Did Fidel Castro say: “The next war in Europe will be between Russia and fascism, only this fascism will be called democracy”?

The leader of the Cuban Revolution is credited with a quote that "predicted" the development of European history and the rhetoric that politicians would use during key events. We have verified the correctness of this attribution.

Beginning in late June 2022, dozens of groups on VKontakte published a quote attributed to Fidel Castro. Among the largest publics - "Donetsk DPR LPR news Donbass Russia Novorossiya" (279,000 subscribers at the time of writing this analysis), "Russia | Z O V | General Staff reports" (277,000), “The USA is a sponsor of world terror (16+)” (264,000), "Patriots of Russia" (176,000), "The Art of War" (172,000) and "For Mother Russia" (105,000). Some of these posts clarify that the long-time leader of Cuba said these words in 1992.

On July 17, with this alleged statement, Castro began fast in his Telegram channel (165,000 subscribers), orientalist and regular participant in political talk shows on Russian federal television, Evgeny Satanovsky. On the same day, his publication was retold, mentioning the Castro quote, Life.ru, "Sight", "Economy Today", SM News And "News of Yakutsk". Other Telegram channels also attributed the loud statement to Fidel Castro, for example "Unofficial Bezsonov Z" (238,000 subscribers) and "Alexander Semchenko" (181,000). It’s also easy to find her on other social networks (for example, Facebook* And Twitter).

Unlike many quotes from famous people that have been circulating on social media for years, the words attributed to Castro are something of a novelty. Earliest mention, which we were able to find on VKontakte, dates back to April 9. Then the statement was posted in the group “Society of Cosmic Marxists-Darwinists,” and until the end of June the quote was mentioned only by the authors of isolated posts. Russian-speaking Twitter users also made this statement for the first time mentioned in April.

Foreign Internet users began en masse to attribute to Castro the quote about “the next war in Europe” before it became popular in the Russian media space. In April 2022 it was published on Serbian, English, French, German and (especially often) Spanish languages. For example, on Twitter it first appeared in Spanish in a post published on April 6.

We were unable to find a single resource in Google searches that published a Castro quote before the spring of 2022. Working with the Google Books service led to similar results. In a fairly extensive collection of quotes, interviews and public speeches by Castro, collected University of Computer Science in Havana, this phrase also does not exist.

The author of one of the early tweets with a quote from Castro, published in German on April 7, quotes a phrase referring to Max Lesnik Menendez - Cuban journalist, who has lived in the USA since the early 1960s. We could not find a note or book in which Forester Menendez quoted Castro's words about the "next war in Europe." However, the journalist is very active on his Facebook page and regularly publishes photographs of the comandante or his thoughts about him. For the first time Forester Menendez brought on the social network a quote from his idol only on July 4 (by then it had already become widely known). At the same time, the journalist claims that the leader of the Cuban revolution personally told him these words in 1992.

In the Spanish-language segment of Facebook, you can also find quite a lot of similar posts published at the end of March 2022. Their authors write: "Max Lesnik Menendez a few days ago wrote: “When the Soviet Union collapsed, Fidel once told me: the next war in Europe will be between Russia and fascism, only fascism will be called democracy.” However, in some tweets published in April, approvedthat the journalist made Castro’s statement public a few years ago. None of these posts discuss the circumstances in which Forester Menendez shared this memory, or the details of that conversation.

Our colleagues from the German project Correctiv sent email to Max Lesnik Menendez asking about the origin of the Castro quote. So far the journalist has not responded to it.

Thus, the widely circulated quote from the Comandante is known only from one source - the statements of journalist Max Lesnik Menendez, and about the words of Castro, deceased in 2016, for some reason he remembered only in the spring of 2022. The statement attributed to Castro is not recorded in other sources.

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons

Most likely not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Correctiv. Keine Belege für angebliches Zitat von Fidel Castro über Russlands Kampf gegen den Faschismus
2. Did Churchill say: “The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists”?
3. Did Thatcher say: “If you spit on Russia, it will wipe itself out. If Russia spits, half the world will choke”?
4. Did Hitler say that National Socialism and Marxism are the same thing?