• It is customary for followers of a cult not to know the real life story of their hero, the historical truth
• "I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated"
…The future T-shirt icon … proclaimed to the press that his ideal societal model was Kim Il-Sung's North Korea. … Guevara traveled there in 1965, saw the brutality and poverty with his own eyes, and then made it his goal to import that system to Latin America. As a champion of the poor, Che aspired to emulate a society that truly benefits its poorest inhabitants -anyone not named Kim Jong-il or Kim Il-Sung. … Leftists always have a problem with U.S.-backed dictatorships, but never with Stalinist and Maoist stooges like — well, like Che Guevara. (Benjamin Duffy)
• Stalin II
There is a misperception that [Ernesto "Che" Guevara] was a free spirit. He had cold Stalinist personality. He used to sign his early correspondence "Stalin II." He said early on that he saw the solution to all the world's problems behind (the) Iron Curtain. But this was not some hippie dippie Marxist, Guevara said in speech in 1962 that he regarded the very spirit of rebellion as anti-revolutionary. Figure that out, he said individualism must disappear in Cuba. If you tried to do your own thing under his regime you wound up in a prison camp. (Humberto Fontova)• The jails of Castro are far worse than those of Batista
Who is the writer of that claim? A capitalist reactionary? An imperialist? A (neo-)fascist? A Batista ally? No.• Che’s biographers consistently report that he sent thousands to the firing squad:Gustavo Arcos Bergnes is Castro's fellow revolutionary, imprisoned with the future Líder Maximo in the mid-1950s. And he experienced Castro both as a fellow cell-mate and (twice) as a warden. Castro's violent revolutionaries of the 1950s were treated far more humanely by the dictator Batista than non-violent human rights activists are treated by Castro today, he says as he recalls getting special treatment (hospital rooms as cells, private cooking facilities, etc) and pardons after only 21 months. (Since Castro's coming to power, incidentally, there have been 20,000 summary executions, but — unlike Pinochet's 3,000 victims — these are not of any particular concern to "human rights activists")
Che Guevara was one of the regime’s chief executioners during this period and is said to have acknowledged ordering "several thousand" executions. All took place without affording the victims fair trials and due process of law.• The mass executioner's T-shirt adorns the very people who oppose capital punishment!
• Leftists: Don’t feed them after dark and don’t get them wet
In 1956, when Che linked up with the Cuban exiles in Mexico city, one of them recalls Che railing against the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheering their extermination by Soviet tanks. (Humberto Fontava)• Where Are the Mickey Mouse Ears?…
Nearly four decades after his death, the legend of Che Guevara has grown worldwide. In this new book, Alvaro Vargas Llosa separates the myth from the reality of Che's legacy, and shows that Che's ideals were a re-hash of notions about centralized power that have long been the major source of suffering and misery in the underdeveloped world. With testimonies from witnesses of Che's actions, Alvaro Vargas Llosa's detailed account of the "real Che" sets the record straight by exposing the delusion at the heart of the Che phenomenon. Vargas Llosa shows that Che's legacy—making the law subservient to the most powerful, crushing any and all dissent, and concentrating wealth under the guise of "social equality"—is not the solution to poverty and injustice but is the core of the problem.
Oubliées, les purges, oubliées, les exécutions sommaires, le plaisir sadique des tortures: Che Guevara est un mythe, et un mythe ne peut être que parfait. … Fidel Castro sut exploiter les pulsions sacrificielles de son ancien compagnon en l'envoyant exporter la guérilla dans le vaste monde — et surtout, coupé de tout lien officiel avec le régime. Che Guevara finirait bien par mourir sur un champ de bataille ou un autre; resterait de lui son image inspirée et intemporelle, contrastant avec une dictature cubaine qui n'en finit pas de pourrir encore aujourd'hui. L'homme devint légende grâce à d'innombrables intellectuels de gauche cherchant à éviter l'erreur du soutien passé à Staline: mieux vaut rendre un culte à la personnalité d'un révolutionnaire mort qu'à celle d'un dictateur vivant. Son histoire fut soigneusement épurée et revue, les moments de gloire mis en avant et les périodes sombres gommées ou effacées. (Stéphane)
• La victoire des barbudos a réveillé en l'intelligentsia française une vieille passion française pour la révolutionLe statut d'icone de Che Guevara est une construction post-mortem, raconte Jacobo Machover dans son livre, La Face cachée du Che
• Should we love Che Guevara?
• Che Was a Mainstay of the Hardline Pro-Soviet Faction
The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system …• Che Guevara in 10 Quotes
In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. (Paul Berman on The Cult of Che)
• Commemorating the Death of Che Guevara the Baf Way
• Che Guevara, Revolutionary and Icon
• Channeling the dead for affirmation
• ¿Quiénes son los revolucionarios verdaderos?
• And here I thought under Communism we were all supposed to dispose of our bourgeois pleasures and eat our spinach
• Gaddafi Is Starting to Be Compared to Che Guevara, Allende, and Other Leftist Icons
• Compare with Bin Laden's Death at the Hands of the U.S.: When a Cuban Dissident Is Killed by Havana, Only a Couple of French Readers Bother Reacting
• Ireland to erect monument to Che Guevara
One can imagine many places wanting to build a monument to El Che, but why would precisely Ireland step in to do that? Because Ernesto Guevara had an Irish ancestor, born in Galway in 1715 (and appropriately, perhaps, named Lynch).
