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BBC News on the Cult of Che
The BBC News website has a long-ish
piece on the genealogy of Alberto Korba's iconic image of
freelance Argentinian imperialist Che Guevera. It, of course,
neglects to mention that, in the words of Paul Berman (two mentions in
one day, I know), Guevara "was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing
but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution
favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new
Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction,
and his faction won." But boy was he good-looking:
It's now 40 years since the Argentine-born rebel was shot dead, so any young radicals who cheered on his revolutionary struggles in Cuba and Bolivia are well into middle age.
Many of those who "cheered" Che, of course, ultimately found themselves on the wrong end of his firing squads. But why quibble?
"There is no other image like it. What other image has been sustained in this way?" asks Trisha Ziff, the curator of a touring exhibition on the iconography of Che.
"Che Guevara has become a brand. And the brand's logo is the image, which represents change. It has becomes the icon of the outside thinker, at whatever level - whether it is anti-war, pro-green or anti-globalisation," she says. "[The image] has become a corporation, an empire, at this point." The unchecked proliferation of the picture - based on a photograph by Alberto Korda in 1960 - is partly due to a political choice by Korda and others not to demand payment for non-commercial use of the image.
...
"The way they killed him, there was to be no memorial, no place of pilgrimage, nothing. I was determined that the image should receive the broadest possible circulation," he adds.
"His image will never die, his name will never die."
Unfortunately true. The author neglects to point out that, as far as I can tell, there is no memorial, no place of pilgrimage for the countless lives extinguished by Guevara; those accused of being "counterrevolutionary traitors," for instance. Take this diary entry from 1957, in which Che explains how he dealt with someone suspected of being a spy in the rebel's Sierra Maestra camp: "I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine."
In 2002, Cynthia Grenier read through Che's Congo diaries and found that "the beloved revolutionary icon sounds pretty much like an old-fashioned racist..."
Above image: An absurd 2005 Der Spiegel cover which reads: "The Heirs of Ghandi and Guevara: Europe's Peaceful Revolutionaries."
|10.5.07 @ 4:47PM|#
Ghandi's cool, Che's a dick, but good goddamn those girls in the
ads to the right are smokin!
Almost as hot as the reason pillow girl.
Paul|10.5.07 @ 4:48PM|#
"I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right
side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine."
So Che believed in private ownership of the fruits of one's own
labor?
|10.5.07 @ 4:52PM|#
Above image: An absurd 2005 Der Spiegel cover which reads: "The Heirs of Ghandi and Guevara: Europe's Peaceful Revolutionaries."
Every time Der Spiegel prints an issue, God kills a kitten. Think
of the kitten!
Pre-Emptive Dan T.|10.5.07 @ 4:53PM|#
BUT AMERICA KILLED PEOPLE TOO AND YOU DONT COMPLAIN ABOUT THE FLAG!
|10.5.07 @ 4:54PM|#
Heirs of Gandhi and Che? What about the heirs of Mother
Teresa and Idi Amin? Cause those all go together so well
when you're talking about peace.
I'm just guessing here, but I don't think Gandhi ever ended a
problem with a pistol shot to the brain.
Andrew|10.5.07 @ 4:56PM|#
Actually, there IS a memorial for Che's victims -- and millions of others who died under communism. It's called the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C. It's brand new (dedicated in June) and it's a few blocks north of the Capitol. Check it out next time you're in DC -- or my blog, where I took a few pics.
|10.5.07 @ 4:56PM|#
And weren't the 1989 peaceful European revolutionaries anti-Communist? I think this is one of the most stupid covers I've seen for a magazine in a long time.
|10.5.07 @ 5:09PM|#
I met a kid in Bend, Or. who had a Che tattoo on his forearm. It was big. He caught me looking at it, and asked if I was a fan of Che. I waffled. As wrong as I find Che, I still can't bring myself to insult someone's stupid tattoo. At least to his face. Them's fightin' words, and I'm a man of peace :) Unlike Che.
|10.5.07 @ 5:17PM|#
Why don't all the Che fans get an Ernst Roehm t-shirt, too? He was a champion of the little guy, who fought the establishment and died as a result of his beliefs. He was also a homosexual and was persecuted for his sexual orientation. Another hero for the common man!
|10.5.07 @ 5:20PM|#
I had a shirt made in time for Bumbershoot in Seattle to
satirize the Che shirts that are all to common in that city. I
found a similar image of a similar iconic revolutionary, one that
represented an ideal a little different than Che's:
Thomas Jefferson.
I doubt anyone ever noticed (or ever will) what I was doing (it's
not similar enough to evoke parody), but walking through the crowds
of strongly leftist/fascist/communist slogans on the festival-goers
clothes, I attained my self-righteous satisfaction.
|10.5.07 @ 5:27PM|#
As wrong as I find Che, I still can't bring myself to insult
someone's stupid tattoo. At least to his face.
The kid had some muscles on him, eh?
highnumber|10.5.07 @ 5:34PM|#
ProGLib,
You're slipping! Why haven't you pimped Jimmy's shirts?
Best
Che parody shirt you will ever see
|10.5.07 @ 5:36PM|#
I think she's hotter than pillow girl, but that "I Survived Roe v. Wade" T-shirt creeps me out. Her flat stomach under that slogan induces a bit of cognitive dissonance.
|10.5.07 @ 5:36PM|#
"The kid had some muscles on him, eh?"
lol...naah. He was pretty small, and I am not. Sometimes I just
feel embarassed for people who have bad tattoos. Fighting him would
not only go against my nature, but would be like kicking a special
olympics competitor in the crotch, just for the hell of it. Funny,
sure...but what an asshole move?
Syloson of Samos|10.5.07 @ 5:39PM|#
Pro Libertate,
Not everyone is pleased with the work, etc. of Mother Teresa.
Syloson of Samos|10.5.07 @ 5:40PM|#
To be rather blunt, this is the market at work and I'm not going to be terribly upset by it.
|10.5.07 @ 5:41PM|#
BTW, those hot-ass chicks sporting the conservative shirts fill
me with the perverse desire to impregnate them, and then watch as
they run screaming to the abortion clinic to rid themselves of the
hellspawned love-child of a mohawk sporting doped out freak.
I know...asshole move. But still.
|10.5.07 @ 5:42PM|#
Maybe Michael should start lecturing the Mongols about their Genghis Khan imagery.
|10.5.07 @ 5:44PM|#
"I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right
side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine."
From each according to his ability, to each according to his
ability to confiscate (and murder) in the name of the
collective.
|10.5.07 @ 5:52PM|#
I wonder if i can get a shirt with the face of the drunk Bolivian Sargent who shot Che on it.
Li\'l Urkobold™|10.5.07 @ 5:54PM|#
LI'L URKOBOLD NOT GET ANGRY! LI'L URKOBOLD GET STEAMY LIKE TEAPOT PRIOR TO TIPPING!
|10.5.07 @ 5:55PM|#
Hear the cult of Che
And you`ll be enlightened.
Or maybe not.
(Damn, that's soooo close to being a haiku.)
|10.5.07 @ 5:57PM|#
Pro Lib - I checked, but it looks like National Lamppon's (Doug Kenney) "Che's Bolivian Diary" is still not on the web.
|10.5.07 @ 5:58PM|#
What an odd thing to spend one's time and energy being angry
about.
You mean a US based global news agency actively distributing
communist propaganda and apologist rhedoric to help prop up a
couple of thuggish tyrants all in living history....ya nothing to
really be angry about here.
|10.5.07 @ 6:10PM|#
BP,
I looked, too. Nada. I still have the paperback, with the pages
falling out. I think it might also be in one of The National
Lampoon's greatest hits books. Should be on the web.
Sorry, highnumber, I was overwhelmed by hypocritical irony.
S of S,
Yes, I know, but I needed an example on the fly.
joe,
You can keep wearing your Che shirt, but I am sending you an Ernst
Roehm shirt as well :)
|10.5.07 @ 6:15PM|#
I like this Che parody the best:
http://www.bustedtees.com/shirt/vivalaevolucion/male
che forever|10.5.07 @ 6:43PM|#
Che was a man of violence; he advocated the dispossession of the American continent from the Indians. Wait, I'm sorry, that was Ayn Rand who said that, whose sculpted visage oft graces the right side of the reason blog.
|10.5.07 @ 6:56PM|#
I don't think Ayn Rand ever was responsible for several hundred extra-judicial executions.
|10.5.07 @ 7:19PM|#
re Ayn Rand -- so endorsing a morally wrong position 50 years
after it ceased to mean anything, is the same as being a murderous
thug who attempts to overthrow governments in pursuit of personal
power and models his actions on those who slaughtered tens of
millions.
Right.
|10.5.07 @ 7:22PM|#
joshua,
You mean a US based global news agency actively distributing
communist propaganda and apologist rhedoric to help prop up a
couple of thuggish tyrants all in living history....ya nothing to
really be angry about here.
Yes, the T-shirt of doom. Totally worth gnashing your teeth
over.
Pro Lib,
I don't have a Che t-shirt. Those people are immensely silly as
well.
|10.5.07 @ 7:36PM|#
Not everyone is pleased with the work, etc. of Mother
Teresa.
The only thing I ever was interested in reading about the lady was
the take down by Christopher Hitchens.
She was really a bitch.
|10.5.07 @ 7:44PM|#
For a good attack on the Che cult from a leftist, see "The
Resurrection of Che Guevara" by Samuel Farber at
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue25/farber25.htm
"By the time he left Guatemala in 1954 in the aftermath of the
overthrow of the constitutional government of Jacobo Arbenz
orchestrated by U.S. imperialism, Guevara was thoroughly
politicized, accepting a Stalinist view of the world. This was true
in both the generic sense that he had become a staunch supporter of
the political model represented by the USSR of a repressive
one-party state owning and controlling the economy without any
democratic popular controls, independent unions, workers' or civil
liberties, as well as in the narrow literal sense of his great
admiration for Joseph Stalin."
It's probably true that the repressive right-wing governments in
Central America from the 1950's through the 1980's killed more
people than Che did. But not many people wear Roberto D'Aubuisson
t-shirts...
highnumber|10.5.07 @ 7:49PM|#
I don't think Ayn Rand ever was responsible for several hundred extra-judicial executions.
FFF,
That's exactly what the Objectivists want you to believe.
Read my revisionist history:
That Crazy Fucking Bitch: How Ayn Rand Turns Thousands of
Impressionable Young Adults Into Insufferable Jerks and Bores
Millions More Nearly to Death Every Year
Apologies to everyone.
Colonel_Angus|10.5.07 @ 8:00PM|#
Guevara was a fucking asshat. Too bad it would be a cool image otherwise.
The Wine Commonsewer|10.5.07 @ 8:19PM|#
.....and your TEE Shirt is NOT cool....
High, so you're shilling for Big Urk?
Yes, the girls in the ads are smoking hot. Doubly interesting to me
in that all the hotties were in love with Che and Communism when I
was thinner.
|10.5.07 @ 9:03PM|#
Whenever I think I might get lucky, I wear my Torquemada
thong.
"No one expects the Spanish Inquisition ...!"
|10.5.07 @ 9:08PM|#
Maybe Michael should start lecturing the Mongols about their
Genghis Khan imagery.
Or maybe he could troll their blogs and stick it to them with some
witless one liners. Boy, that'll get em.
Jerry|10.5.07 @ 9:41PM|#
Talking about the Che cult, this picture of Che was given to one leftish Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who clumsily killed himself in 1972 when he though he could be a terrorist as well. Feltrinelli created his own cult of followers, of whom many found a home in the Brigate Rosse.
|10.5.07 @ 9:56PM|#
I've been reading these boards for a while and joe is one of the best trolls I've ever seen.
Syloson of Samos|10.5.07 @ 10:18PM|#
Reason should create a thread on "oddest communist moments, campaigns, etc." I would nominate, amongst other things, the campaign against sparrows.
|10.5.07 @ 10:26PM|#
Is Che that popular? A few threads ago people spoke of college
students running around in Che or Hammer and Sickle shirts. What
college was that? At my college everybody wore shirts acclaiming
that great revolutionary Tommy Hilfiger...
I do think that people have mentioned that since we fought and
defeated fascism everyone knew they were bad. Before that hard
right people would have pictures of "questionable" folks like
Mussolini and Franco in their houses (Pat Buchanan in his
autobiography mentions that his dad had a pic of Franco). That
became very discredited. But for some reason the leftist monsters
stayed in vogue...I think Hollywood can get some blame: how many
anti-Soviet films have you seen relative to anti-Nazi?
Syloson of Samos|10.5.07 @ 10:49PM|#
Mr. Nice Guy,
Well, there have been a lot of great anti-Soviet films which have
come out of Europe.
|10.5.07 @ 11:54PM|#
"that 'I Survived Roe v. Wade' T-shirt creeps me
out."
If ya can't sell the message, sell tha ho.
highnumber|10.6.07 @ 12:00AM|#
TWC,
Well, duh! Always shilling for the Mighty Urkobold™!
You knew that.
Asharak|10.6.07 @ 1:30AM|#
The only thing I ever was interested in reading about the
lady was the take down by Christopher Hitchens.
She was really a bitch.
Penn & Teller: Bullshit! did a pretty good expose of
her as well. Incidentally, they interviewed Hitchens for it.
|10.6.07 @ 2:54AM|#
"The only thing I ever was interested in reading about the lady
was the take down by Christopher Hitchens."
Yes, and we all know that Hitch is one of the most honest
journalists of our times. Why, just look at his take on the
wonderful world of Iraq.
Ditto for Pen and Teller. Their show might be more interesting if
they actually attempted any sort of balanced appraisal of an issue.
Okay, maybe not more interesting, but at least more honest.
As far as the t-shirt parody of the Che goes, I think the "Milt"
version is the best.
I can understand why the Che t-shirts piss some people off. He
murdered thousands of people, execution style, and contributed
towards ushering in a dark age in many parts of the world. Yet,
he's lionized by millions. It might sound manichean, yet, it's not
too far of a stretch to say he was a force of darkness, considering
the attrocities he committed and the terribly torturous political
systems he helped to midwife. Turning him into a symbol is
potentially dangerous, considering that symbols do have power,
especially for the ideologically naive and the young (hey, new idea
for a soap!).
M|10.6.07 @ 6:19AM|#
that "I Survived Roe v. Wade" T-shirt creeps me out. Her flat stomach under that slogan induces a bit of cognitive dissonance.
Vanessa, I believe the message means that the wearer of the T-shirt
escaped being aborted.
|10.6.07 @ 8:03AM|#
Well, there have been a lot of great anti-Soviet films which
have come out of Europe.
Really? I can't think of any, but I don't know much about European
film, either.
Asharak|10.6.07 @ 8:12AM|#
It's high time they came out with a sequel to Red
Dawn.
WOLVERINES!!!
What really cracked me up about Red Dawn (aside from its
silly premise) was that while the Russians were all ruthless
motherfuckers, the Cuban general was an honorable Che clone. Even a
movie like this couldn't escape the romantic myth of Castro's
"revolution."
The Wine Commonsewer|10.6.07 @ 9:52AM|#
Rand is an easy target, in part, because we have such intimate
knowledge of her personal life and she made several idiotic
pronouncements to justify her own lifestyle choices (like smoking
is rational).
But in the end lots of those intellectual types are wacky on the
junk. All you gotta do is skim through Paul Johnson's book,
Intellectuals, to realize that.
I'm not sure why that is. Mrs TWC seems to think that everybody is
just fine until you get to know them pretty well. Maybe she's right
and were all just hiding the stranger inside from public view. Or
maybe he ain't much of a stranger just good with disguises.
[shrugs]
|10.6.07 @ 10:09AM|#
RC - I can't think of too many, either, but Repentance was an indictment of neo-Stalinism. Ironically, it was made in Georgia during the Soviet era (1984) and banned until Gorbachev took over.
|10.6.07 @ 10:26AM|#
Whether this is worth getting upset over. It isn't just a tee shirt. Latin America is in perpetual poverty in part because of the lingering power of the Che myth.
|10.6.07 @ 10:47AM|#
That Spiegel cover does a good job of encapsulating the pretentious stupidity of Europe's leftist mainstream.
|10.6.07 @ 4:53PM|#
Soviet officials who were in power during the Cuban Missile
Crisis tell us that Castro and Guevara were begging, literally
begging, Khrushchev to launch the missiles at the US.
Lovely, WWIII with nuclear weapons.
I wonder if the editors of Der Spiegel knew this?
Or even care?
SMG
Les|10.6.07 @ 5:02PM|#
Yes, and we all know that Hitch is one of the most honest
journalists of our times. Why, just look at his take on the
wonderful world of Iraq.
I disagree mightily with Hitch on Iraq, but I don't know if he's
been dishonest in his support of overthrowing Sadaam.
In regards to Mother Teresa, he didn't report anything that wasn't
reported in many other places. She was a sick fraud and hypocrite
who took money from thieves and murderous dictators, and lied about
how many people her centers "helped" while providing sub-minimal
health care and pain medication to the dying (often re-using
needles to save money). Ex-nuns have written first-hand
accounts of her insidious methods, and there is a well reviewed
book which exhaustively documents it all called, ""Mother Teresa: The Final
Verdict."
atrevete|10.6.07 @ 5:08PM|#
And I thought "The Lives of Others" was a pretty powerful anti-communist movie.
|10.6.07 @ 5:17PM|#
How is it that Che Guevara and Gandhi are EUROPEAN "voices
for peace"?
They weren't anti-communist in their salad days? And they were
critical of the West, especially the US.
That's sufficient.
(and scratch that salad days for Mahatma)
zombyboy|10.6.07 @ 5:33PM|#
Three things:
1- Hitchens may be a jerk and he may be wrong, but he's a wonderful
writer and I don't think you can call him dishonest.
2- Lives of Others was an amazing--and, yes,
anti-communist--movie. Brilliantly made; that final act, just
before the epilogue, is heartbreaking.
3- Fuck Che. I would say something meaningful about the bastard and
his hypocrisies and brutality, but the Che cultists don't care and
the rest of you have already heard it.
Edward|10.6.07 @ 7:10PM|#
Libertarians hate Che because he actually did something other than yammer and whine. But what do you expect from a collection of ninnies that get excited about Yawn Paul? H&R is the greatest unintentional satire site in the world. Keep up the good work.
|10.6.07 @ 7:31PM|#
he actually did something other than yammer and
whine
Hmm, (a) putting bullets in people's heads and establishing a one
party dictatorship;
Or (b) going with the people who sit on their asses and
complain?
I'll still take (b), thanks.
I like the current number of holes in my head thank you very
much.
Besides, I'd probably have to buy a bunch of new hats. And ya gotta
admit, capitalism does produce a wide variety of hats.
Ushankas? No wayski.
SMG
Edward|10.6.07 @ 7:46PM|#
In terms of deaths caused by their actions, let's not
forget
Alexander the Great
Ceasar
Napolean
Reagan (or don't dead Nicaraguans count?)
|10.6.07 @ 8:07PM|#
In terms of deaths caused by their actions, let's not
forget
But the hats!!! Commies make lousy hats. Gotta' have a hat to cover
the new holes in our heads.
You want to go around wearing these??
SMG
|10.6.07 @ 8:47PM|#
SteveMG - you might not hate those hats so much if you had to walk around in -40° weather five months a year.
The Wine Commonsewer|10.6.07 @ 9:01PM|#
... don't dead Nicaraguans count?
Do Nickies offed by Danny Boy count?
|10.6.07 @ 9:09PM|#
SteveMG - you might not hate those hats so much if you had
to walk around in -40° weather five months a year.
That's true. I was once in -8/-10 temperatures and didn't really
give a damned how I looked. Just wanted to survive.
Hell, I would have even worn a couple pair of those Che shirts too.
Pair? 10 or 12 of 'em.
Brutal.
SMG
|10.6.07 @ 9:19PM|#
TWC - 'course not. Damn reactionaries. All they did was yammer and whine, they got what they deserved.
|10.6.07 @ 9:23PM|#
Reagan (or don't dead Nicaraguans count?)
Good joke! It was the legacy of Che that started the Nicaraguan
conflict. Also, ask the Poles, the Checks and the Hungarians who
there hero is Ronald Maximum Reagan or Murdering Che?
Also lets examine the Pantheon of murderous gangster leftist
despots....
Stalin 20 million
Mao Tse Tung 65 million
Pol Pot 2 million
Kim Jong IL 2 million (and counting with his son's help
counting)
Castro only 10 thousand, (small country really hard to run up the
numbers)
Yes communism, socialism. Its all about death. Che's image should
be a skull.
|10.6.07 @ 9:25PM|#
But the hats!!! Commies make lousy hats. Gotta' have a hat to
cover the new holes in our heads.
You want to go around wearing these??
--- I agree. Very objectionable I object to dog fur hats.
|10.6.07 @ 9:30PM|#
But surely capitalism has produced the most delightful mutations
(27--count 'em) of Che T-shirts at:
http://www.che-mart.com/
|10.6.07 @ 9:42PM|#
But surely capitalism has produced the most delightful
mutations (27--count 'em) of Che T-shirts at:
There you go. Hats and Che shirts.
Is there anything that capitalism can't do?
Well, communism can produce them too. Only one size. One
color.
You want two colors? Hole in the head.
And it should be at this point that any defender of Che runs and
screams for their Mommies. 'Cause, y'know, there just isn't any
defense for these thugs.
You want to criticize American policy? Sure, fire away. I'll
probably, in part, agree with some of it.
But please, the answer is not a one party dictatorship that
completely denies human freedom.
SMG
The Wine Commonsewer|10.6.07 @ 10:25PM|#
Baked :-)
Somebody brought me back a three peso bill from Cuba (may have been
Brian Snidely). It had Che's mug right on the front. I was going to
go find it but it's prolly easier to just look it up on
Google.
sure
was.
You simply cannot believe how many times I showed that to someone
and had them say:
What? Che's Gay?
|10.6.07 @ 10:33PM|#
Hitchen's style (and often substance) is hyberbolic. Is that not a kissing cousin of dishonesty?
|10.6.07 @ 10:45PM|#
Hitchen's style (and often substance) is
hyberbolic
A remnant of those old internal Trotskyite disputes? I used to
cover the radical left groups in college. Quite nasty stuff. No
shades of grey at all.
Quite similar, so I've heard, to academic disputes.
Less name-calling perhaps. Hell, stakes are lower.
Still, a bad habit one would think a mature journalist would have
shedded.
|10.6.07 @ 11:16PM|#
Libertarians hate Che because he actually did something
other than yammer and whine. But what do you expect from a
collection of ninnies that get excited about Yawn Paul? H&R is
the greatest unintentional satire site in the world. Keep up the
good work.
Edward will be the first up against the wall when the revolution
comes...happily the revolution will never come thankfully in part
because of the whining libertarians here at Hit and Run.
I think reading Edward's whining how his group has lost forever is
a small price to pay.
|10.6.07 @ 11:38PM|#
M,
I understand it. It's creepy because seeing the message on a young
girl, scantily clad from the waist down, creates a graphic and very
unpleasant mental image for me. I assume my reaction is somewhat in
keeping with the intended effect of the ad.
V.
The Wine Commonsewer|10.6.07 @ 11:53PM|#
V, maybe you're not into girls? :-)
Josh, when the Night of the Long Knives comes at long last, Edward
will be on the wrong side of the barricades.....
Now back to tending the fire whilst the kids roast marshmallows on
a balmy yet breezy So Cal night. If they were all like this I'd
never complain about the traffic.
|10.7.07 @ 12:10AM|#
Hitchens might not be dishonest but he is hardly Fox News Fair
and Balanced (not that they are either). In addition to hyperbole,
his style is ad hominem and straw man driven. Religious
fundamentalism is ridiculous but not all religious pursuits are
fundamentalistic.
P.S. Better to be a ninny who gets excited over Ron Paul than a
knave who tattoos murderous thugs on his arms or a self-satisfied
statist who rationalizes state sponspored coercion, in the guise of
serving the common good, at every opportunity where his class
interests are served.
jk|10.7.07 @ 12:27AM|#
The Che Guevara pop-art seems to be very Warhol. It's almost
exactly like his Chairman Mao wallpaper. The Wikipedia has an entry
that says its a copy of his Marilyn Monroe posters, of which Warhol
took some possession. I think his Moa poster pre-dated the Monroe
one but I'm not sure.
Anyway, Warhol both mocked advertising and made of living off of
it. I doubt many of Che admirers get Warhol's joke.
|10.7.07 @ 12:38AM|#
"Soviet officials who were in power during the Cuban Missile
Crisis tell us that Castro and Guevara were begging, literally
begging, Khrushchev to launch the missiles at the US."
I thought Che and the Ruskies were on the outs because Che was more
Maoist in his approach to killing his own citizens. If Big Wiki is
to be believed, even Castro criticized Che as "excessively
aggressive."
Edward|10.7.07 @ 1:46AM|#
Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam and Bush in Iraq have killed more people than Che ever dreamed of killing. If the number of actual victims is your criterion, Che was a piker.
Asharak|10.7.07 @ 1:56AM|#
Libertarians hate Che because he actually did something other
than yammer and whine. But what do you expect from a collection of
ninnies that get excited about Yawn Paul? H&R is the greatest
unintentional satire site in the world. Keep up the good
work.
Yeah, because only libertarians/capitalists dislike Che and
communism, right? You're even more dense than Guy Montag.
Edward|10.7.07 @ 2:00AM|#
During the Salvadoran civil war, death squads achieved notoriety when far-right vigilantes assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero for his social activism in March 1980 . In December 1980, three American nuns and a lay worker were raped and murdered by a military unit later found to have been acting on specific orders. Death squads were instrumental in killing hundreds of peasants and activists. Because the death squads involved were found to have been soldiers of the Salvadoran military, which was receiving U.S. funding and training from American advisers during the Carter administration, these events prompted outrage in the U.S. and led to a temporary cutoff in military aid from the Reagan administration.Some death squads, such as Sombra Negra, are still operating in El Salvador.
Edward|10.7.07 @ 2:05AM|#
The U.S. government has systematic links to Guatemalan Army
death squad operations that go far beyond the disclosures that have
recently shaken official Washington. The news that the C.I.A.
employed a Guatemalan colonel who reportedly ordered two murders
has been greeted with professions of shock and outrage. But in fact
the story goes much deeper, as U.S. officials well know.
North American C.l.A. operatives work inside a Guatemalan Army unit
that maintains a network of torture centers and has killed
thousands of Guatemalan civilians. The G-2, headquartered on the
fourth floor of the Guatemalan National Palace, has, since at least
the 1960s, been advised, trained,
armed and equipped by U.S. undercover agents. Working out of the
U.S. Embassy and living in safehouses and hotels, these agents work
through an elite group of Guatemalan officers who are secretly paid
by the C.I.A. and who have been implicated personally in numerous
political crimes and assassinations.
This secret G-2 / C.I.A. collaboration has been described by
Guatemalan and U.S. operatives and confirmed, in various aspects,
by three former Guatemalan heads of state. These accounts also mesh
with that given in a March 28 interview by Col. Julio Roberto
Alpirez, the C.I.A.- paid Guatemalan G-2 officer who has been
implicated in the murders of Guatemalan guerrilla leader Efrain
Bamaca Velasquez and a U.S. citizen, Michael DeVine.
Edward|10.7.07 @ 2:08AM|#
"Feds Look the Other Way While United Fruit Company Peddles
Death and Corruption in Latin America"
Today of course, the infamous United Fruit of yore (whose
machinations in Guatemala led to a CIA coup that set off decades of
mass-murdering chaos) is known by the more perky name of Chiquita,
and conjures up cheery pictures of childhood banana-munching around
the family table. But while corporations may change their spots (or
their peels) and their personnel over the years, the nature of the
beast remains much the same, because its raison d'etre remains the
same: maximizing profit. And United Fruit/Chiquita has
traditionally been willing to push the banana boat way out when it
comes to ensuring that its exploitation of cheap labor remains
undisturbed.
In the case of Colombia, this meant paying an officially designated
terrorist gang -- the vicious killers of the rightwing United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) -- to keep Chiquita's
operations running smoothly in the war-torn nation. A whole sordid
history could be written about the extensive intertwining of
American government and corporate interests with AUC and the other
rightwing Colombian militias, but for our purposes here it is
enough to note that Chiquita not only paid AUC for protection from
leftwing militias, it also took an active and direct role in "in
smuggling thousands of arms for paramilitaries into the Northern
Uraba region, using docks operated by the company to unload
thousands of Central American assault rifles and ammunition," as
the Post reports. In turn, the paramilitaries used these weapons
"to fund operations against peasants, union workers and
rivals."
"I regarded this as a murder investigation," says Roscoe Howard
Jr., the former U.S. Attorney who spearheaded a prosecution of
Chiquita for its death-squad collaboration, the Wall Street Journal
reports. "Even though Chiquita didn't murder anyone, that's what
the money was used for -- to buy weapons."
Asharak|10.7.07 @ 2:23AM|#
Edward, what makes you think everyone here approves of any of the above? I don't. Of course, it's obvious that you only oppose atrocities when the U.S. or its allies commit them.
Edward|10.7.07 @ 2:50AM|#
Asharak:
My point is that you can't condemn Che and his socialist/communist
ideology without considering the context of his activity. It isn't
a though Che introduced some evil violence into an otherwise
tranquil, free society. Many who supported the idea of a communist
revlution did so out of desperation. Che was a hero to many because
he opposed the oppressors. Revolutionary communists weren't the
only ones committing atrocities in Latin America.
Thinking in black and white and reducing everything to facile
slogans belies the complexity of reality. But reality isn't the
long suit of the loons who blather here, is it?
Les|10.7.07 @ 3:21AM|#
Revolutionary communists weren't the only ones committing
atrocities in Latin America.
Who has suggested that they were? Just because I know that the U.S.
supported terrorism in Latin America throughout the Cold War
doesn't mean I can't think people are stupid for describing a
murderous hate-monger like Che as a hero.
I feel the same way about Reagan worshippers, too. And when I point
out that Reagan supported terrorists, his loyalists point their
fingers and shriek, "But...but...communists!"
Idealists on the right and left consistently ignore the atrocities
of their own.
Edward|10.7.07 @ 3:27AM|#
Idealists on the right and left consistently ignore the
atrocities of their own.
Amen!
Asharak|10.7.07 @ 3:50AM|#
Who has suggested that they were? Just because I know that
the U.S. supported terrorism in Latin America throughout the Cold
War doesn't mean I can't think people are stupid for describing a
murderous hate-monger like Che as a hero.
I feel the same way about Reagan worshippers, too. And when I point
out that Reagan supported terrorists, his loyalists point their
fingers and shriek, "But...but...communists!"
Idealists on the right and left consistently ignore the atrocities
of their own.
I concur.
As for what Edward said in his last post about Marxist
revolutionaries, it is true that they don't exist for no reason at
all, but they've done an awful lot of thinking in black and white
themselves, with disastrous results.
M. Simon|10.7.07 @ 5:53AM|#
The Indians fought wars with each other all the time for
territory.
The white man was just a better Indian.
|10.7.07 @ 7:28AM|#
Che never had a chance to get fat and ugly, like the hideous Fidel. He died young and stayed pretty, as Blondie used to sing.
DWPittelli|10.7.07 @ 7:51AM|#
I feel a bit unclean defending Che against any charge, but
shooting "someone suspected of being a spy" without strong evidence
or a formal trial is normal and often necessary practice within a
guerrilla army.
Read a history of the French Resistance and you will find more
problematic cases than that, including a man who slipped into town
to get laid, and was shot almost summarily because he had risked
getting captured by the Nazis and tortured for information, such as
the location of his encampment.
I recognize that the French Resistance was fighting against one of
history's greatest evils, while Che was fighting to replace one
evil with a greater one, but that difference in ends does not,
IMHO, make a key difference to how we should judge a guerrilla
army's administration of internal justice.
The Wine Commonsewer|10.7.07 @ 10:40AM|#
Edward, my point is that you can cut and paste with the best of them.
Sarcasm Man|10.7.07 @ 10:50AM|#
Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam and Bush in Iraq have killed
more people than Che ever dreamed of killing. If the number of
actual victims is your criterion, Che was a piker.
Yeah, but that's nothing compared to the greatest mass murderer in
US history, FDR. Look at all the Germans and Japanese he
killed!
|10.7.07 @ 12:43PM|#
"BTW, those hot-ass chicks sporting the conservative shirts fill
me with the perverse desire to impregnate them, and then watch as
they run screaming to the abortion clinic to rid themselves of the
hellspawned love-child of a mohawk sporting doped out freak."
I think even most of those on the right approve of abortion for
rape victims.
|10.7.07 @ 3:18PM|#
"I think even most of those on the right approve of abortion
for rape victims."
Woman gets drunk and has sex with a guy; she gets pregnant.
Abortion in this case kills a beating heart, god's children.
Woman gets raped; she gets pregnant. Abortion in this case does not
kill a beating heart or god's children.
atrevete|10.7.07 @ 4:57PM|#
" Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam and Bush in Iraq have killed
more people than Che ever dreamed of killing. If the number of
actual victims is your criterion, Che was a piker."
If the number of actual victims is your criterion, North Vietnam
killed far more people in Vietnam than Kennedy or Johnson.
According to Statistics of Democide there were close to 1.5 million
killed by North Vietnam from 1945-1987.
Edward|10.7.07 @ 8:32PM|#
If the number of actual victims is your criterion, North Vietnam
killed far more people in Vietnam than Kennedy or Johnson.
According to Statistics of Democide there were close to 1.5 million
killed by North Vietnam from 1945-1987.
Oh well, nobody lives forever, and guns are an important part of
the world economy. Che, for one, would have no argument with the
NRA.
dhex|10.7.07 @ 10:33PM|#
hey riddle me this residents of 'merica:
have you guys seen mussolini shirts? i've seen a few being sold in
little italy (no shit, had an eagle and a faces and everything) but
i've never actually seen anyone wearing one.
The Wine Commonsewer|10.7.07 @ 11:46PM|#
get it on ebay, choice of 43 colors with a nice color photo of il douche hisself.
The Wine Commonsewer|10.7.07 @ 11:49PM|#
See LaMar, that's my lunatic sister's argument, that you can't
kill the kid because it's father was a depraved rapist. That ain't
the kid's fault.
Don't get me wrong, she's deranged, but I don't say that because
she's pro-life.
The Wine Commonsewer|10.7.07 @ 11:53PM|#
Che, for one, would have no argument with the
NRA.
That's why all the peasants in Cuba have M-1's and pistolas stashed
in the closet, cuz, after a few good smokes our man Che convinced
Fidel that the populace should be armed.
Get outta town, Edward.
dhex|10.7.07 @ 11:56PM|#
yeah i mean get it on ebay but have you ever seen anyone wearing
one?
i'm fuckin' neck deep in guidos here and i've never seen anyone
wearing anything remotely like that.
Edward|10.8.07 @ 2:15AM|#
"...there is no memorial, no place of pilgrimage for the
countless lives extinguished by Guevara; those accused of being
"counterrevolutionary traitors"..."
Alas, there is no memorial to the countless victims of the CIA and
corrupt right-wing Latin American dictators either.
|10.8.07 @ 3:16AM|#
Edward, you might actually have a point if the Reason 'ninnies' you mentioned here were tattooing their arms with the likenesses of Latin American dictators or other statist thugs on the right, but since none of us here are celebrating statist thugs on the right (or middle) any more than we are celebrating statist thugs on the left, you are simply blathering irrelevantly into the wind. But nice apologies for thuggery you prefer.
|10.8.07 @ 12:05PM|#
I'd like to go on record and state my preference for hot chicks wearing skimpy outfits over murderous, totalitarian zealots.
Edward|10.8.07 @ 1:14PM|#
Mikhael
You wouldn't understand the concept of putting things in context if
it bit one of your balls off. No active agents in history have had
clean hands.
atrevete|10.8.07 @ 2:17PM|#
And the white handkerchief ladies with the pictures of the
"disappeared" in Argentina? Who are THEY??? In comparison, there
are PLENTY of memorials and demonstrations in Latin America against
"right wing" barbarities, but much lesser outrage against the
left.
Edward, do you really believe the mothers in Argentina deserve
sympathy, but those Cuban mothers whose sons and daughters have
disappeared or drowned trying to escape that hellhole do NOT? Or do
you believe Cubans don't have mothers?
JD|10.8.07 @ 11:25PM|#
So, Edward, you'd be cool with a Carlos Castillo t-shirt, or maybe a Somoza t-shirt, or a Trujillo t-shirt? All of your wind would seem to indicate that since "all active agents have had dirty hands", all are morally equivalent and there's no point in any outrage or anything.
|10.9.07 @ 5:45AM|#
Edward,
Context can explain actions, it does not necessarily excuse them.
Or perhaps you have tattooed Dubya's face on your butt?
|10.9.07 @ 7:26AM|#
'An absurd 2005 Der Spiegel cover which reads: "The Heirs of
Ghandi and Guevara: Europe's Peaceful Revolutionaries."'
Sorry to be a pedantic pissant but isn't it 'Gandhi'? Why do so
many people get this wrong? Professional journalists no less.
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