While much of the discourse surrounding foreign election meddling has focused on Russia in 2016 and 2020, and Iran and China more recently, Cuba has sustained attempts to influence American elections, and according to industry experts, they appear to be escalating their efforts ahead of the 2024 election.
Breitbart News reports:
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) warned in a briefing on Monday that the communist regime of Cuba is looking to actively interfere in America’s 2024 election, not only influencing votes for president but seeking to aid pro-communist candidates in local and congressional races.
An ODNI official who preferred to remain anonymous said, “Havana almost certainly has considered influence efforts targeting some candidates. Havana may be, as it has done in previous cycles, trying to curry favor from congressional and sub-national politicians that it believes will support its preferred policies. Havana is very focused on a few policy issues that it believes to be negatively impacting the regime, particularly the U.S. embargo on Cuba and other economic and travel restrictions, all of which Havana perceives as an effort to force regime change.”
Communists have long denied their ideology’s overwhelming failure in Cuba, and on the rare occasion they acknowledge the island’s rampant and crippling poverty, they often blame the United States embargo, though many Cuban-Americans support the embargo and insist that the widespread suffering in the once-prosperous country has much more to do with Cuba’s economic system and government than America’s trade policies.
Another official says, “Havana considers election influence activities as part of its standing requirements to influence those policies, and Florida is a prime target of their activities. To that end, we have observed Cuba tailoring influence activities based on its perception of a candidate’s stances on policies toward Cuba. For example, in 2020 Havana intended to denigrate specific candidates in Florida and pushed influence narratives to the Latin American community in the United States.”
Florida has a high population of Cuban-Americans, and while they have traditionally voted Republican and been vocal and passionate critics of the Cuban government, younger generations that have never lived under Castro’s rule have demonstrated more openness towards left-wing ideas.
Though the regime has tried to influence previous elections, they ODNI officials believe they’re ramping up their operations, and perhaps believe this election cycle will be more consequential.
Breitbart News continues:
Citing a greater ODNI report on election interference, the independent outlet Cubanet on Tuesday reported that the American agency described Cuba as “not new to these intents, but the current conditions allow them to intensify their efforts.” In addition to contacting sympathetic candidates, the ODNI suggested that Cuba is bombarding Americans with “disinformation” campaigns to favor the communist agenda.
The regime has also more directly involved itself in American politics by supporting communists in the U.S. In September, for example, several high-ranking Communist Party officials were allowed to travel to Atlanta, Georgia, where they engaged in meetings with radical leftist agitators in the local community. The officials were reportedly invited by a “progressive” radio station known as “Radio Free Georgia,” a play on the U.S. government’s series of anti-communist broadcasters used during the Cold War.
More indirectly, the Cuban regime has in the past used America’s free social media outlets to spread communist propaganda through automated accounts. In 2018, the Cuban Democratic Directorate, a Florida-based human rights group, documented the existence of dozens of Twitter accounts linked to the communist regime, spreading propaganda pretending to be regular Cuban citizens who loved their government. In reality, many of the accounts used stock photos of young people or photos of foreign celebrities. Following an inquiry by Breitbart News, Twitter shut down many of the accounts.
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