that the people live as fools, without their roots, without looking back, or to manipulate the past. The collision between the ideas of emancipation with the imperial and neo-fascist ideas concerns not only the present and the future, but also the past.

It is becoming essential that we work in two directions: spreading works based on historical analysis and adjusted to the truth — essays, books, documentaries and fiction films, and promoting by any means possible our critical thinking which uncovers lies and distortions.