The false romance of Che Guevara

The lefty hero Che HATED homosexuals (had them sent to camps) and had prisoners (including children) executed for their politics. What do you bet Soderberg is against the death penalty and in favor of gay marraige? These people disgust me. There is no limit to barbarism they will support, even if it contradicts their alleged beliefs.

You mentioned a Catholic priest who was horrified by the executions. Good for him! But the fact is that many, many Catholic priests and nuns lined up to praise Castro, Che, and the Sandinistas as "champions of the poor," with VERY LITTLE criticism from their Bishops. This continued even after the mass graves of Mosquito Indians was found in Nicaragua [Mosquito Indians are the Indians whose oppression you don't read about in school].

I recently saw a Stations of the Cross from the Maryknoll Nuns. Each station featured (in addition to Christ's suffering) a depiction of suffering from around the globe throughout history. Victims of Pinochet were prominently featured. Nothing from any communist country (and no Jews, of course). Some things never change.

Come, come, Rod. What's all the fuss and bluster about? No doubt Che broke a few eggs in making his omelet, but what are the lives of a few reactionary kulaks when measured against the hip frisson Che brings to the t-shirt-wearing, dorm-room-poster-hanging masses all the way from Williamsburg, NY to Cambridge, Mass. Oh yes, San Francisco, too.

Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

Viva la Revolucion!

Peace-out!

When my wife and I watched The Motorcycle Diaries, she asked why some people didn't like this good humanitarian.

The Motorcycle Diaries was a good flick, but again, it only told part of the story.

Monster is a good word.

"So, presumably, if one has a T-shirt with Adolf Eichmann or William Calley, and a flag of apartheid South Africa on one's truck, then it could conceivably just be a "sexy symbol of rebellion."

Nazis and pro-Apartheid folks weren't rebels. Your analogy fails.

Actually, when I see someone in this day and age with a Confederate flag on their truck, I assume that person is a redneck racist, or at the very least someone who doesn't care much for how that image appears to their black or Northern countrymen, so that analogy fails also. From where I'm sitting, if you are walking around with Che Guevara on your t-shirt or a Confederate flag on your pickup truck, you are either a moron with no sense or knowledge of history, or a moral bankrupt (i.e.: Communist in one circumstance, neo-Confederate racist in the other).

Not sure the Conf. flag issue equates entirely here. The Duke boys were Southerners not slave owners. If they had run around with Che on the top of their car I would have thought them Marxists. Now if the Duke boys took the Charger up to NYC they would have been wise to stop in Newark and put Lincoln on the roof, for he was the sort of murderer that commanded the respect in them parts. If you ask me, we need to blame Warhol. It it wasn't for his soup can people wouldn't be walking around putting Che and Conf. flags on purses in the first place, and may I remind you Warhol was a Northerner.

Wingless Crow's comments show a regrettable lack of perspective. Certainly Nazi's weren't rebels when they were running the German government, but neither was Che when he was Castro's henchman in the new communist government of Cuba. But the Nazi's were definitely rebels of a sort - against the bourgeois Weimar Republic - for most of the 1920s. Doesn't that make them just as effective symbols of rebellion as Che?

The uncritical adoration of this monster gives me similar pause.

It's odd hearing the declamations against Che for executing so many people, and for refusing to commute any sentences. We execute more people than almost any other country. And George Bush, as governer of Texas, had a reputation for never commuting sentences, which he largely continued into the White House.

I can see the right hating Che for many reasons, but a strictly enforced death penalty, with little hope for appeal hardly seems one of them. Nor for running brutal prisons or torturing the innocent, which we seem to have taken up as well. Decry his love of violence, his venom, his ideology all you want, but whining about his correctional institutions and capital punishment policies seems like the pot calling the kettle black.

"The uncritical adoration of this monster gives me similar pause."

Surely you jest, oh please tell me you jest. I suppose I am the fool for even approaching you. Good heavens, sometimes reading some of the writers on here makes one look for the hills.

Nazis and pro-Apartheid folks weren't rebels. Your analogy fails.

Actually, they were -- against the liberal Weimar Republic in the former example; first against British colonialism and later against decolonization in the latter example.

In fact, the very argument being made is exactly why Guevara has been so blindly lionized: "rebellion" being cited (implicitly) as a good thing; plus and relatedly "rebellion" being inevitably constructed as a feature of the left (the goodies) and never the right (the baddies).

When "The Motorcycle Diaries" came out, Paul Berman posted the following review on the cult of Che in SLATE magazine: http://www.slate.com/id/2107100/

BTW, this new "Che" movie is supposed to be almost unwatcheable. "The Motorcycle Diaries" movie is at least entertaining.

There are some people on the Left who I think are deluded enough to hero worship murderers and anti-American dictators such as Che, Fidel, Hugo Chavez, Osama, or Qadafi. They should consider the case of the former Black Panther the late Eldridge Cleaver, who was permanently cured of his infatuation with dictators after living in exile for several years in Libya. He returned to the U.S. and spent his remaining years advocating right-wing positions.

Whoever abuses Che is an enemy of the human spirit of struggle. Those whom Che executed were not innocent kids. They were rapists, counter revolutionary rascals and traitors. Why doesn't anyone think that punishing a traitor, irrespective of his age is a great service to any nation? Che Guevara was a hero and no one, not even the lord in heaven can deny this. Ask us, the oppressed people, about Che Guevara's real legacy...