Dr. Douglas Young, Professor from the Political Science & History at Gainesville State College has a question for you to ask the next person you see wearing a Che Guevara tee-shirt
Hollywood has dutifully churned out yet another cinematic agitprop paean to a leftist ‘martyr’, this time Ernesto Guevara. So let us recall the real ‘Che’ and try to discern why many supposedly democratic, civil libertarian liberals still swoon over this Stalinist mass-murderer.
The meticulous myth of Senor Guevara is of a handsome Argentine heroically helping Fidel Castro’s guerrillas liberate Cuba from Fulgencio Batista’s military dictatorship in 1959. Then he became a global revolutionary icon inspiring the downtrodden to rise up everywhere, even personally leading rebel warriors in the Congo before being executed doing the same in Bolivia in 1967. The (communist) party line says Che personifies the selfless humanitarian courageously fighting for ‘social justice’. He is the Marxists’ martyred Christ figure replete with pictures of his half-naked corpse riddled with bullet holes. And the classic poster of an angry young Guevara has scarred countless college dorm rooms for over 40 years, putting a face on the eternally young rebel for angry adolescents everywhere.
The real Guevara was a reckless bourgeois adrenaline-junkie seeking a place in history as a liberator of the oppressed. But this fanatic’s vehicle of ‘liberation’ was Stalinism, named for Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, murderer of well over 20 million of his own people. As one of Castro’s top lieutenants, Che helped steer Cuba’s revolutionary regime in a radically repressive direction. Soon after overthrowing Batista, Guevara choreographed the executions of hundreds of Batista officials without any fair trials. He thought nothing of summarily executing even fellow guerrillas suspected of disloyalty and shot one himself with no due process.
Che was a purist political fanatic who saw everything in stark black and white. Therefore he vociferously opposed freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, protest, or any other rights not completely consistent with his North Korean-style communism. How many rock music-loving teens sporting Guevara t-shirts today know their hero supported Cuba’s 1960s’ repression of the genre? How many homosexual fans know he had gays jailed?
Did the Obama volunteers in that Texas campaign headquarters with Che’s poster on the wall know that Guevara fervently opposed any free elections? How ‘progressive’ is that?
How socially just was it that Che was enraged when the Russians blinked during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and withdrew their nuclear missiles from the island, thus averting a nuclear war? Guevara was such a zealous ideologue that he relished the specter of millions of Cuban lives sacrificed on the altar of communism, declaring Cuba “a people ready to sacrifice itself to nuclear arms, that its ashes might serve as a basis for new societies”. Some humanitarian!
Che was a narcissist who boasted that “I have no house, wife, children, parents, or brothers; my friends are friends as long as they think like me, politically”. This is a role model for today’s ‘post-political’ voters claiming we should get beyond partisanship?
Adding to the ridiculousness of the Che cult is that he was virtually a complete failure. As a medical doctor, he never even had a practice. When put in charge of the Cuban economy at the start of Castro’s government, his uncompromising communist diktats ran it completely into the ground, from which it never recovered. Humiliated, and also angry that Castro was not fomenting enough revolution abroad, he then tried to lead such quixotic adventures in Argentina, the Congo, and Bolivia, failing miserably everywhere while sacrificing the lives of scores of naïve, idealistic young followers as deluded pawns in the service of his personality cult.
Another reason he fled Cuba in the mid-1960s was the complete mess he made of his private life. Though he preached sexual purity to his colleagues, he was a shameless adulterer who abandoned two wives and many children, some legitimate, others not. As a grandson put it, “he was never home”. The public Che who supposedly had such great love for humanity privately could not stand most folks.
Guevara’s promiscuous communist adventurism was the pattern of a terminal adolescent running away from his problems to get caught up in some heroic crusade against his eternal bete noir, ‘Yankee imperialism’.
So why do so many well-heeled American libs still admire this thug? Are the young simply ignorant of his execrable record and drawn to the image of the dashing young rebel? Do older progressives feel guilt for their free market prosperity, and showing solidarity with Che absolves them? Do hippies-turned-yuppies get nostalgic for their youthful protests and rationalize that the symbolism of Che as a ‘social reformer’ eclipses his actual horrific human rights record? And are some American Guevaraistas truly dangerous leftists who seek to emulate their icon and destroy our free, democratic, capitalist society?
Ask that guy wearing the Che tee-shirt.
The best reply I’ve seen was another T shirt with the Che picture and the line “Communism Killed 100 million people and all I got was the lousy T Shirt !”
I just read your post above and thought you might appreciate my line of “Just Ché No!” t-shirts and other merchandise. Inspired by former First Lady Nancy Reagan’s 1980s anti-drug message (i.e., “Just Say No!”), “Just Ché No!” items provide conservatives an alternative to the now-popular Ché Guevara t-shirts being worn by people who don’t realize he executed as many as 400 people during the Cuban Revolution.
Bob, you do not need to be ‘conservative’ (I am certainly not) to find Che despicable.
Well, the defining image of Che is by that most capitalist of artists, Andy Warhol.
We stole him.
So fuck ’em.
Very thought-provoking article.
An image represents many things and it would be a mistake, in the case of the Che image to supppose that people wearing the t-shirt are only waiting for the opportunity to behave just like Che. One of the wierdest things I heard in the last couple of years was that in some parts of Europe (Italy definitely and possibly France and Germany) young adherents of right-wing youth organisations had adopted the Che image. They would definitely never vote or support a left-wing party of any description.
Sounds a bit like Dolly!
Argue with someone wearing a Che shirt? Nah. You can’t argue with an epiphany.
Are the young simply ignorant of his execrable record and drawn to the image of the dashing young rebel?
Yes.
The young in my household is wearing one of these.
Che T-Shirts are, I think, a nice example of a relatively trivial matter that can help elucidate deep and obscured political faultlines, including within the Right, where there are three discernible positions:
1) Those who wear Che T-Shirts have an admirable belief in equity and fairness, but are naive. They need to be reasoned into understanding that progressive ends are best achieved by conservative means (which are themselves fundamentally progressive blah blah blah – hey fancy a canape and a line of coke?).
2) Che T-shirts are a perfect example of the triumph of capitalism, wherein the free market neutralises potentially sibversive threats and makes money from them.
3) I hope all the people wearing Che T-Shirts get run over by a combine harvester.
Me, I’m with (3) all the way. I hate having to wade through organic and fair trade groceries, I hate being confronted with a company’s statement to social responsibility, I hate having to feign a whole bunch of lamebrained opinions to pass a job interview. I hate it all even when I know that it’s just a cynical ploy to turn credulity into ready cash. I fundamentally can’t stand the way capitalism absorbs and profits from the sort of repulsive, milquetoast gross stupidity that makes up received opinions. I don’t want to make money from it, I wan’t to destroy it.
And that’s what I’m talking about. Che T-shirts make me realise that on some level what I want is the rule of the saints and that’s something I should probably work on.
If they don’t look particularly violent, I usually just ask “Is it Racist Mass Murderers’ Day Today? Damn, my Hitler shirt is in the wash.”
I work in Boulder, Colorado. The streets are dense with Che shirts.
My take, as a fresher of ’71 (so not quite a ’68-er) is that it [the T-shirt] was/is just an anti-establishment statement.
All this post-hoc rationalisation (even revisionism), that the guy must be recognised as evil and a failure, however true, misses that point.
Oh, and I never wore one, nor wanted to: my anti-establishmentism, such as it is, really only got going around ’03.
Best regards
I read a biography on the unflushable turd a few tears back.
What an abject failure he was. He left Africa just before his own “allies” strung him up, his advice and posturing beconing that odious.
And if youve never read them you must check out Pacos Che diaries, they are the best piss take you will ever read on the bearded fool. Truely inspired, well written and funny.
http://pacoenterprises.blogspot.com/2008/12/che-philia.html
Heres a sample. The link is to the last episode, but has the previous ones linked at the top.
“Ok, I won’t deny that this is a bit of a setback. Being captured by Bolivian troops has definitely thrown the revolution off schedule. And of course, since Felipe and Julio are the comrades planning the rescue effort, things don’t look particularly rosy for me, personally. However, so far, my treatment hasn’t been bad. In fact, this morning, when I complained to the guard about the effects of this stuffy cell on my asthma, he smiled and told me that they would be working on my ventilation shortly.”
Che liked to shoot things- so do Americans!
Che liked being top dog- so do Americans!
Che liked espousing populist slogans to gain power- so do Americans!
What’s not to like?
Half of you lot sound like shy, socially-awkward nerds who are so angry with everyone that you fantasise about summarily executing people. Political extremists tend to be dodgy – that’s partly why they went out of fashion. Get over it.
And you sound like someone who reacts to trigger words rather than actually reading people’s comments, Bendle.
And who should get over what, exactly? Please try again with something coherent.
Hi!
I am from Argentina and I agree 100% with your article.
Unfortunately here he is a hero fueled by the atmosphere of extreme left wing stupidity along with Ecuador, Bolivia and (specially) Venezuela.
It is embarrasing for me that Che Guevara is Argentinean. He has never done ONE SINGLE act for the good of this country. Still considered a hero. Nonsense.
Thats why we are a third world country, with high poverty levels, high unemployment, and abundant corruption.
Nacho-
Che did one good thing- he died! He stopped wasting good air that was needed elsewhere!
In fact, you could say he died by his own creed- violence!
At least Harold Shipman’s patients seemed to have liked him but then he only killed about 300.
I work near the university in Manchester and see thousands of students on Oxford Road most days. The Che T shirt is very rarely spotted.
Can’t remember ever having seen a spotted Che T-shirt ;-))
A couple of years ago I went to a folk fest wearing my ‘Mickey Che’ T. Almost everyone under forty years of age thought it hilarious; everyone over fifty just glared at me. Only two people, young college students, were genuinely puzzled. They asked me what it meant, and I explained about the executions, the torture, the mass graves, about Che’s being first and foremost a psychopath and so on. They were utterly astonished. They had never heard one single word of this.
Well…
(a) the Che image we all know and love is due to that most captilaist of artists Andy Warhol.
(b) it’s very commonplace in Manchester amongst the sort of folk who shop at Afflecks. And that would include a load of students.
(c) I shop at Affleck’s.
(d) so does Debbie Harry.
(e) I dunno.
(f) What matters is what matters and Che doesn’t. His image has been usurped by kids as a saleable symbol of rebelion which has nothing to do with the real Che.
(g) Nacho. Decent folk in this country (the UK) couldn’t give a toss about Che. We do though care about your fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges. Now that is the Argentine I care for.
And who should get over what, exactly? Please try again with something coherent.
Ideologues should get over the fact that once-celebrated extremist leaders, and indeed government agencies, commit heinous crimes in the name of their causes. This is true of the left and the right, though it has of course been more common on the left.
The problem lies with people who want tell other people what to do. I suppose debunking one’s opponents’ mythologies is fun, but to me it seems locked in old, dualistic thinking.
Hardly anyone under 40/50 cares or even knows about Che Guevera’s politics, but the Warhol portrait T shirts are still around in places like Afflecks Palce because a few years ago several ,ahem, “streetwear” designers began using old Leftist iconography from the 1960s and 1970s with a sort of arch, postmodern and nauseating irony. This seems to have started a trend that led to the revival of the Warhol image.
To me, it would be more interesting to talk about the (non) thinking driving trends such as that, and the reasons why Hollywood producers think they can now make money out of the Guevera myth, than it would be to get cross about “liberals”.
Apologies for earlier abusive incoherence.
Let us not forget that the Bolivia of 1967 had virtually no large scale private estates (they had been stolen after the Revolution of 1952) or large scale private companies – they had been stolen in various waves of nationalization going back to the 1930’s.
“Che” Guevara was fighting for Marxism – nothing else.
Of course that means, contrary to the writer, that the Obama activists were quite correct to have a piture of “Che” on the wall – as Barack Obama has a Marxist background going back all the way to his childhood.
Sounds like a couple of commenters at this very website, only with a different political philosophy.
So Che pushed out the Batista reign that was supported by the american’s, who deprived his own people and left the american mobsters rule the country. Cuba has national pride back no matter what you think.
And the American government actually helped Castro get in to power… that must be a bit more of a kick in the balls for you.
Get your facts straight before you write anything pal. John Anderson’s autobiography on Che would be a great start…. instead of basing your article from Wikipedia!!
Che was not a native Argentinean. He name was Lynch. Father all Irish and mother 1/2 Irish and 1/2 Spanish(Barcelona). He was 100% European. The darker your skin color the more likely Che was going to kill you. Look it up.
Well wearing a Che tee gives me hope. And being that this is a free country and that is the reason you all feel so proud of yourselves to make comments about a person who at least had the guts to die for what he believed in, I have the right to wear my tees and feel good about it. i wear them because unlike you all who talk based on what you have read and based on movies you’ ve seen. i have actually lived in poor countries and i have also lived in Cuba…and I love the country and its people. Che made the people of Cuba who they are and for that I am thankful. The experiences I have lived make me who I am today and make me have respect for others, even when their believes are not the same as mine. Some of you may based your opinion on experiences from family members who fled Cuba. I am sorry for that, but you don’t leave your country, you stay and fight, or you died fighting. A war is a sad thing. It is sad to see kids go fatherless, it is sad to have your neighbors house destroyed by bombs. It is sad to meet your enemy and realize that he is just a human being like you, fighting for his own believes. Truth is we are all capable of doing wrong, we are all neighbors and friends to people who do wrong. we have all done wrong, and if in a war we would all kill inocent lives, like it or not. So don’t be so quick on judging others, specially when they are already dead. To you Che may be the worst there is, to others he is a hero who gave his life for those who at that time had no voice. Go to Bolivia and see the way the poor live there, some kids run around naked because there is no clothe for them to wear. You don’t even have to go that far, go to Mexico and look for yourself. Know that while you are reading this in your computer a 5 year old boy is working to make the “Made in not the USA” shirt you are wearing, and he will probably died by the age of 40, maybe younger, he will never know how to read or write and he will never own a computer. and if he hears of Che he will probably want someone like Che to come around just so that maybe he has a better chance at a better future.
Yes unlike Cuba. Try wearing a Batista tee-shirt in Havana and see what happens.
Yes, he died for what he believed in. So did a lot of Nazis. Does that make them admirable? Cuba is an economic basket case and a civil liberties nightmare. Great job.
I was wearing a Che t-shirt and someone took a minute to explain some of his practices……like killing people and jailing homosexuals……I immediately took the shirt off and threw it in the trash!
First off, Che’s iconic image is not the work of Andy Warhol.
The classic Red and Black image was created in 1967 by Jim Fitzpatrick, an Irish Artist who actually personally met Che. This image is based off a photo by Alberto Korda, who took the photo of Che while he was mourning the death of his fellow countrymen at the CIA led La Coubre Explosion. Neither men asked for any royalties or money from the image. In fact, Jim Fitzpatrick did not copyright his work so it could be copied and disseminated as widely as possible. And in 2000, when Smirnoff tried to use Che’s face in a vodka ad, Korda, the man who took the original photo, sued Smirnoff, and recieved an out of court settlement, all of which he donated to the Cuban Healthcare System (imagine that). While it is ironic that the image has become a mainstream capitalist fad, i don’t think in a capitalist society that you can blame any one person for finding a way to make a buck.
Secondly, while Che was a mass murderer, i think he should be remembered for the ideals he believed in. Although his methods were corrupt and disgusting-WHEN YOU HERD PEOPLE AROUND LIKE CATTLE ALL THEIR LIVES YOU CAN’T BE OUTRAGED WHEN THEY RESPOND LIKE BUTCHERS. The original point of the Che image is that the entity, the essence of Che lives on, not necessarily the human. Ghandi was a mysoginist who beat his wife. MLK Jr. had multiple families-all our hereos are flawed. Now i think we should all take a little more time looking at our own government, and our own attrocities, rather than complaining about the fashion of our youth.
Whilst I like you nickname, I must profoundly disagree…
Indeed we must. That is what makes Che not a mere “flawed hero”, it is what makes him a monster, because that ideals he believed in were wicked. He believed in enforced collectivisation… he did not want Cuba to become a voluntary kibbutz, he wanted to make it a mandatory collective at gunpoint. He believed in politically mandated ‘culture’ (i.e. no civil society outside the state whatsoever). And he killed people who did not want those things. That is not a minor character flaw, it is the very definition of a evil man.
Perry,
he also believed in community work days where he called for the entire country to perform community service to rebuild the country. He tried to nationalize most commodities to get rule of foreign influence (imagine that). And yes he did kill people that did not want the same thing. But like i said before, when you herd people around like cattle, you can’t be outraged when they respond like butchers. Guevara’s actions, while gross, are exactly like that of the CIA who overthrew several latin american governments for drugs and fruit-look up what Banana Republic really means (and read 100 years of solitude). I don’t think you can blame people for resorting to the only means they truly know. I think the major flaw of any revolution is that the leaders usually expect everyone to agree with them and share their beliefs. I do believe what Che did was evil, but i’m not sure he was an entirely evil man.
Also there have been 180 confirmed victims of Che. A few months ago a U.S. bombing killed 90 civilians in Afghanistan. I’m pretty sure the US kills off people who don’t believe the same thing they do.
All of which misses the point completely.
So? That makes idolizing Che ok how exactly?
If Che has been at least trying to replace Batista (a corrupt and brutal but fairly ineffective tyrant) with a system that prevented individual rights being trampled by collectives and other institutions, be they US banana companies using the laws OF THE CUBAN STATE to screw people or Batista’s secret police… and seek to replace them with a state that does not allow multinationals to in effect seize private property and allow the state to crush dissent against the state, then Che would have been at least fighting for a good cause.
But that is not what Che was fighting for. Whatever Batista was, he was not totalitarian, because frankly he did not really give a damn about what people did as long as they paid their taxes to him and did not oppose him.
Che was a genuine totalitarian however and replaced a bad system with a worse system, not by accident but by design. He replaced corruption and ineptitude with systematic seizure of ALL the means of production by the state and crushed dissent in ways Batista could only have dreamed off.
Moreover, when was the last time you saw someone wearing a CIA tee shirt?
Perry,
Can we please stop arguing apples and oranges. It’s obvious we disagree on this subject for different reasons. You dislike Che for the regime he set into place and how he carried out his government. I appreciate Che for his personal beliefs, what he stood for, and NOT the methods he used to carry them out-if you read his motorcycle diaries, you’ll find the reason Che wanted to overthrow these types of governments was because he saw oppressive capitalism leaving all of latin america in abject poverty. Freedom of speech may be nice, but food and health care helps you live. And like i said before, the problem with most revolutions is they expect everyone to think like them-hence totalarianism. Obviously you have a lot of knowledge on the subject, but i encourage you to look at both sides, read past your typical pro-american textbooks, and to actually see Che as a human being, not this monster everyone makes him out to be. If we can see the human in him then maybe we can all start to understand ourselves a little better.
I do see Che as a person… and I come to the opposite conclusion you do.
I see the problem of both Cuban Communism and American state-sponsored fascism overseas as one of the inherent moral and utilitarian failing of statism.
You think the problem of poverty in Latin America is caused by ‘capitalism’… but that is not the case. What you think is capitalism is actually state backed corporatism.
It is caused by lack of institutions, both cultural and legal, that underpin personal non-collective property rights. The reason certain US companies can do the things they have done in the past overseas is because they can use the power of corrupt states to act in ways that would be impossible if private property rights were enforceable. But the problem is rooted in the over-mighty state vis a vis the individual… so communism for fear of fascism is a bit like suicide for fear of death, and that was in effect what Che was pushing and why his lack of clarity makes him so undesirable on every level.
@Perry
thanks for the only clearly stated arguable point made in opposition to Che and his political ideology. If more people actually argued like this over emtional statement, the net would be a better place.
It sounds as if you are probably a libertarian. The problem that I have with capitalism as argued by pols like Ron Paul is that it is too utopian (not that I think less of those fighting for true capitalism through law, pressure groups, or grassroots efforts).
One example of what I think the problem can be illustrated by looking at disasters. Disasters are bound to occur and with most of population in urban areas this means massive death counts from them (tsunami, Bhopal, US Dust Bowl, recent Chinese earthquake, etc). This means that the State is able to leverage power like never before, charities aren’t the ones you see rescuing people out of flooded homes. The corporatist State uses the inevitable to make it seem as if without it there would be mugging and looting.
This is also the thought process behind all the Nobama lies; that without bailing out Wall Street, all us Joe citizen would be further up a creek.
How do you win against this? I think that is why some big philosopher(spacing name) said something like “We have reached the end of the progress of man and it will all be downhill from here”. The corporation has conquered all truly human institutions.
Cheers.
I prefer “social individualist” but I can live with “libertarian”.
Personally I am a ‘libertarian’ because I am *not* a utopian. I think the notion that demonstrably fallible people can be trusted with massive amounts of coercive power (via ballot boxes or executive orders, in the end it is all the same)… THAT is the “utopian” position.
It is precisely because I think it is an axiom that any power which can be abused, will be abused, that I argue for a minimal “nightwatchman state”. In other words the only way to get rid of corruption in high places is to get rid of as many high places as possible.
The state should be *entirely* about dealing with the few genuine collective threats that can only be faced collectively (violent conflicts (be they foreign uses of force or organised domestic uses of force), infectious plague and fires… all things that do not respect property lines). Any state that consumes much more than 10% of the GDP is probably a tyranny in the making eventually and should be opposed at all levels.
Any system that will *not* let bankers go bust cannot be described as ‘capitalist’. A redistributionist state, be it redistributing the wealth of others to peasants or bankers, is morally (and eventually practically) no different to a mafia in my opinion.
A redistributionist state, be it redistributing the wealth of others to peasants or bankers, is morally (and eventually practically) no different to a mafia in my opinion.
That is not just your opinion Perry, that is quite clearly a demonstrable fact. What is the difference between the Government saying “Give me 30% of your income, or Ill throw you in prison” and a Mafioso saying “Give me 30% of your income or I’ll smash up your property and/or kill you”
The only difference I can discern is that because a tiny minority of my fellow citizens decide it’s ‘fair’, the Government extorting a percentage of my income at gunpoint magically becomes morally acceptable.
I call bullsh*t.
I see lots of books with Che Guevera on the cover, usually about revolution or doing good. I`d love for one of those Che T wearing idiots to explain to a Cuban on why exactly Che is awesome possum. Come on! I have yet to see a Hispanic sporting Che, and I doubt I ever will. I know I never will.
Guess what, you just found a Hispanic who likes Che.. I can see why you guys all deeply resent this man, but I find his idealistic views appealing. He helped tons of Latin Americans throughout his travels and really wanted to rid Latin America of the corruption it has faced for centuries. I’m sorry but it makes me sick thinking that large corporations with enough power can takeover whatever they want! I am against killings of any kind (even the death penalty), and in that sense I do oppose what Che did in his extrajudicial hearings. BUT think about how many “terrorists” we have tortured in the US…is that justifiable in your opinion? Overall this man had good intentions, and that is why there are people who actually like him..
Then you are incoherent. His entire approach was based on violence yet…
…somehow he had “good intentions”. So killing people deemed “class enemies” indicated “good intentions”? Moreover…
But you are ok with communism and an end to private property apparently! It “makes you sick thinking that large corporations with enough power can takeover whatever they want” yet you support having a dictatorial state with enough power to take quite literally everything.
I went to a teacher conference in Habana a few years ago & bought a “che” t-shirt. Since my amigos know I am a libertarian, they laugh at me & my shirt.
By the way, everyone I met in Cuba, wants to leave!