By Angel Guerra Cabrera on June 10, 2021
The dictatorship of the algorithm is the title of a very interesting Cuban documentary premiered on the island on June 4 on television (see its official FB page). Directed by Javier Gómez Sánchez, it effectively dismantles not only the economic and political interests behind algorithms, those supposedly neutral mathematical models, but also the intensive use of the Internet by the United States as a weapon in its multidimensional, or fourth generational, war against Cuba. In any war the objective is the annihilation of the opponent, in this case “regime change”, who knows at what human cost in a country historically so guarded of its sovereignty and independence. This statement is not a slogan, it is backed up by conclusive facts such as the defeat of the mercenary invasion of Playa Giron and all the attempts to subdue the Cuban revolution by violent means.
The prolonged and bloody campaign of State terror against the island, also dismantled attempt after attempt, should not be forgotten. In view of these failures, it is significant that both political parties in the United States, from the administration of George W. Bush until today, agree on the soft coup as the magic formula that can suddenly create the perception of a defeated revolution. To achieve this, they make massive and very aggressive use of social networks.
According to official data, Washington invests 50 million dollars annually to promote “democracy” in Cuba, but this figure is much lower than the real one, since the largest part of the funds is a declared secret with the argument of protecting the recipients, or because it is part of the CIA budget. A significant portion is destined to sustain a huge digital media set-up whose sole purpose is subversion, regime change in Cuba, as explicitly stated in the Helms-Burton law of 1996, which is possibly the most barbaric and shameless attempt to give a semblance of legality to the monstrous interference in Cuba’s political destiny. Dozens of groups and individuals on the island receive money from the U.S. taxpayer as “activists”, “independent journalists” or “artists”. In the case of the recently launched Movimiento San Isidro, the sponsorship of the U.S. government and its embassy in Cuba is graphically documented. The movement, of course, is just a figure of speech; it is a pro-U.S. concoction of the worst taste, totally alien to the democratic ideals of which the Cuban Constitution and political order are radical bearers. It was, however, part of the recent attempted soft coup in Cuba and continues to be part of that criminal scheme.
The dictatorship of the algorithm documents the machinery of seduction and terror that Washington is trying to impose on the island through social networks, aimed especially at the new generations. On the one hand, to create a taste in the subject and then attract him by offering him the object that matches that taste. On the other hand, to discipline audiences so that they do not think with their own heads, so that individuals do not dare to express their own criteria, because it breaks with the supposed consensus existing in the group and exposes the offender to the virtual firing squad in the sort of public square that are the networks. In the case of Cuba, the demonization of whoever dares to pronounce words as organic, endearing and typical of the daily life of the island as revolution. Or as odious but omnipresent as blockade or empire. In order to disqualify, terrorize and isolate those who utter them, Washington’s mercenary media have created the label of “officialist”, which frightens not a few young people educated in the idea of rebellion. It is an offensive against nothing less than the revolutionary institutionality in general and the institutions of culture in particular, defective as everything human, but as important as they have been throughout years of revolution to make culture massive and encourage the emergence of talents. All this drama is explained in the film made by a mostly young group of communication scholars, artists, students and a former state security agent, whose approaches are talented, honest, sensitive and up-to-date on the evolution of cyberspace and its ambushes on an international scale.
The Cuban government… has the vigor, the forcefulness, the cultural and moral strength to encourage the debate convened by the eighth congress of the Communist Party of Cuba on the development of the strategy to defeat the imperialist enemy in the battle of ideas in social networks. And also, how to use these networks to form patriotic, socialist, internationalist values, to create ethical standards and aesthetic tastes at the height of the revolutionary project.
Source: La Pupila Insomne, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English