The real Che Guevara

Think the far left cult-worshippers of Che Guevara will change their tunes once they read this?

(CNSNews.com) – Che Guevara, who aided Fidel Castro in his rise to power in Cuba in the late 1950s and early 1960s, is today an icon of liberal culture worldwide. His picture and image adorn countless products, from posters to t-shirts to CD cases to bikinis.

Robert Redford made a 2004 movie about Guevara, “The Motorcycle Diaries,” which won media praise and an Academy Award. Two more Guevara movies are due for release in 2008.

Yet the liberal-left and Hollywood are perpetuating myths, if not outright lies, about Guevara, according to author Humberto Fontova in his book, “Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him.”

Fontova discussed with Cybercast News Service his new book and what he describes as the real Guevara – the man who directly helped Castro put into place a communist regime responsible for at least 102,000 deaths and which has cycled 500,000 people through its gulag.

[…]

Cybercast News Service: When academics and Hollywood and establishment media promote untruths about Guevara and Cuba, is it ignorance, or that they’re sympathetic towards Castro, or both?

Humberto Fontova: It’s a combination and reflexive anti-Americanism. You have to remember that, well before Osama bin Laden, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were the emblems of anti-Americanism, the worldwide emblems. Basically, the Cuban revolution and everything associated with it – and Che Guevara is the primary symbol of that – is the handiest club to pick up and whack the U.S. on the head.

Cybercast News Service: What do you consider to be some of Guevara’s greatest crimes or offenses that people today should know about?

Humberto Fontova: He was the chief executioner. He performed for the Cuban revolution what Heinrich Himmler performed for the Nazis. Everything Che Guevara did was directed by Fidel Castro. Early on, when they were in the mountains, Castro realized that Che seemed to relish executing little farm boys. There were executions carried out, carried out in the mountains, of so-called informers. I interviewed many people who witnessed those executions. There was no due process.

Che Guevara wrote a letter to his father in 1957 and to his abandoned wife. In the letter to her, he wrote, “I’m here in Cuba’s hills, alive and thirsting for blood.” Then, to his father, “I really like killing.” The man was a clinical sadist, whereas Fidel Castro you could describe as a psychopath in that the murders did not affect him one way or the other. It was a means to an end – the consolidation of his one-man rule. Che has a famous quote, where he wrote, a revolutionary has to become “a cold killing machine.” The thing was, Che Guevara was anything but cold. He was a warm killing machine. He relished the slaughter.

Cybercast News Service: Are there reliable estimates on the number of people killed by Guevara or killed as a result of his policies or orders?

Humberto Fontova: He was put in charge of the execution squads in early 1959. He stayed in charge of the prison where most of the executions took place in Havana. And in the months he was in charge there, about four months until July 1959, the estimates run from 500 to 1,182 men and boys sent to the firing squad without due process. But the system he set in place for the executions … in that system of justice, according to “The Black Book of Communism” – the definitive source – by the mid-sixties, 14,000 men and boys had been executed in Cuba. That was the year, December 1964, when Che Guevara … addressed the General Assembly, and he said: “Executions? Certainly we execute. And we will continue executing as long as it is necessary!” So, in other words, he still claimed the system. It was still his system at work.

This is a fascinating read, part of a 2 part interview – the other part, I presume, will be published tomorrow.

I suspect that Che fans (of which there are many) know the depth of Che’s depravity already. Just like they know how ruthless Fidel Castro is, and any number of other thugs whose faces they, oddly, use as symbols of freedom – especially when marching against the ‘oppressive’ US under the “reign” of “King” George W. Bush.

It’s very revealing having a conversation with supporters of the likes of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. When you ask them what they like so much about Cuba, they talk about the healthcare system there (Jules Crittenden has had this conversation, too) and how ‘wonderful’ it is (see useful idiot Michael Moore for more on that, and then for a dose of reality on Cuban healthcare, go here). I typically respond “yeah, outside of its rampant human rights abuses, including locking up and punishing journalists who don’t toe the official Cuba line, then sure – it’s a wonderful place to be.” Some of the human rights abuses that are on record as happening in Cuba are some of the same types of abuses that Cuba-admirers (who usually include a high number of rabid anti-war protesters) baselessly claim the US engages in routinely on its own soil.

This is the number one reason why I don’t take rabid anti-war Bush haters in this country seriously, because I know so many of them are lacking a very important component when it comes to critical thinking and deductive reasoning when comparing the rights they have here versus the ‘rights’ oppressive countries supposedly have. That component?

A clue.

Then again, it could be that many of them are well aware that this administration isn’t engaging in the human rights abuses they claim it is. They’re just leveling charges as often as possible in hopes that eventually something will stick. As I’ve written before, it’s not so much whether or not the charge is true so much as it is about the “seriousness” of the charge. Whatever it takes to bring down the admin, right?

Hat tip: EU Referendum

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