This book shows how, far from being an individuality-loving rebel,
Che Guevara was an unelected authoritarian tyrant
who supported (and implemented) capital punishment,
burned books,
censored cinema,
opposed free elections,
massively increased poverty,
persecuted gays,
and made rock and roll illegal.
An open admirer of Stalin, he signed his name "Stalin II".
He supported the Soviet imperialist crushing of the
1956 Hungarian Revolution.
He was against individualism.
He often stated that individualism should be stamped out, that young people should unquestioningly obey the state and its leaders.
Let the left's tyrants die
by the leftist Johann Hari, 27 August 2004.
"Che Guevara was sexy and idealistic. He was also a defender of Joseph Stalin and mass murder."
The Iranians are looking for ties with the global anti-American left,
hoping to bring some of them under
Islamist leadership.
Some of the left are willing to make this
deal with the devil,
despite the fact that the Islamists despise them
and will kill them first.
One speaker
called on all anti-American forces to accept the leadership of Iran.
Another speaker claimed Guevara was
"a truly religious man who believed in God and hated communism and the Soviet Union.
Today, communism has been consigned to the garbage can of history as foreseen by Imam Khomeini.
Thus progressists everywhere must accept the leadership of our religious, pro-justice movement.
...
The Soviet Union is gone. The leadership of the downtrodden has passed to our Islamic Republic. Those who wish to destroy America must understand the reality and not be clever with words."
(I love the way he describes the left.)
Guevara's daughter, forced to wear the hijab,
horrifies them
by disputing this claim about Guevara:
"My father never mentioned God. He never met God."
Suddenly she finds herself escorted from the hall,
losing her VIP status, and having to leave Iran in a hurry.
Hilarious stuff.
The Cult of Che: Don't applaud The Motorcycle Diaries
by Paul Berman,
on the movie
The Motorcycle Diaries,
which glorifies Che Guevara.
"Che was an enemy of freedom, and yet he has been erected into a symbol of freedom.
He helped establish an unjust social system in Cuba and has been erected into a symbol of social justice.
He stood for the ancient rigidities of Latin-American thought, in a Marxist-Leninist version,
and he has been celebrated as a free-thinker and a rebel."
Unbelievably, movie director Steven Soderbergh has made no less than two puff pieces
about Che Guevara,
neither of which
mention his crimes,
nor even the kind of country Cuba became because of him.
Naive young people will see these films and think they are truth
rather than incurious propaganda.
Review:
"must be the most fevered piece of Communist propaganda since Sergei Eisenstein's days, makes Ernesto Guevera look like Florence Nightingale + Abraham Lincoln times Jesus Christ.
...
There are more scenes about agrarian land reform (many) than there are about
the taking of Havana
by the Communists (zero) or about what Communism actually did in practice as opposed to theory (zero). An alien watching this film could be forgiven for thinking that Communism was this neat new ideology about lifting up the underclass that was never fully put into practice because of corrupt dictators."
Benicio del Toro,
who plays Che,
claims that Che only executed people after due process
(as if a Stalinist like Che believed in such a bourgeois concept).
Del Toro absurdly claims that:
"They didn't do it blindly; they had trials.
They found them guilty, and they executed them - that's capital punishment."
This is, of course, entirely false.
Cuban dissident hero
Armando Valladares,
who spent 22 years in Che and Castro's gulag,
says witheringly:
"Benicio del Toro is just one of the many accomplices of the Cuban tyranny. All the murderers of people have had accomplices and people who made excuses for them. Stalin had them, Hitler had them, Pinochet had them, all the dictators have had apologists for them. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro also had them."
Poster from Young America's Foundation.
It shows some (but by no means all) of the people executed by Che:
14 people executed by Che in the Sierra Maestra during the anti-Batista guerrilla struggle (1957-1958).
10 people executed in Santa Clara at Che’s orders in only two days (January 1959).
156 people executed at La Cabaña Fortress prison at Che Guevara’s orders.
Irony:
A 2004 protester at the coming execution (carried out 2005)
of rapist and serial killer
Michael Bruce Ross
in Connecticut.
The protester
wears a cap celebrating the killer
Che Guevara,
who personally implemented the death penalty (without trial) for scores of
Cuban political prisoners.
If he thinks killing people is wrong, then why is he wearing that cap?
Photo by Cloe Poisson /
Hartford Courant
/ December 10, 2004.
From
Hartford Courant photo gallery.
"These youths walk around with their transistor radios listening to imperialist music!"
[i.e. Rock and roll]
"They corrupt the morals of young girls - and destroy posters of Che!
What do they think?
That this is a bourgeois liberal regime?
NO! There's nothing liberal in us!
We are collectivists!
We are communists!
There will be no Prague Spring here!"
- Cuban dictator Castro attacking Cuban dissidents and hippies in 1968.
Quoted in [Fontova, 2007].
Young Cuban rebels of course hated his vicious dead sidekick Che Guevara.
"I know your tactics! You press people are injecting venom into your articles
to damage the revolution.
You're either with us or against us.
We're not going to allow all the press foolishness that Batista allowed.
I can have you executed this very night. How about that!"
- Che Guevara to a journalist he arrested, 1959.
Quoted in [Fontova, 2007].