When the race-baiting Marxist pressure group known as Black Lives Matter scrubbed the most offensive content from its website last year, we can’t say we were surprised. Marxists, after all, are liars. It’s how they come to power. They find an aggrieved and vulnerable group, and they tell them that their problems are the fault of others.

Nor were we surprised yesterday when BLM took to Instagram to issue a statement on Cuba that sounded like it’d been churned out by some mid-level Soviet apparatchik. Still, the intensity of the pro-commie, anti-American invective was impressive even for an organization whose money-grubbing leadership has boldly boasted, “We, uh, are trained Marxists. Um, we are, uh, super, uh, versed, um, on, sort of, ideological theories.”

“Black Lives Matter condemns the US federal government’s inhumane treatment of Cubans, and urges it to immediately lift the economic embargo,” the screed began. “This cruel and inhumane policy, instituted with the explicit intention of destabilizing the country and undermining Cubans’ right to choose their own government, is at the heart of Cuba’s current crisis.”

Here, BLM has it perfectly backward: Our nation’s economic embargo is meant to pressure Cuba’s communist government into allowing its people “to choose their own government.” After all, it’s hard to run a campaign from behind bars — which is where the regime’s political opponents and journalistic truth-tellers typically end up. Not even hard-left Amnesty International could cover for Cuba’s commies: “Freedom of expression, association, and movement,” it once wrote, “continue to be severely restricted.”

Cuba would be in great shape, though, if only Uncle Sam would loosen his purse strings: “Since 1962,” BLM writes, “the United States has forced pain and suffering on the people of Cuba by cutting off food, medicine and supplies, costing the tiny island nation an estimated $130 billion. Without that money, it is harder for Cuba to acquire medical equipment needed to develop its own COVID-19 vaccines and equipment for food production. This comes in spite of the country’s strong medical care and history of lending doctors and nurses to disasters around the world.”

We’re glad it mentions Cuba’s medical “history,” because not even The New York Times will defend the country’s exploitative practice of sending its doctors overseas. According to one of those doctors, the policy is “a form of slave labor.”

To its credit, we suppose, BLM waited until the fourth paragraph to play the race card, but play it the group did: “The people of Cuba are being punished by the U.S. government because the country has maintained its commitment to sovereignty and self-determination. … Instead of international amity, respect, and goodwill, the U.S. government has only instigated suffering for the country’s 11 million people – of which 4 million are black and brown.”

Of course, none of this rhetoric is new. Much of it is old. Just ask that noted Castro apologist Bernie Sanders:

Better yet, ask Senator Marco Rubio, who knows a thing or two about Cuban communism, and who recognizes a corrupt racket when he sees it. “The extortionist ring known as the Black Lives Matter organization,” he tweeted, “took a break today from shaking down corporations for millions and buying themselves mansions to share their support for the Communist regime in Cuba.”