When I wrote last week about Big Left's tourist excursion to Cuba, I honestly expected it to go about like a Greta Thunberg operation: lots of fawning media coverage, ending with some comic, mildly humiliating fiasco.
I may have hoped it would turn into the bonanza of patrician, humiliating "ugly American" images that came out of the trip.
Which brings up a theory.
Put a pin in that. We'll come back to it later.
The star of the show was "Code Pink", the organization of upper-middle-class, over-schooled/undereducated progressive women of all genders who have been showing up and waving the sign du jour of the various leftist causes du jour for the past couple of decades. My first exposure to the group was at the Minnesota state capitol back in the '00s, when they took time off from protesting the Iraq war to agitate for gun control laws in Minnesota. I tried to ask the pink-clad members what, specifically, they were protesting about; none could actually answer, and several literally plugged their ears and walked away.
Which tracks, when you watch their performance in Cuba last weekend.
Here they are, demonstrating their high school Spanish...
BREAKING: Code Pink chants “This is what democracy looks like!” in the streets of Cuba, an authoritarian country that explicitly bans all political parties outside of the Communist Party of Cuba.
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) March 22, 2026
pic.twitter.com/CpaDyhJfZK
...and not-quite-high-school level of understanding of Cuban history for the past 65 years.
The "ugly American" tourist cliche from the 1960s isn't dead. They just moved upmarket and to the political left:
A group of entitled champagne socialists went to Cuba to “deliver aid.”
— Vatnik Soup (@P_Kallioniemi) March 22, 2026
The group included Hasan Piker (wearing $1,380 Cartier glasses) and pro-CCP, pro-Kremlin Code Pink activists. They flew in first class, stayed at a five-star hotel, and partied all night while most Cubans… pic.twitter.com/epBL9IUTx8
🚨BREAKING: Footage from outside the hotel in Cuba where the communist flotilla, Pablo Iglesias, Hasan Piker, Code Pink, and other useful idiots and VIP propagandists lounge in comfort while Cubans are left in the dark during a nationwide blackout.
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) March 22, 2026
The entire island is without… pic.twitter.com/wxbxO9OaiD
The "activists" were apparently shuttled around Havana in tour buses, and then feted at Havana's government-run five-star hotel, where they may well have eaten more food than they brought in their "flotilla" to feed Cubans.
Estas son imágenes exclusivas que me llegan desde Cuba.
— Agustín Antonetti (@agusantonetti) March 22, 2026
En pleno apagón nacional, el hotel en donde está hospedado Pablo Iglesias junto al resto de la comitiva de invitados VIP de la dictadura cubana es el ÚNICO PUNTO DEL PAÍS con electricidad en estos momentos.
Hay un… pic.twitter.com/cc124ZSLjj
And we may need to have a word with them about how they "fed" Cubans:
Los miembros de la flotilla VIP de Pablo Iglesias y Hasan Piker le arrojan comida a niños cubanos para que bailen mientras ellos graban videos para sus redes sociales.
— Agustín Antonetti (@agusantonetti) March 22, 2026
Ya han cruzando todos los limites, se piensan que tratan con animales. Cuba no es un safari para extranjeros. pic.twitter.com/4owL7nBTRq
Then they went to one of Havana's five-star hotels - which exist to harvest hard currency from foreigners - where they were, er, "treated" to a show - not an acoustic show in power-starved Cuba, mind you - by the Irish "rap" group "Kneecap":
So grim that Kneecap were able to host a concert in Havana while the Cuban dictatorship rations power and denies electricity to its own people pic.twitter.com/53izMjDycu
— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) March 22, 2026
And the "rappers" showed they know what really matters to Cubans in this difficult time:
Even in Havana, with the power cutting out shorty after our gig, the message of solidarity to Palestine remains the same ❤️ pic.twitter.com/NUCzYfiTvB
— KNEECAP (@KNEECAPCEOL) March 21, 2026
Or...not?
lol the Cuban communist dictatorship had to cut off power to impoverished peasants so that Kneecap could conduct a “humanitarian performance” pic.twitter.com/W8v8Lnhx3l
— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) March 22, 2026
As an OG punk rocker, I was glad I wasn't the only one to notice this bit of irony:
Forty years ago, punk rock bands like the Sex Pistols ("Holidays in the Sun") and The Dead Kennedys ("Holiday in Cambodia") mocked privileged, brain dead leftists who fawned over communist dictatorships
— Jonathan Eric Lewis (@LewisJonathanE) March 22, 2026
Now we have the putrid Kneecap doing exactly that in Cuba — enjoying a cheap…
So - how did the event go over? Well, this is too good to fact-check:
BREAKING - It’s now been revealed the Cuban regime was forced to deploy armed security to protect the five-star hotel where champagne socialists like Hasan were staying, fearing locals might attempt to storm it in protest of the country’s electricity being diverted to the hotel. pic.twitter.com/fzm96NiNyQ
— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) March 22, 2026
And this is awful enough that I will fact-check it:
🚨BREAKING: Just hours after Irish rappers Kneecap blasted the amps and turned a Havana concert into a rave for Code Pink activists chanting anti-blockade slogans, reports claim local hospital went dark and ventilator patients died.
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) March 22, 2026
Meanwhile, members of the communist flotilla… pic.twitter.com/l0s8UMsDcN
And it appears to be false - there doesn't appear to be a direct causal link between Code Pink's little rave and the blackout.
But it does tell you something about the priorities, not only of the Limo Leftists but of their hosts.
Almost...too much.
Which brings me to my theory.
Has Code Pink ever had any public exposure that didn't make entitled, over-schooled/undereducated, upper-middle-class progressive women of all genders look ignorant, patronizing, entitled, and stupid?
No. Not once in two decades. Zero.
Now, I'm not saying that some fiendish, nefarious Republican think tank created a Potemkin "leftist" organization to try to make entitled, over-schooled/undereducated, upper-middle-class progressive women of all genders look like spoiled finance bros at spring break as an elaborate practical joke.
But if some group had carried out one of the most fiendishly effective "punks" in history, would the results look any different than what we saw in Havana?
