Who was Che Guevara? What if Hilter Had Been Photogenic?
I will not add much of my prose to that which has been written by many who have spent more time studying the real Che Geuvara. So I will be content to post some excerpts and links that lay out the real story of this pop icon and the fraudulent nature of his glorification.
In the beginning, however, I must observe that Che Guevara's real story contradicts every value held dear by those who glorify him. They oppose capital punishment: he believed in it and practiced it without trials on guilt or innocence. They cherish personal freedom: he sent young people to re-education camps for listening to rock music. They value heroism and personal honor: he was at his best shooting unarmed men. They respect intellectual achievement: his writings are petty regurgitation of Marxist slogans. They try to epitomize personal freedom: he was the master of collective suppression of freedom. They extol love: he preached hate as a political tool.
“The fog of time and the strength of anti-anti-Communism have obscured the real Che. Who was he? He was an Argentinian revolutionary who served as Castro's primary thug. He was especially infamous for presiding over summary executions at La CabaÒa, the fortress that was his abattoir. He liked to administer the coup de grace, the bullet to the back of the neck. And he loved to parade people past El ParedÛn, the reddened wall against which so many innocents were killed. Furthermore, he established the labor-camp system in which countless citizens — dissidents, democrats, artists, homosexuals — would suffer and die. This is the Cuban gulag. A Cuban-American writer, Humberto Fontova, described Guevara as "a combination of Beria and Himmler." Anthony Daniels once quipped, "The difference between [Guevara] and Pol Pot was that [the former] never studied in Paris." Jay Nordlinger, republished by the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research, http://www.hacer.org/current/LATAM71.php
On the movie, The Motorcycle Diaries: Tony Daniels: "It is as if someone were to make a film about Adolf Hitler by portraying him as a vegetarian who loved animals and was against unemployment. This would be true, but rather beside the point."
In France, the remarkable group Reporters Without Borders took an image well known in that country: that of a policeman wielding a truncheon and a shield. But it put Guevara's face in place of the policeman's and cried, "Welcome to Cuba, the world's biggest prison for journalists." Nordlinger, supra.
“But facts are not unimportant to Cuban Americans. Imagine being one of them and seeing celebratory images of Guevara all around you. Imagine — even further — being the son or daughter of someone whom Guevara personally executed. There are such people in the United States. Or imagine — further yet — being a Cuban political prisoner, and knowing that masses in free countries were wearing Che on their chests.” Nordlinger, supra.
“"Hatred is an element of struggle; relentless hatred of the enemy that impels us over and beyond the natural limitations of man and transforms us into effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machines. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy." Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental
1967 cited at http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/che.html.
"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. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon (The Wall)! Che Guevara, 1959.
Che's slaughter of (bound and gagged) Cubans (Che was himself an Argentine) exceeded Heinrich Himmler's prewar slaughter of Germans – to scale, that is.” Che Guevara: Assassin and Bumbler – by Humberto Fontova Feb. 23, 2004, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/23/171252.shtml
“Within three months in power, Castro and Che had shamed the Nazi prewar incarceration and murder rate. One defector claims that Che signed 500 death warrants, another says over 600. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book "Yo Soy El Che!" that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad. In his book "Che Guevara: A Biography," Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions during the first few years of the Castro regime.
So the scope of the mass murder is unclear. So the exact number of widows and orphans is in dispute. So the number of gagged and blindfolded men who Che sent – without trials – to be bound to a stake and blown apart by bullets runs from the hundreds to the thousands.” Fontova, supra.
“But the mass executioner gets a standing ovation by the same people in the U.S who oppose capitol punishment! Is there a psychiatrist in the house?!” Fontova, supra.
“"We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable ... we will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood! Let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeois – more blood, as much as possible." Che Guevara, in his “Motorcylce Diaries” quoted at Fontova, supra.
From those who today condemn the use of loud rock music on terrorists detainees in Cuba, the glorification of Che is more than a paradox: “The "acrid odor of gunpowder and blood" never reached Guevara's nostril from actual combat. It always came from the close-range murder of bound, gagged and blindfolded men. He was a true Chekist: "Always interrogate your prisoners at night," Che commanded his prosecutorial goons. "A man is easier to cow at night, his mental resistance is always lower." Fontova, supra.
During the Bay of Pigs invasion, Che led several thousand troops 300 miles away in response to three boats set up off-shore with roman candles, other firepowers, and tape recorded battle-sounds. Fontova, supra. “Three days later the (literal) smoke and mirror show expended itself and Che's men marched back to Havana. Not surprisingly, the masterful Comandante had managed to wound himself in this heated battle against a tape recorder. The bullet pierced Che's chin and excited above his temple, just missing his brain. The scar is visible in all post-April '61 pictures of the gallant Che (the picture we see on posters and T-shirts was shot a year earlier.) Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a Fidelista at the time, speculates the wound may have come from a botched suicide attempt. "No way!" say Che hagiographers John Lee Anderson, Carlos Castaneda and Paco Taibo. They insist it was an accident, Che's own pistol going off just under his face.” Fontova, supra.
“…the century's most celebrated guerrilla fighter never fought in a guerrilla war or anything even approximating one. The few puerile skirmishes again Batista's army in Cuba would have been shrugged off as a slow night by any Cripp or Blood. In Cuba Che couldn't fight anyone to fight against him. In the Congo he couldn't find any to fight with him. In Bolivia he finally started getting a tiny taste of both. In short order he was betrayed, brought to ground and routed.” Fontova, supra.
Read Che? “I defy anyone to actually finish a Guevara book. I defy them to hack their way through the first five pages. Che's gibberish makes Babs Streisand sound like Cicero.” Fontova, supra.
Famous Che quotes:
"The past makes itself felt not only in the individual consciousness – in which the residue of an education systematically oriented toward isolating the individual still weighs heavily – but also through the very character of this transition period in which commodity relations still persist, although this is still a subjective aspiration, not yet systematized." Cited by Fontova, supra.
"To the extent that we achieve concrete successes on a theoretical plane – or, vice versa, to the extent that we draw theoretical conclusions of a broad character on the basis of our concrete research –we will have made a valuable contribution to Marxism-Leninism, and to the cause of humanity." Cited by Fontova, supra.
Great guerilla leader? Folks who decided to leave Che’s little band of murders: “These hapless "deserters" were hunted down like animals, trussed up and brought back to a dispassionate Che, who put a pistol to their heads and blew their skulls apart without a second thought. After days spent listening to Che and smelling him, perhaps this meant relief.” Fontova, supra.
Party guy? “In 1961 Che even established a special concentration camp at Guanacahibes in extreme Western Cuba for "delinquents." This "delinquency" involved drinking, vagrancy, disrespect for authorities, laziness and playing loud music.” Fontova, supra.
Fidel did not like Che: “The one place where I can't fault Fidel, the one place I actually empathize with him, is in his craving to rid himself of this insufferable Argentine jackass. That the Bolivian mission was clearly suicidal was obvious to anyone with half a brain. Fidel and Raul weren't about to join him down there…” Fontova, supra.
To the young people in the Free World that glorify this vapid thug, their ignorance of what Che left for modern young Cubans is appalling. The highest suicide rate in the Hemisphere, more than doubling after 1963. See Juan Tamayo, “Study: Suicide epidemic exists under Castro,” Miami Herald, June 18, 1998, link: http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/suicidepidemic.html and World Health Organization (2004) link:
http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/303.pdf
“Che Guevara was monumentally vain and epically stupid. He was shallow, boorish, cruel and cowardly. He was full of himself, a consummate fraud and an intellectual vacuum. He was intoxicated with a few vapid slogans, spoke in clichés and was a glutton for publicity.” Fontova, supra.
Randy Mott (Many thanks and much credit to the sources cited, who cared about the truth).
In the beginning, however, I must observe that Che Guevara's real story contradicts every value held dear by those who glorify him. They oppose capital punishment: he believed in it and practiced it without trials on guilt or innocence. They cherish personal freedom: he sent young people to re-education camps for listening to rock music. They value heroism and personal honor: he was at his best shooting unarmed men. They respect intellectual achievement: his writings are petty regurgitation of Marxist slogans. They try to epitomize personal freedom: he was the master of collective suppression of freedom. They extol love: he preached hate as a political tool.
“The fog of time and the strength of anti-anti-Communism have obscured the real Che. Who was he? He was an Argentinian revolutionary who served as Castro's primary thug. He was especially infamous for presiding over summary executions at La CabaÒa, the fortress that was his abattoir. He liked to administer the coup de grace, the bullet to the back of the neck. And he loved to parade people past El ParedÛn, the reddened wall against which so many innocents were killed. Furthermore, he established the labor-camp system in which countless citizens — dissidents, democrats, artists, homosexuals — would suffer and die. This is the Cuban gulag. A Cuban-American writer, Humberto Fontova, described Guevara as "a combination of Beria and Himmler." Anthony Daniels once quipped, "The difference between [Guevara] and Pol Pot was that [the former] never studied in Paris." Jay Nordlinger, republished by the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research, http://www.hacer.org/current/LATAM71.php
On the movie, The Motorcycle Diaries: Tony Daniels: "It is as if someone were to make a film about Adolf Hitler by portraying him as a vegetarian who loved animals and was against unemployment. This would be true, but rather beside the point."
In France, the remarkable group Reporters Without Borders took an image well known in that country: that of a policeman wielding a truncheon and a shield. But it put Guevara's face in place of the policeman's and cried, "Welcome to Cuba, the world's biggest prison for journalists." Nordlinger, supra.
“But facts are not unimportant to Cuban Americans. Imagine being one of them and seeing celebratory images of Guevara all around you. Imagine — even further — being the son or daughter of someone whom Guevara personally executed. There are such people in the United States. Or imagine — further yet — being a Cuban political prisoner, and knowing that masses in free countries were wearing Che on their chests.” Nordlinger, supra.
“"Hatred is an element of struggle; relentless hatred of the enemy that impels us over and beyond the natural limitations of man and transforms us into effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machines. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy." Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental
1967 cited at http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/che.html.
"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. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon (The Wall)! Che Guevara, 1959.
Che's slaughter of (bound and gagged) Cubans (Che was himself an Argentine) exceeded Heinrich Himmler's prewar slaughter of Germans – to scale, that is.” Che Guevara: Assassin and Bumbler – by Humberto Fontova Feb. 23, 2004, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/23/171252.shtml
“Within three months in power, Castro and Che had shamed the Nazi prewar incarceration and murder rate. One defector claims that Che signed 500 death warrants, another says over 600. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book "Yo Soy El Che!" that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad. In his book "Che Guevara: A Biography," Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions during the first few years of the Castro regime.
So the scope of the mass murder is unclear. So the exact number of widows and orphans is in dispute. So the number of gagged and blindfolded men who Che sent – without trials – to be bound to a stake and blown apart by bullets runs from the hundreds to the thousands.” Fontova, supra.
“But the mass executioner gets a standing ovation by the same people in the U.S who oppose capitol punishment! Is there a psychiatrist in the house?!” Fontova, supra.
“"We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable ... we will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood! Let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeois – more blood, as much as possible." Che Guevara, in his “Motorcylce Diaries” quoted at Fontova, supra.
From those who today condemn the use of loud rock music on terrorists detainees in Cuba, the glorification of Che is more than a paradox: “The "acrid odor of gunpowder and blood" never reached Guevara's nostril from actual combat. It always came from the close-range murder of bound, gagged and blindfolded men. He was a true Chekist: "Always interrogate your prisoners at night," Che commanded his prosecutorial goons. "A man is easier to cow at night, his mental resistance is always lower." Fontova, supra.
During the Bay of Pigs invasion, Che led several thousand troops 300 miles away in response to three boats set up off-shore with roman candles, other firepowers, and tape recorded battle-sounds. Fontova, supra. “Three days later the (literal) smoke and mirror show expended itself and Che's men marched back to Havana. Not surprisingly, the masterful Comandante had managed to wound himself in this heated battle against a tape recorder. The bullet pierced Che's chin and excited above his temple, just missing his brain. The scar is visible in all post-April '61 pictures of the gallant Che (the picture we see on posters and T-shirts was shot a year earlier.) Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a Fidelista at the time, speculates the wound may have come from a botched suicide attempt. "No way!" say Che hagiographers John Lee Anderson, Carlos Castaneda and Paco Taibo. They insist it was an accident, Che's own pistol going off just under his face.” Fontova, supra.
“…the century's most celebrated guerrilla fighter never fought in a guerrilla war or anything even approximating one. The few puerile skirmishes again Batista's army in Cuba would have been shrugged off as a slow night by any Cripp or Blood. In Cuba Che couldn't fight anyone to fight against him. In the Congo he couldn't find any to fight with him. In Bolivia he finally started getting a tiny taste of both. In short order he was betrayed, brought to ground and routed.” Fontova, supra.
Read Che? “I defy anyone to actually finish a Guevara book. I defy them to hack their way through the first five pages. Che's gibberish makes Babs Streisand sound like Cicero.” Fontova, supra.
Famous Che quotes:
"The past makes itself felt not only in the individual consciousness – in which the residue of an education systematically oriented toward isolating the individual still weighs heavily – but also through the very character of this transition period in which commodity relations still persist, although this is still a subjective aspiration, not yet systematized." Cited by Fontova, supra.
"To the extent that we achieve concrete successes on a theoretical plane – or, vice versa, to the extent that we draw theoretical conclusions of a broad character on the basis of our concrete research –we will have made a valuable contribution to Marxism-Leninism, and to the cause of humanity." Cited by Fontova, supra.
Great guerilla leader? Folks who decided to leave Che’s little band of murders: “These hapless "deserters" were hunted down like animals, trussed up and brought back to a dispassionate Che, who put a pistol to their heads and blew their skulls apart without a second thought. After days spent listening to Che and smelling him, perhaps this meant relief.” Fontova, supra.
Party guy? “In 1961 Che even established a special concentration camp at Guanacahibes in extreme Western Cuba for "delinquents." This "delinquency" involved drinking, vagrancy, disrespect for authorities, laziness and playing loud music.” Fontova, supra.
Fidel did not like Che: “The one place where I can't fault Fidel, the one place I actually empathize with him, is in his craving to rid himself of this insufferable Argentine jackass. That the Bolivian mission was clearly suicidal was obvious to anyone with half a brain. Fidel and Raul weren't about to join him down there…” Fontova, supra.
To the young people in the Free World that glorify this vapid thug, their ignorance of what Che left for modern young Cubans is appalling. The highest suicide rate in the Hemisphere, more than doubling after 1963. See Juan Tamayo, “Study: Suicide epidemic exists under Castro,” Miami Herald, June 18, 1998, link: http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/suicidepidemic.html and World Health Organization (2004) link:
http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/303.pdf
“Che Guevara was monumentally vain and epically stupid. He was shallow, boorish, cruel and cowardly. He was full of himself, a consummate fraud and an intellectual vacuum. He was intoxicated with a few vapid slogans, spoke in clichés and was a glutton for publicity.” Fontova, supra.
Randy Mott (Many thanks and much credit to the sources cited, who cared about the truth).
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