Leave the left's tyrants in their graves
by Johann Hari, 27 August 2004.
"Che Guevara was sexy and idealistic. He was also a defender of Joseph Stalin and mass murder."
The
Iranian regime reaches out to the global anti-American left,
hoping to bring some of them under
Iranian/Islamist leadership.
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.
Poland's equality minister,
Apr 2009, proposes
banning Che's image
(and all fascist and totalitarian propaganda images).
I don't support banning it,
but I like how people who have lived and suffered under communism
understand what Che really stands for.
The Cult of Che: Don't applaud The Motorcycle Diaries
by Paul Berman, 24 Sept 2004,
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.
The movie Che (2008) consists of two parts:
Part 1: The Argentine
Part 2: Guerrilla
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."
"one has to constantly think on behalf of masses and not on behalf of individuals. ...
It's criminal to think of individuals".
- Che Guevara, March 1960.
Above is from
p.18 of
The Politics of Che Guevara: Theory and Practice
by Samuel Farber (2016).
It would be good to see the original source.
"We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it:
to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace".
- Che Guevara promotes urban terrorism,
Message to the Tricontinental (1967).
This was a message to the
Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America,
an international pro-communist and pro-terrorist organisation.
Above is from transcript at
marxists.org.
"we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of atomic war victims."
- Che Guevara,
"Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution" (1962).
Above is from
p.304 of the
Che Guevara Reader (2003).
Unproven or fake quotes
There are in circulation many quotes claiming to be from Che Guevara.
Che Guevara supporters claim many of these are fake quotes.
Having looked into it, and loath as I am to agree with communists,
on this point they may be right.
Some Cuban anti-communists
have engaged in sloppy research.
Che was a mass murderer who enslaved Cubans under communism.
His life is the life of a monster, an enemy of freedom.
That is not in dispute.
But accuracy matters.
If quotes are fake, they must be exposed as such.
Quote
Source
Conclusion
"If they attack, we shall fight to the end. If the (nuclear) rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression. But we haven't got them, so we shall fight with what we've got."
This was said to be in an
interview in the
Daily Worker (UK) in 1962.
The interview was in the issue of
4 Dec 1962
but the quote does not appear.
The obituary
of the journalist claims that:
"the editor removed Che's declaration that the Cubans would have fired the missiles if they had been in control of them."
Unproven
"We must eliminate all newspapers;
we cannot make a revolution with free press. Newspapers are instruments
of the oligarchy."
Said
to be
1959 interview with Cuban
leftist journalist José Pardo Llada.
One would need to see this.
Unproven
"Judicial evidence is an archaic and secondary bourgeois detail.
This is a revolution!
We execute from revolutionary conviction."
"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail.
This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."
A variant on the above.
Printed by Humberto Fontova on 2 March 2004. No source.
Discussed here.
Looks fake
"Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service."
I cannot find any proper source for this.
Looks fake
Conclusion:
Some
Cuban anti-communists have damaged their own side by peddling fake quotes.
In 2011, Galway City Council announced a plan for a memorial to the totalitarian communist Che Guevara.
This decision was taken at
Galway City Council, meeting of
16 May 2011.
Billy Cameron (Labour) proposed:
"That Galway City Council commit itself to honouring "one of its own" Ernesto "CHE" Guevara descendant of two of our Tribes - the Lynch family of Lydican House and the Blakes. The project to be furthered by liasing with the Argentinean and Cuban Embassies".
This was seconded by Níall McNelis (Labour) and agreed unanimously.
Not one person opposed this outrageous motion!
The other Councillors present who agreed to this were:
Labour: Tom Costello, Nuala Nolan, Colette Connolly.
FF: Ollie Crowe, Peter Keane.
FG: Pádraig Conneely, Hildegarde Naughton, Frank Fahy.
Ind: Declan McDonnell, Terry O'Flaherty, Catherine Connolly, Donal Lyons.
Shame on all of them.
What a disgrace.
Can they not read?
It's like erecting a new
Sean Russell statue.
Feb 2012 update says the Che monument may be on the Salthill Promenade.
How dare they deface the Promenade with a tribute to oppressive and murderous communism.
Salthill will become a place I will never want to walk again.
Report, 2 Mar 2012, that the Mayor of Galway, Hildegarde Naughton (FG) will no longer support the memorial.
Will this be enough to stop it?
See update, 9 Mar 2012.
Kevin Myers, February 21, 2012, muses on the sort of tourists who will be attracted to this:
"Now if Galway does actually raise a statue to a man who wanted to turn the world into a conjoined series of Tet Offensives, the city will certainly get some tourists who will gaze admiringly at it: Islamic Bader Meinhof, Continuity ETA, Real PLO, et cetera. But are they really the kind of visitors Galway wants?"
Declan Ganley:
"Che Guevara is responsible for the deaths of an untold number of people in his brutal quest for power
...
He worked to deny people the right to vote, the right to own property, and the right to freedom of religion. He persecuted Catholics with a psychotic zeal.
...
This monument will damage Galway. It will make us less attractive for investment. It will drive away tourism. It will pour salt in he wounds of those this man tortured, kidnapped, maimed and killed. It would be a monument to the insensitivity and ignorance of those who dreamt it up, and it would shame the people of Galway and Ireland."
American and Cuban exile reaction:
U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee issues statement, February 29, 2012, urging Ireland not to erect a monument to Che Guevara:
"Instead of honoring a killer, the City Council of Galway should honor the victims of Che and the Castro dictatorship".
U.S. Representative
Mario Diaz-Balart
(who is Cuban-American)
says
the proposal is shameful:
"Galway is a city where people have the right to vote, the right to worship freely,
the right to speak freely, and access a free press - all of which "Che" Guevara and his murderous associate,
dictator Fidel Castro, ruthlessly suppressed.
Having a memorial to this cruel assassin is a shameful affront to the thousands of Cubans he murdered".
Carlos Eire, Mar 2012: "Everyone in Galway and Ireland should know this: Che has a lot in common with Oliver Cromwell.
Like Cromwell, Che proclaimed himself a liberator and felt justified in committing thousands of atrocities in a land other than his own, all in the name of a higher cause. Like Cromwell, Che stole everyone's property too, for a sacred purpose. As for reputation: Cromwell received plenty of good press and adulation from those on his side, just like Che. To Cromwell's admirers - and he had plenty who would eagerly build him monuments - the Irish people were inconsequential obstacles to a higher goal, or worse, despicable papist wretches who deserved no mercy."
As at 2017, this monument has not yet happened.
And hopefully never will.
Billy Cameron, the Che lover,
is also
anti-Israel.
Here he urges a boycott of a company
for merely doing business
with Israel.
Supporting a dictatorship (Cuba)
and opposing a democracy (Israel).
Pathetic.
Michael Moynihan of "Right Turn", 2 July 2012, destroys Billy Cameron:
Right Turn: You are a sympathizer with the government in Cuba.
Cameron: [pause] I respect the sovereignty of Cuba and whatever political changes will happen in Cuba, will come from the Cuban people.
Right Turn: How does it come from the Cuban people if the Cuban people aren’t allowed to vote?
Cameron: The Cuban people vote in elections, my dear man.
Right Turn: And how many parties do they have to choose from?
Cameron: They have one party.
Right Turn: You say there are elections but only one party. Is that something you support?
Cameron: [long pause] Anyone can stand once they are a member of the party. I’ve watched TV in Cuba and there is an awful lot of discussion, an awful lot of politics.
Right Turn: So why don’t they allow the formation of competing parties?
Cameron: Well, eventually they will, I presume…It will be up to the Cuban people to decide that, really.
Obscene:
An Post issues Irish stamp, Oct 2017, to commemorate "50th Anniversary of the death of Che Guevara".
Communist murderer celebrated on Irish stamp, Oct 2017.
From here.
Irish footballer
Andy Reid
has actually tattooed
Che onto his arm.
Still from video.
Also here.
See other people with Che tattoos.
What happens if he ever finds out what Che really stood for?
Poster by the press freedom group
Reporters Sans Frontieres.
Based on
the
famous image of Che
by communist photographer
Alberto Korda.
The poster says:
"Welcome to Cuba: The biggest prison in the world for journalists".
RSF are very left-wing, but even they can see how repressive Cuba is.
Ironically, this poster
was banned in France on "copyright" grounds.
The heirs of the dead photographer Korda
won a case against RSF in France in 2003 preventing the use of the famous image of Che
in anything critical of communism.
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.
The resting place of evil.
The tomb
of Che Guevara, Santa Clara, Cuba.
From here.
