I was expecting more idolation of Che from the inhabitants of this board.
Me personally, I think Che was a mass murdering jackass, and every time I see someone with a Che poster or T shirt I think about the same of them as if they were publicly letting everyone know how much they love Hitler, Stalin, or Osama bin Laden, or any other generally heinous example of human depravity. However, I restrain myself because I also know 99% of the sad sacks exhibiting such admiration of Che know less than nothing about the man, other than that he’s supposedly some symbol for revolution. If I were them, I might pick a symbol that was more intelligent and successful at it, but intelligence doesn’t run high in those circles.
What you often found in the 1950’s-1970’s strains of communism in the west at least were many people reaching past Stalin to Trotsky. One can argue about how much of a motherfucker he was as well, but it is always easier to lionize the loser and underdog and claim if only they had succeeded everything would have been much better. I think unreformed Stalinists weren’t as common compared to Trotskyists ( or even Maoists, who had to weasel around their own set of atrocities ).
With all due respect, if that surprised you I don’t think you have been paying enough attention to the actual ideology of posters around here. This board skews very heavily to the ‘liberal democrat’- types, but actual Marxists are quite rare in these parts. They’re probably outnumbered by at least casual libertarians ~100-1 :).
Che was in charge of executions at La Cabana prison after the Revolution, and something between 50 to a few hundred deaths may have been under his responsibility. Most of the death penalties were imposed through a judicial process (even if sometimes of the character of a kangaroo court), and many of those executed had been responsible for atrocities and other war crimes under the Batista regime. This compares to probably several thousand extra-judicial deaths under Batista, and tens to hundreds of thousands under other Latin American dictators supported by the US government.
Guevara no doubt was responsible for unjustified executions and other deaths, but comparison to Hitler or Stalin isn’t warranted either. There was quite a bit of debt-settling after the Revolution, but nothing comparable to the many millions killed by Hitler or Stalin.
There are conservatives who can’t understand the difference between a Democrat, a liberal, a socialist, and a communist. It’s as foolish to think that every liberal is a covert communist as it is to think that every conservative is a covert fascist.
True to a certain extent. But you didn’t see Castro and Guevara holding up Tito as a role model for their regime. They quickly jumped full-heartedly into the Soviet camp. And while the Soviets had officially moved past Stalin by that point, they certainly weren’t endorsing Trotsky.
But Trotsky might have ended up being similar to Guevara in ways he wouldn’t have liked. Castro started setting up his own cult of personality in Cuba - identifying himself personally with the strength of the regime. And personality-based regimes like that don’t like rivals that distract attention from them. If Guevara hadn’t been killed by the Bolivians and the CIA, he might have ended up being killed by Castro.
Sure, I agree on something, they are clueless of the full history, but the symbolism of a revolutionary that succeeded (in the early days) is the one that is being used, and not just by white teenagers but by guys willing to risk their lives against a dictator.
True, and that may have had something to do with why he left (as well as the death of fellow Hero-of-the-Revolution Camilo Cienfuegos in a plane crash not long after Castro took power).
However, with regard to the cult of personality, images of Che and even Camilo are much more common than those of Fidel in Cuba today.
Just some thoughts regarding the use of a symbol like him in the Arab world:
It seems to me that there is a good number of people that oppose the extremism of the Muslim militants by going under the socialist or communist banners, one big item why they are at odds with fundamentalists is their granting of equal rights to men and women. It is interesting to notice in a different location that most of the pictures showing very happy Iraqis when they learned that Saddam was captured on December 2003 showed celebrants from the Iraqi communist party! That was because they were brutally prosecuted by Saddam and they really put on a big show of celebration…
Just what the narrative of Bush and others ordered.
Only that, it was not a good thing to report to, (What? you mean American soldiers died for those commie guys too?) in a very naked censorship effort I saw pictures of the hammer and sickle and references to the communist party removed from most of the mainstream reports of the people celebrating in the streets. Independent media did notice the nature of those first celebrations. (It seems that most people in Iraq were not interesting in celebrating that capture, hard to change when all your life the propaganda was telling them to support that bastard, and people were also beginning to notice the creeping uncertainty and violence that the occupation was bringing in.)
But I digress…
As for the Che: Good, bad, he was the one with the gun.
But seriously, in the end he was more bad than good, although IMHO this is due to the fact that the US finally stopped supporting military coups in Latin America.
There is no justification now to take to arms when the democratic tools are more effective now in places like Latin America.
One of the most ubiquitous songs in Cuba, after only *Guantanamera *and Chan Chan, is Hasta Siempre Comandante, which regardless of its subject I think is very haunting.
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One way I will describe him - absolutely drop dead gorgeous. You only usually see that one picture of him, but if you seek out more, the guy was stunning.
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He couldn’t grow a beard for shit though, which may have held him back among the barbudos.
And if Che saw all the keychains and t-shirts sold to tourists from captalist countries in Cuba with his image on them he no doubt would be spinning in his grave. Hasta siempre capitalismo!
