L'ultima icona del '900

Protagonista della Guerra Fredda, condannato all'irrilevanza dalla storia. La parabola triste del Comandante Fidel Castro.

The world has now moved on from Castro’s world. Today, the majority of countries on Earth are capitalist democracies. Even the world's most powerful authoritarian states, Russia and China, feel the need to pay occasional lip service to democratic ideals. Authoritarian communism, of the sort Castro dedicated his life to, is no longer a vital force.

The most potent ideological divides in 2016 are inside Western democracies: whether to embrace multi-ethnic democracy and global integration, an option exemplified by Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, or whether to resist demographic change and wall off one's nation from the world, an option exemplified by Donald Trump and the European far right.

On these questions, Castro had nothing of note to say. He was simply irrelevant. His death in 2016, the year of Brexit and Trump, shows just how much the old world has given way to the new.