This article was originally published by Truthout on July 20, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
The State Department has released a report that labels Cuba as the “ideological capital” of left-wing politics in a document seemingly imitating Cold War politics published amid the Trump administration’s fascistic crackdown on the left.
The 99-page report is entitled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” It argues that, since the rise of Fidel Castro and left-wing revolutionary thought in the Caribbean country in the 1950s and ‘60s, the country’s brand of left-wing politics “now enjoys something approaching ideological hegemony both within and beyond the West.” Though Cuba itself is a “failed state,” the report says, its political project has still spread to the point of threatening “Western civilization itself.”
The ultimate goal for the small island state is “conquering the neighboring United States,” the report asserts. “Since 1959, Cuba has been — and without fundamental, radical reforms, will always be — less a nation-state than an all-encompassing intelligence and subversion operation, focused around its existential revolution against the United States,” the report says.
In reality, the report comes as the U.S. is seemingly preparing for an invasion of or assault on Cuba. For months, President Donald Trump has threatened that Cuba is “next” on the U.S. military’s hitlist. And CBS reported last week that Pentagon officials have been preparing a “range of options” including an air assault of the country — which is already on the brink after the Trump administration’s months-long total oil blockade has caused wave after wave of nationwide blackouts.
Indeed, the report hits on two of the Trump administration’s goals: the vilification of Cuba ahead of potential military action against the country, as well as the creation of a myth of an organized and violent left that is prepared to destroy the U.S., as administration officials kickstarted last week.
The sprawling document names numerous American left-wing groups, some of which have not been active or prominent in decades, as “front groups and fellow travelers” of Cuba.
This includes groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), National Lawyers Guild, Code Pink, and Cuba solidarity groups The Cuban Institute of Friendship with Peoples and the National Network on Cuba. The document also ties racial solidarity movements with Cuba, flimsily insinuating that Cuba is the driving force behind much of the Black Lives Matter movement and pro-immigrant, anti-ICE movements.
The report cites “examples” that are often just symbolic declarations of support for the Cuban people, taking them to improbable logical extremes.
DSA, for instance, isn’t under any control of the Cuban government, the report says. Yet, it is still a major part of the “Cuban influence operation,” the State Department claims, solely because its members espouse left-wing ideals and have expressed solidarity with the population of Cuba amid the U.S.’s sanctions regime on the country.
State Department officials also call out individual Americans who have expressed opposition to the U.S.’s policies on Cuba or otherwise participated in the Cuba solidarity movement, including prominent figures like Hasan Piker, Zohran Mamdani, Chris Smalls, Isra Hirsi, and Amy Goodman.
The report does not discuss the U.S.’s decades of meddling and suppression of Cuba’s government. In that context, the report only brings up left-wing groups’ condemnation of the failed Bay of Pigs operation and the sanctions regime as supposed proof that they are controlled by Cuba — rather than motivated by credible human rights concerns such as those raised by the United Nations.
The document is reminiscent of Cold War-era assessments and propaganda against the Soviet Union and other countries vilified by the U.S. at the time, even quoting Cold War-era reports on the supposed threat of “Communist subversion” — a key difference being that the Soviet Union was actually taking substantial action to back political movements in other countries.
At the time, President Harry S. Truman reoriented U.S. foreign policy toward combating the growing influence of the Soviet Union and China, and spoke of the need for the U.S. to combat such “aggression.” This spiraled into decades of proxy wars ranging across the world, from Cuba to Afghanistan to Korea to Vietnam, as well as the McCarthyist campaign to silence and imprison left-wing dissidents at home.
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