Celebrate the Death Day
 

October 11, 2008
Che Guevara's Rendezvous With Justice
By Humberto Fontova
41 years ago this week (Oct.9, 1967) in Boliva, Ernesto "Che" Guevara got a major dose of his own medicine. Without trial, he was declared a murderer, stood against a wall and shot.

Historically speaking, justice has rarely been better served. The number of men Che's "revolutionary tribunals" condemned to death in the identical manner range anywhere from 400 to 1,892. The number of defenseless men (and boys) Che personally murdered with his own pistol runs to the dozens.

"Executions?" Che Guevara exclaimed while addressing the hallowed halls of the UN General Assembly on Dec. 9, 1964. "Certainly, we execute!" he declared to the claps and cheers of that august body. "And we will continue executing as long as it is necessary! This is a war to the DEATH against the Revolution's enemies!"

According to "The Black Book of Communism," those firing-squad executions had reached around 10,000 by that time. "I don't need proof to execute a man," snapped Che to a judicial underling in 1959. "I only need proof that it's necessary to execute him!"


Not that you'd surmise any of the above from the mainstream media or academia-much less Hollywood. From the high priests of the Fourth Estate, Che Guevara gets only accolades. Time magazine, for instance, honors Che Guevara among "The 100 Most Important People of the Century."

The man who declared, "a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate" (and set a spirited example), who boasted that he executed from "revolutionary conviction" rather than from any "archaic bourgeois details" like judicial evidence, and who urged "atomic extermination" as the final solution for those American "hyenas" (and came hearth-thumpingly close with Nuclear missiles in October 1962), is hailed by Time-not just among the "most important" people of the century-but in the "Heroes and Icons" section, alongside Anne Frank, Andrei Sakharov and Rosa Parks.

(continued)
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/...z_with_ju.html

Aren't they shooting the messenger (Time) there? He was an important figure in the history of the last century, so was Hitler and Stalin. Che certainly isn't a hero, or icon, of mine, but he is to hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.

I think the point of the authors message is that the marketing of his image to young people who can't find Bolivia, Cuba, or even frigging Iraq on a map is not a good thing. Since most do not know the history of this terrorist. He has a point.

I agree, most of the kids wearing Che t-shirts probably don't have a clue.
I was just defending Time's choice of Che as being important... and a hero/icon to many.

I have an anti-che shirt in my closet... camo-green with a big che face, in a big red circle with a slash through it.
revolution - good.
violent revolution complete with killing sprees and thuggery - bad.

Icon. Sure. Hero? In the US? that is the problem. The guy was a fucking terrorist. I bet even after reading Time's article 99% of the yahoo kids wearing that shirt or hat or whatever could tell you very little about his violent past, or that of the great purge in communist China, and all the grand things that did for Red China.

Silliest Che-patch award goes to that young Japanese lad with the USMC camo pants with the Che patch sown on next to the B-52 silhouette.

Best T-Shirt award gos to the on with the caption: "cliChe lives".

Important? Yeah maybe a little. My hero? No.

:lol2:

Another great history lesson:

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1535

I am no fan of Che, but when you speak of ignorant kids, I think you should also include their ignorance of Latin America in general. Lack of a Democratic process, wide-spread terrorism, abuse of human rights, and all too often, hunger and malnourishment are prevelent. There are many reasons for this - corrupt governments, the Columbian drug cartel, abuses by the United Fruit Company, AND US interference such as the CIA assasignation of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile. Chile had the distinction of being the longest standing democracy in South America until the US decided to undermine the government there.

No, I am no fan of Che, but I consider him as much a symptom of a serious problem, as he was the cause.

I had the opportunity to spend 6 months in Brasil, and at the time I was there, government soldiers were dragging people off in the night and people were quite literally starving in the gutters. I am rather surprised no Che-like character showed up there.

It is important to see all sides of a question. Otherwise you run the risk of being considered as ignorant as those kids on Yahoo. :rolleyes:

Sure SamIam, without the horrific conditions that existed, and continue to exist, in South and Central America, Che would have never gained traction in the first place. I can see why he continues to represent the hope that someone, anyone, will ride in like Zorro and make the world beautiful.

I was only addressing the kid from the American suburbs, that hasn't missed a meal, or birthday present, in his life.

You know, come to think of it, using Che's image to sell soap is the ultimate victory of the capitalists over communists. :haha:

That was sort of my beef as well. Rich or poor American kids.

Sam, no doubt problems still exist. Not here, although I am sure some bleeding heart liberal will try to make a case otherwise. I am talking about kids in the US who should be better educated. Those who like to bitch and moan about the practices of our government on the one hand and hold up the banner of Che in the other as if it was more rightious. BS.

Is Che still seen as a hero by the disaffected youth of America?
I'm a little surprised.
He didn't really get a foothold here, except on an occasional t-shirt or poster by someone who didn't really know who he was, but man he fucked the system, right? He lived fast and died beautiful, right? Fucking cool, man.

I might be wrong about making a UK-wide statement- I'd need Dani and Monster to verify that- but certainly round here he was seen as a terrorist.

Nothing like having your cities blown up and civilians blown apart to turn you off terrorists.

BTW I can actually see how privation in South America would make the populace hail a hero out of a murderer. If you're out of options you take the hand that's proffered, no matter how bloody it is. It doesn't make him a hero though.

In as much as Youth needs an anti-authority figure, I think they'd be better off with James Dean. At least he just fucked, drank and drove himself to death.

Yes, go to any widely known leftists site. I would also be interested to see how many of these kids would react if faced with a true revolution that would undermine their current social status.

This post is too vague to fully tell but keep in mind that a non-violent revolution will have very little effect on a power hungry, usually violent oppressor. Change can happen non-violently within a system (see United States), but to completely overthrow a system, one has to be willing to use violence to get it.

For example, lets say we have a stable caste system set up in a country with two levels, an upper caste and lower caste. In order to get rid of the caste system, violence will be necessary (disregarding outside forces). But, as you pointed out, there is a HUGE difference between killing the counter-revolutionaries who will fight to defend the current system and just killing the entire upper caste.


For the record, I have no interest in Che.

The only problem I see with that philosophical approach is that the state is usually willing to up that anti and answer the violence with violence. Hence the all to common development of quasi-state sponsorship of death squads. Esp common in Central and South America.

True, but I haven't really heard of any other way. If you are getting beat up in the playground, its seems you either have to fight back or get your big brother to step in for you.

The only exception I can think of are democracies, but that is still rare.

gandhi was non-violent, and he still was probably the biggest factor in getting rid of the british...
true, after partition millions died, but that wasnt the revolution that was the partition.

Gandhi .... Mandela .... can anyone think of any other successful non-violent revolutionary leaders? Martin Luther King rates a mention as an also-ran. Any more?

I've always had a soft spot for Che Guavara. I think he was ruthless and violent, but then he was trying to overturn a ruthless and violent enemy. He was a fascinating and charismatic man, very clever. To point at him and say he was extreme is to ignore the extremities that created his mission. Nobody had clean hands. I admire his courage and determination.

In truth, Sundae, I think the Che has a mixed image here. There are plenty of Che t-shirts and he is still something of an icon to the left...but not an uncomplicated one. I think he is admired for what he tried to do, dared to do. But people are rarely pure heroes or out and out villains. I think even for those who admire him, or see in him the symbol of continued struggle, they also see the ruthless killer. He is seen as both a revolutionary and a terrorist. I don't think he's viewed as negatively here as in the States. There's more of an air of tragedy to his image here.

One man's Freedom Fighter is another man's Terrorist. Same could have been said about any person or group who used violent means to overthrow a sitting government. It just depends on who you choose to support whether or not you choose to ignore or downplay the violent acts and elevate and glorify the "courage and determination". Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mugabe, Pancho Villa, Osama Bin Laden, Pervez Musharraf, Ho Chi Minh, the history is endless. But of course you know this as a history major.

The more I hear about that subject the more I think we hear a biased version just like thinking that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Supposedly economic factors had a much larger part, which is much more realistic. But either way, Gandii, MLK, etc changed the system from within in a democracy, which is possible non-violently, not overthrew a system, which isn't.

"If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone, anyhow...."

don't you know it's gonna be alright?

During the Cuban missile crisis he got mad at the Soviets for not letting him bomb NYC with the nukes they so helpfully provided.

This is an idiot low-level mobster who died by the violence he so loved. Who loved revolution, but avoided the leadership that transforms a nation into something that lifts humanity up, instead of re-tearing it down in the name of a new boss running things.

Get rid of the old assholes, install new assholes who are worse and get glory from being a cutting figure. There's nothing "revolutionary" about it, really, it's just gangsterism.

SamIAm, give thought to Latin America's manner of colonization, contrasted with North America's. Here you will find a great deal of root cause, all of it predating the nineteenth century to say nothing of the early twentieth.

North America got a flood of smallholders and working-class types and young apprentices, out to have a small to fairish (occasionally vast) piece of land of their own and to carve out their bit of what became the American Dream. All these smallholders, all roughly similar in their resources and likewise similar in both their stake in the society they made and the political power they possessed, ended up with a penchant for the general equality. What is the result? A working Republic, downright bursting at the seams with functionality.

From Mexico southwards, there wasn't a flood. There was a sparse settlement instead by wealthy aristocrats, impoverished aristocrats brimful of personal ambition, and adventurers of similar ambition but socially humbler antecedents. These were united in pursuit of grandee status and condition, and damned little else mattered for long. So what they did was recreate the latifundian, plantation economy of late medieval Spain. Given who they were and what society they sprang from, it is hard to imagine them doing anything else -- it was what they knew. So there you are: a latifundian economy in a colonial relationship with developing Europe, exporting raw materials and importing finished goods, a very small minority of gentlefolk owning the entirety of the land and the exploitable resources, and everybody else is hired labor, landless, resourceless, and hapless -- and the teensiest middle class you ever saw, if indeed it were visible to the naked eye at all. Damned little in the way of small employers or self-employers. And in the end, not enough of these. Latin America's systemic problem is it lacks a middle class. A large middle class would have solved the systemic problem and likely it can yet, for it is doing so now. But it was the nature of the colonization of this continent that engendered the troubles seen since, right down to, as the joke has it, "thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute" -- most of them just enough to be typical but not so prolonged as to get boring.

Look into it further, Sam.

Very well said.

Any fool with a big enough hammer can smash a house down in a few days. It takes many months of skilled work to build a new one.
The same principle applies to governments, systems, societies.

Mandela was non-violent, the ANC certainly weren't.
I never supported the ANC. Despite the provocation - which I appreciate was a horrendously unfair system - it stuck in my throat to support terrorists.