Should Che be an icon?
Kaligulax:
Forty years after his death, the militant marxist continues to divide left-wingers around the world. Here, two prominent thinkers debate El Comandante's legacy
The myth of Che Guevara is seductive and lush. It's the story of an Argentinian rich-boy who was so shocked by poverty he became a Robin Hood fighting alongside the poor, until eventually he was murdered by the CIA. But the reality of Che Guevara is very different. The facts show that he was a totalitarian with a messiah streak, who openly wanted to impose Maoist tyranny on the world. He was so fanatical that at the hottest moment in the Cold War, he even begged the Soviet Union to nuke New York or Washington or Los Angeles and bring about the end of the world.
It is true that Che's story begins with a motorcycle journey across South America. The young man was repulsed by the gap between the swanky transplanted European culture in which he lived and the starving misery of the indigenous peoples. He could see that this was caused largely by America's habit of smashing local governments and replacing them with dictators prepared to slobber over US corporations. But he concluded from that journey – gradually, over a few short years – that there was only one solution: the imposition of authoritarian communism, by force, everywhere. He chose not to see that this system, wherever it is tried, makes people even poorer still, invariably spreading famine, starvation, and terror.
Of course, Che's defenders act as if this was the only choice confronted by Latin Americans: you were either for US-imposed market fundamentalism, or for Maoist Communism. But you don't have to look very far in Che's life to see that this is a lie. His diaries show that he was constantly appalled to discover that almost everyone around him, including the revolutionaries fighting by his side, did not share his Maoist vision for the future. His first wife, Hilda Gadea, was a social democrat. She wanted to depose the US-backed tyrants – and then replace them with moderate, Swedish-style mixed economies. Che ridiculed and pilloried her as "bourgeois", before abandoning both her and their child. The ordinary Cubans he fought alongside on the Sierra Maestra also wanted to create a democracy with a mixed economy. Disgusted, Che noted in his diary: "I discovered the evident anti-communist inclinations of most of them."
How is possible that this murderous monster became a pop cult icon. From any angle that you look at it, he is not a hero figure. Selling T-shirt with his image to clueless youth under the veil of being a "social rebel", when there are real heroes to emulate and honor. What an irony that Che is now used to sell T-shirts to make money for the capitalist shirt makers.
tompa555:
Che is my favourite Marxist.
Kaligulax:
Traditionally the progressives have hail despots as folk heroes, without having to live under their rule. In reality very few that have lived under Che’s influence in Cuba would have any doubt of his evil character. The evil of thousands of killings by fire squads during the reign of terror under Che Guevara cannot be justify by comparing it to the evils of the previous administration. Che was a cool killing machine whose history speaks for itself.
tompa555:
Just because someone engage din political violence does not make them bad, he killed corrupt oligarchs who had betrayed their own people.
Kaligulax:
On December 1964, during a debate in the United Nations General Assembly where Guevara represented de Cuban government, this was severely attacked because of the firing squad executions without any judicial process and evidence as required by the rule of law. Guevara, in his own voiced, responded:
"We must say here what is a known truth, which we have always expressed before the world: firing squad executions, yes, we have executed; we are executing and we will continue to execute as long as is necessary. Our struggle is a struggle to the death."
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