Sadly enough naive people get taken in by their messages marketed by special interests, usually commercial ones craving for a buck. A Republican mouth organ network grandstands crazed Glenn Beck, reeling in ratings and fat profits.
Meanwhile left-wing directors and T-shirt companies hawk images of "heroic" communist gangsters. You've seen those flashy red shirts with the noble face of Comandante Che Guevara. Buttons, too. There was also Steven Soderbergh's "Che," a 2008 biopic that shamelessly lionized this ruthless killer.We well know about the twisted ideology of the far right. But the far left is guilty of equally obscene promotions. It's just that they seem a bit more problematic to expose. Maybe it's the glamor of the "radical chic" making it harder to resist. The Che Worship merchandise, however, is just as repugnant as those Saint Ronnie Reagan calendars on sale at the local mall.
The biggest point about this is the simple reminder about two wrongs never making the right. In the case of Cuba, nothing justifies communism's murderous excesses and tyranny that followed the demise of murderously excessive right-wing tyrant Fulgencio Batista.
Guevara may have been a brave guerrilla fighter but the glory ended when he joyfully worked overtime as Castro's drooling, hyperactive mass executioner. Notably he was also was an amazing bumbling nitwit when it came time to mismanage the "new & improved" Cuba."The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara", observed Slate magazine's Paul Bermen, "is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster....The present-day cult of Che--the t-shirts, the bars, the posters--has succeeded in obscuring this dreadful reality."
I see enduring salutes to this psychopath in places like Facebook and wonder just how many more people will be taken in. Perhaps this report by Libertarian "Reason TV" will disabuse those of the myth.
I fervently disagree with Libertarians and their crackpot notions of "functioning anarchy." But this presentation is dead-on correct, unmasking the preposterous glorification of blood-thirsty despots, Marxist or otherwise.
See if you agree.
1 comment:
Any average USA president kills more people fighting wars all over the World in a quiet week than Che did in his lifetime. Just for comparison.
Being a revolutionary means involvement in battles and killings. I cant approve that, but no one speaks about G. Washington as a murderer, but just do the body count.The simple truth is that there isn't an easy way to fight imperialism and Che did what he thought is best. He fought for his believes and that must be respected.
CHE GUEVARA:
- Worked in a Leper colony and treated lepers (as seen in the excellent film ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’)
- Was instrumental in teaching over 900,000 Cubans to read
- Tended to thousands of sick campesinos
- Helped construct dozens of schools throughout Cuba
- Removed the Mafia and dictatorship of Batista from Cuba which had killed 20,000 Cubans and tortured thousands more
- Desegregated the schools in Cuba before they were in the Southern US
- Called out South Africa’s Apartheid in 1964, 30 years before the West!
- Denounced the racism and KKK in America
- Warned of the dangers of the IMF, 3 decades before most of the developing world realized they had been scammed into debt slavery
Che’s “CRIMES” were:
~ Stopping American companies from owning 70 % of the arable land in Cuba
~ Teaching peasants to read, by bringing the Cuban literacy rate from 60 to 97 %
~ Having the 200 or so War Criminals who killed 20,000 Cubans for Batista shot against a wall
~ Fighting white mercenaries in the African Congo with an all black army
~ Speaking out against US and eventually USSR Imperialism while demanding that the poor of the world be allowed to live a life of dignity
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