It is common to see young “social justice” warriors sporting tee shirts bearing the image of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. Active in a number of guerilla initiatives in countries around the world, he is of course best known for his role in Castro’s 1959 defeat of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The latter, his country’s duly elected President from 1940-44, launched a military coup in 1952 in advance of an impending June election, and continued to rule by force with the backing of the U.S. until 1959. Certainly neither he nor the States were unworthy of the revolutionary disdain that led Castro and his forces to bring their regime to its knees. But history is complicated and Guevara, any honest appraisal must conclude, is himself hardly worthy of the saintly status granted him by the contemporary Left.
A recent post by Prager U. asked: “Che Guevara: Why is a Mass-Murdering Racist and Homophobe a Left Wing Hero?” Each of those epithets, it turns out, is entirely appropriate!
As head of Cuba’s La Cabana Fortress Prison, Guevara orchestrated the execution of approximately 140 inmates on the basis of what one article referred to as his “extra-judicial orders;” [i.e., they had had no trials, had been found guilty of no criminal acts, but were slaughtered for their political views.] This, one might point out, is hardly unusual in times of political turmoil but elsewhere, according to Cuban expatriate Cumberto Fontova, Guevara openly expressed his disdain for the Rule of Law, saying, with typical Marxist cynicism, that “judicial evidence” is a mere “archaic bourgeois detail.” This seeming indifference to basic Human Rights was certainly borne out by the facts of the Castro regime. All media organs were controlled by the State, free speech utterly banished; all educators of “moderate” views were purged from the educational system; and approximately 20,000 dissidents were tortured or allowed to starve to death in various prisons and concentration camps. Che was okay with all this!
Even more detrimental to his status as a Leftist Icon, Guevara frequently declared his disgust with both homosexuals and Blacks, stereotyping the latter as simple-minded and compulsively lazy. This is no place for a detailed biography of the man but even a cursory review of his history reveals him to be utterly unworthy of the esteem in which he is presently held.
Abandoning his position as Cuba’s Minister of Industry in 1965, he ended up in Bolivia where he tried to incite a revolution against that country’s ruling regime. It was there, in 1967, that he died before a firing squad, an inspiring form of martyrdom, no doubt, but ironically the very way in which he had dispatched his own political enemies!
An honest, rational appraisal of Guevara’s life must end in the conclusion that while he was motivated by what he considered a genuine desire for “social justice,” he was as guilty of heinous sins against humanity as were his enemies! This is a judgement rooted in Morality rather than Ideology. Sadly, those who wear tee shirts bearing his image appear to be interested in neither Truth or Morality, and that, I would argue, is the dominant characteristic of the lobotomized, religious Left.