Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Jay Nordlinger on "Che Chic"
Jay Nordlinger on Che Guevara Chic on National Review Online:
#aD#The world is awash in Che paraphernalia, and this is an ongoing offense to truth, reason, and justice (a fine trio). Cuban Americans tend to be flummoxed by this phenomenon, and so do others who are decent and aware. There is a backlash against Che glorification, but it is tiny compared with the phenomenon itself. To turn the tide against Guevara would take massive reeducation — a term the old Communist would very much appreciate...
...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 Cabaña, the fortress that was his abattoir. He liked to administer the coup de grâce, the bullet to the back of the neck. And he loved to parade people past El Paredón, 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."
The entire article is only available to NRO subscribers - which I am not, but having just slogged through John Lee Anderson's 800-page, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (It's Che, Che, nothing but Che...), let me add a few words to the re-education.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was trained as a doctor, but chose the life of a murderer in the name of his religion of Marxism. He was the worst of the breed of Coercive Utopians who had a vision of a perfect future and would let no man or woman - or their lives - stand in his way.
He and Fidel were subversive leeches on the back of the Cuban Revolution - a Revolution which sought to re-assert democratic principals on the Batista regime - a regime even Washington was embarrassed by. They kept their Communism a secret, since most of the revolutionary support was pro-Democracy and anti-Communist. They only allowed their true proclivities to be known when their power was sufficiently concentrated that they couldn't be opposed.
By that time they were able to banish the opposition, force them into silence, send them to prison or execute them in "Revolutionary Courts." Che helped oversee Cuba's economic transformation - a complete disaster for Cuba. Economic disaster and a disaster for freedom. Utterly.
Guevara was contemptuous of the concept of democracy. He did not believe in it. The only democracy he believed in was "the will of the people" - such will to be interpreted and enforced only by revolutionary high-priests - like himself, of course.
He did not believe in peaceful compromise or change within the system. He believed in true, revolutionary - read: Violent - change. This put him at odds with even many of the Communist Parties throughout Latin America who were working within the various systems. Che didn't care. He instigated and imported violent revolution whether they approved of it or not. He reveled in the fact that this would cause a blow-back by the government - more suffering was good for him and, he hoped, would only serve to strengthen his revolution. This should sound familiar, it's the same thing today's terrorists do.
It didn't work. Outside of Cuba, in Africa and South and Central America, Guevara was the original miserable failure. And misery is the right word. He succeeded at no great social change (thankfully, considering his goals), brought nothing but brutality to the regions he touched and eventually died in Bolivia, killed by government forces.
So when you see people waiving Che's image - assuming they have any idea whatsoever about what he really stood for - you know that such people are not for peace, freedom, civil liberties, peaceful coexistence, prosperity, change within the system...nor can you trust them since they, like Che, must by necessity hide their true face.
Related, if you're interested in more about Che, don't miss these two reviews of the new Che movie - The Motorcycle Diaries - Here and Here.
From Wikipedia:
Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina, the eldest of five children in a family of mixed Spanish and Irish descent. The date of birth recorded on his birth certificate was June 14, 1928, but his true date of birth was May 14, 1928. The birth certificate was deliberately falsified to help shield the family from scandal relating to his mother's having been three months pregnant when she was married.
Guevara's ancestor Patrick Lynch, founder of the Argentine branch of the Lynches, was born in Ireland in 1715. He left for Bilbao, Spain, and traveled from there to Argentina. Francisco Lynch (Guevara's great-grandfather) was born in 1817, and Ana Lynch (his grandmother) in 1861. Her son Ernesto Guevara Lynch (Guevara's father) was born in 1900. Lynch married Celia de la Serna and had five children.
In this upper-middle class family with significantly left-wing views, Guevara became known for his dynamic and radical perspective even as a boy. Though suffering from the crippling bouts of asthma that were to handicap him throughout his life, he excelled as an athlete. In 1948, he entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. There he also excelled as a scholar; he completed his medical studies in March 1953.