The claim
Fidel Castro is said to have once said, “The next war in Europe will be between Russia and fascism, only the Western world will call this fascism a democracy.”
Our conclusion
The quote has only been circulating on the internet since April 2022. Neither in German, nor in English or Spanish can the quote be verified with search engines.
Everyone has probably come across these quote images on social media: A personality (usually someone who has already died, because they can hardly defend themselves) is said to have said some clever sentence, and everyone was like, “ Ooooh, how wise, you see, he/she was right back then .” But the alleged quote from Fidel Castro about the next war in Europe, which he is said to have said in 1992, only appeared on the internet in April 2022, despite very extensive collections of quotes about him.
This is what this quote is about
The quote is circulating on various sharepics in different languages: in German, English and Castro's native language, Spanish:
- In German: “The next war in Europe will be between Russia and fascism, only the Western world will call this fascism democracy.”
- In English: “The next war in Europe will be between Russia and fascism, except that fascism will be called democracy.”
- In Spanish: “La próxima guerra en Europa será entre Rusia y el fascismo, pero al fascismo se le llamará democracia.”
- Spanish again: “La próxima guerra en Europa será entre Rusia y el fascismo, solo que el fascismo se llamará “democracia”.”
When did Castro say that?
The disseminators of the quote alone disagree:
a journalist from RT (formerly Russia Today) claims that Castro said this “ more than 30 years ago ,” i.e. in 1992 or earlier.
„Fidel said this in a conversation with Max Lesnik Menéndez, who was his good friend and who publicly stated a few years ago that Fidel had told him that with the defeat of the USSR, war would be inevitable.“
Source: Twitter
Oh!
So this Max Lesnik Menéndez publicly stated this a few years ago? Then this quote should at least be found in connection with Menéndez, right? Not so fast, because the next tweet read:
“You won't find this online because any revolutionary or anti-imperialist text about Fidel will be severely hindered in the search. But if you read everything Max said, you can find it.”
Source: Twitter
She could have simply named a source, which should be a given as a journalist, but that didn't happen. Now it may be true for Google that certain search results are restricted, but there are other search engines, such as the very free DuckDuckGo , which are not subject to any restrictions.
But the quote has only been found there in all possible variations since April 2022:

A search on the Russian search engine Yandex , which would certainly not censor such a quote from the communist politician Fidel Castro, also leads nowhere: no results before April 2022.
A Russian blog claims the same thing as the RT journalist, only it says that he said this to Menéndez in 2001 and even links to a source! Yes, great, so let’s take a look now…. but the disappointment is great: the “source” is the “ Quora ” page, on which a Chinese account posted the sharepic with the Spanish quote on April 29, 2022. Not more. Also with the claim “ Over 30 years ago… ”, which even contradicts the Russian blog, which puts the quote in 2001, i.e. 21 years ago.
Conclusion
Castro's alleged quote appeared on the Internet almost out of nowhere in April 2022; no previous sources can be found. Castro's most extensive does not contain this quote.
The colleagues from “ Correctiv ” are digging a little further: They have now contacted Max Lesnik Menéndez via his station “ Radio Miami ” by email, but have not yet received a response.
According to current findings, the quote can therefore be classified as a fake.
Article image: pixabay
Also interesting:
A clever quote, a big name, all together on a sharepic, that's how you know it.
But many quotes are wrong. – False quotes on the internet – Please help to curb them!
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

