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October 7, 2009
Exclusive: Che Lied, Artists Fried
In the High Point Enterprise (October 29, 1967), J.F. Ter Host described Ernesto “Che” Guevara, as “the New folk hero of America’s New Left.” He also wrote about a “concerted move to immortalize Che as a martyr worthy of emulation,” thanks to so-called underground publications and wannabe radicals, also known as high-bourgeois college kids, with dough.
“The cult of Che Guevara is not” run “by gentle peaceniks and well-meaning pacifists. It
is, rather, a cult -as ruthless and arrogant as Che, that literally would like to see a violent revolution to overthrow the U.S. government,” wrote Ter Host. “Gone is the one time reverence for the late John F. Kennedy and the subsequent hope that his brother, Bobby, might lead some kind of national reformation. The Kennedys have turned out to be too square.”
Che, in a word, was groovy. Today, you’ll see leftists wearing his image, thanks to sweatshop T-shirt companies, where little hands allegedly make the best threads.
There are even movies portraying the rich bearded-communist as a hot-and-sweaty babe. It is a cult built on pop images. Or as Ter Host correctly prophesized: “Now that he is dead, his own atrocities can be overlooked and he can be elevated as a kind of Communist St. George who tried only to liberate the masses from the imperialist dragon.”
So what angered Argentina’s bitter son? Go figure. My Buenos Aires-born grandmother was poorer – and she didn’t go ape (except for the time my brother tried to cross the traffic without looking). But I digress. In some ways, I think the New Leftists were always looking for a hero. The old Communist Left had Stalin, with his big moustache. The old tax-loving Nazis – National Socialists – had Hitler, with his little moustache. Arguably, then, the groovy university students were going for the scraggy-bearded look. Or they related to a loud college yuppie, with attitude.
Writing for The New York Times News Service on Tuesday, October 10, 1967, before Che’s death became official, C.L. Sulzberger wrote:
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA—One cannot help admiring the courage and persistency of Che Guevara, Argentina's most famous revolutionary since Jose De San Martin. Guevara has now disappeared among his guerrillas in the Bolivian bush. He is a fanatical Communist of the Havana- Peking activist school and he went to Bolivia solely for the purpose of inciting armed revolt. Using various noms de guerre, including Ramon and Fernando, moving around in various disguises and with various collections of forged documents, he is an arch conspirator.
Adding that:
He hates the United States with a passion even exceeding San Martin's hatred for imperial Spain.
ALSO LIKE SAN MARTIN, Guevara comes of [sic] a good family in upcountry Argentina. He was well-educated and qualified as a physician before he became a professional revolutionist.
One can’t help but feel that Sulzberger and others in the Big Media glamorized the terrorist a little too much, but to be fair and all, The New York Times also praised Mussolini for his socialistic achievements. And, they couldn’t help admiring the courage and persistency of FDR too, in spite of the fact that he stood against anti-lynching Republicans for pro-lynching laws. After all, he was left.
That said, Che was not dumb, confessing in the end that, “The presence of a foreign journalist, American for preference, was more important to us than a military victory.”
In the real world, there’s not a wide gap between newspaper columnists and precious hippies, unless, of course, we’re talking about facial hair. There was, though, a huge gap between poor Bolivians and the new colonialists, also known as communists. Or as Che’s reports remind us, it was Che who reported that, “Not a single peasant has joined us." (Pearson & Anderson, “Letters Beside Diary,” Time-Mirror and Observer (PA), Wednesday, July 17, 1968, page 4.)
It may be that that the locals didn’t care for oil-hungry commies.
Clearly, if you’re going to establish a popular cult, associating with the Peking-Havana activist scholars makes sense. But a taste for blood is key. Che proved himself a real man by executing a child, without trial. (Apparently, the malnourished kid stole some food.) Che showed off his manliness too by marching into Havana with Castro and conducting mass executions inside two major prisons.
We know that Che was a genuine revolutionary because he lived in a well-off area. Or to put it politely: Communism was not made for communists. Later, Cuba grew into an island prison, with a healthcare system so good that thousands risked raging waves and hungry sharks to reach capitalist Florida.
By the late 1970s, Red Cuba was home to more than 15,000 prisoners of conscience, from fabulously camp poets to born-again Christians, or basically all free-thinking citizens. They were the ones who didn’t get away. Che lied, artists fried. The other bearded religion, if it can be called that, was built on blood too.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Ben-Peter Terpstra, an Australian-European satirist, is a contributor to a number of websites, from On Line Opinion (Australia's e-journal of social and political debate) to American Thinker. His pieces are also posted on his blog, Pizza Trays and Beer Bottles.
Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (3)
Wow, so much hyperbole and so little fact.
Che was a hero, and Reagan is a war criminal.
Viva Che
When I attended Amnesty International meetings, Red Cuba’s human rights atrocities (past and present) stood out and were shocking, to say the least. We all need to spend more time searching our hearts to find compassion for the victims of Che’s revolution. I’m sure – deep down - you oppose executing hungry kids Carlos.
Sure. I think Che’s beard is cool. That said he was not a man of the people but an elitist, with blood on his hands. Murder is murder. Elitism is elitism.
The Miami Mafia who carry out terror attacks on Cuba have always hated the heroic El Che. All the more reason to admire him.
"Che Guevara is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom, we will always honor his memory." --- NELSON MANDELA
Hasta la Victoria Siempre !
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