El Che

[Incongruous]

Is he a revolutionary demi-god or as the New York Sun put it a sociopathic thug?

His contribution to socialism is vast, his selflessness to his cause is unmatched
as his demise in a dank Bolivian choolhouse proves.

Yet his executions without fair trial are often compared to Lenin's often tyranical treatment of anyone who disagreed with him.

I believe he was a selfless revolutionary, who gave up the trappings of office to continue the struggle.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

My friend wears a T-shirt with Che on it...

A substitute once called him "guerilla" when he wore the shirt...

Funny, funny...

[lars573]

Is he a revolutionary demi-god or as the New York Sun put it a sociopathic thug?

His contribution to socialism is vast, his selflessness to his cause is unmatched
as his demise in a dank Bolivian choolhouse proves.

Yet his executions without fair trial are often compared to Lenin's often tyranical treatment of anyone who disagreed with him.

I believe he was a selfless revolutionary, who gave up the trappings of office to continue the struggle.
Both, as one is not exclusive of the other. That said his kind have done more to hurt socialism than help it.

[Proletariat]

His sort is typical of socialism. Nice selection of hero.

[Strike For The South]

oh come on prole you dont love this guy https://img141.imageshack.us/img141/793/reagantshirt1lc.jpg (https://imageshack.us)

[Major Robert Dump]

Most people who wear the shirts not only have no idea who he is, but have no idea how much the shirt pisses people off. Being the type of guy who wears shirts that say "Eating ain't Cheatin" "Me Love You Short Time" and "Jersey Girls Ain't Trash (trash gets picked up" I guess I don't have room to talk, but Che can kiss my grits, and people wearing Che shirts can expect some witty commentary from my direction.

[Ironside]

Personally I think that he fits into the category "fallen idealist" quite well.

Basically they start out with a good and noble goal, but with time they change the path to this goal to something dark and brutal, possibly thinking that sacrificing themself will make it better for other people or that this brutality isn't needed after the goal is reached.
As the goal cannot longer be reached (mostly due to that the goal gets increasingly utopian), they'll never stop.

[Beirut]

Che's revolution was an astounding achievement!

Unless you were in the shower for the whole 15 minutes and missed it.

[rory_20_uk]

IMO one crucial aspect of Idealist is their way of putting ideals above people. Once you've done that there is no end of the slaughter you can perform with narry a sleepless night in persuit of the ideals you have.

From the French Red Terror, to Trotsky (head of the NKVD) to China's Great Leap Forward, to the Khamer Rouge to Che millions have died to make the world a better place. Unless the "joke" is the world is better off without human life on it, all singularly failed...

~:smoking:

[Major Robert Dump]

Save the Planet
Kill Yourself

I have that shirt too

[Idaho]

Well he certainly didn't kill as many people as Reagan, both by personal command and by indirect action. However all these people have failings. I don't know much about the bloke to be honest.

[Reverend Joe]

IMO one crucial aspect of Idealist is their way of putting ideals above people. Once you've done that there is no end of the slaughter you can perform with narry a sleepless night in persuit of the ideals you have.

From the French Red Terror, to Trotsky (head of the NKVD) to China's Great Leap Forward, to the Khamer Rouge to Che millions have died to make the world a better place. Unless the "joke" is the world is better off without human life on it, all singularly failed...

~:smoking:
Maximmilian Robespierre. Fransisco Franco. Benito Mussolini. The Juntas of South America and Africa. The Middle East and Central Asia.

It ain't just Communists.

And need I mention the ultimate capitalst: Pablo Escobar?

(Up next: "the conservative response" starring Gawain of Orkney, Redleg, Devastatin' Dave, Crazed Rabbit...)

[rory_20_uk]

Sorry, the choice of regimes was more to do with what ones I could remember rather than any intentional left / right bias.

~:smoking:

[Redleg]

Maximmilian Robespierre. Fransisco Franco. Benito Mussolini. The Juntas of South America and Africa. The Middle East and Central Asia.

It ain't just Communists.

And need I mention the ultimate capitalst: Pablo Escobar?

(Up next: "the conservative response" starring Gawain of Orkney, Redleg, Devastatin' Dave, Crazed Rabbit...)

Nothing to correct about political leaders, they all make mistakes and cause the deaths of innocents. They all have a tendency to lose sight of what the common good is in the pursuit of thier idealogical philosophy.

However you are incorrect on one thing. Pablo Escobat while a capitalist was not an idealist for society.

[Reverend Joe]

Sorry, the choice of regimes was more to do with what ones I could remember rather than any intentional left / right bias.

~:smoking:
Gotcha. :2thumbsup:

Redleg- the Escobar thing was just baiting. I was hoping to catch someone in a tirade, just because I feel like doing that occasionally. I mean, don't you occasionally feel like baiting hippies? You know...

https://img149.imageshack.us/img149/5525/dbwildbillsfishingboy10yv.jpg
"Pa, look- I caught me a lefty!"

[Divinus Arma]

http://smilies.vidahost.com/contrib/edoom/Lurking.gif

[Soulforged]

Is he a revolutionary demi-god or as the New York Sun put it a sociopathic thug? Nobody is a demi-god, but Guevara was certainly a revolutionary by the literal meaning of the word. A socialist can never be a sociopathic thug, a socialist is compromised with society, it will be contradictory. However to be fully compromised with society might be, sometimes, a double edged sword. From the point of view of the ideology communism presents itself as a glorified standard of the domination of the opressed over the opressors (this has many implications, is not the case to discuss them). Now what this actually means in reallity is unclear, no Marx, Engels or Lenin, ever discovered the applied mecanism of communism, so when it comes all to a revolution, so we can do all from scratch again, sumarial executions are in order, the intention is not to create fear, but to finish an era an initiate a new one. I disagree with any execution, but the fact is that there's no revolutions without deaths, wheter they're on the battlefield or decided behind the office. A bloodless revolution is possible, but it's also just a noble ideal.

His contribution to socialism is vast, his selflessness to his cause is unmatched as his demise in a dank Bolivian choolhouse proves. There are certain recounts of this event that will surprise, I'll post it here.

I believe he was a selfless revolutionary, who gave up the trappings of office to continue the struggle.Yes he was very concerned with the well living of the people of his country. However he couldn't initiate a revolution here so he helped the cubans achieve it.

Here (http://www.patriagrande.net/cuba/ernesto.che.guevara/)is a link in spanish, very complete.

Here (http://www.el-comandante.com/)you'll find a collection of pictures.

Here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/biography.htm)'s one source from the communist side version of the history (wich I suppose is the same as others :2thumbsup: ). Also there's a collection of interviews and some works of Guevara. He was also a doctor so I there's some medical works there too.

Don't expect more than a google from me, but this is what I found from the recounts of his death in Bolivia (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB5/):
On October 9th, 1967, Ernesto "Che" Guevara was put to death by Bolivian soldiers, trained, equipped and guided by U.S. Green Beret and CIA operatives. His execution remains a historic and controversial event; and thirty years later, the circumstances of his guerrilla foray into Bolivia, his capture, killing, and burial are still the subject of intense public interest and discussion around the world.

Here (http://www.moreorless.au.com/heroes/guevara.html)'s a neutral source (don't guide yourself by the term "hero" in the title).

A listing of his books. An excerpt on guerrila warfare (why not in a "Total War" forum?):
"The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves. The guerrilla band is not to be considered inferior to the army against which it fights simply because it is inferior in fire power. Guerrilla warfare is used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in defense against oppression." (from Guerrilla Warfare, 1960)

Mora a rant about el "Che" (http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/23/171252.shtml). A agree with his possition towards his public image, but a lot of things in this article are biased in my opinion, specially the use of clear persuasive lenguage to describe, both, Che and Castro.
Cuba was a nation of 6.5 million in 1959. Within three months in power, Castro and Che had shamed the Nazi prewar incarceration and murder rate. One defector claims that Che signed 500 death warrants, another says over 600. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book "Yo Soy El Che!" that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad. In his book "Che Guevara: A Biography," Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions during the first few years of the Castro regime.It also talks about the rumors concerning his suicidal mission on Bolivia (rumors say that Fidel wanted to get rid of him, but also create a martyr for his cause).

The capitalization of his ideal image (http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200507081316).
The metamorphosis of Che Guevara into a capitalist brand is not new, but the brand has been enjoying a revival of late--an especially remarkable revival, since it comes years after the political and ideological collapse of all that Guevara represented. This windfall is owed substantially to The Motorcycle Diaries, the film produced by Robert Redford and directed by Walter Salles. (It is one of three major motion pictures on Che either made or in the process of being made in the last two years; the other two have been directed by Josh Evans and Steven Soderbergh.) Beautifully shot against landscapes that have clearly eluded the eroding effects of polluting capitalism, the film shows the young man on a voyage of self-discovery as his budding social conscience encounters social and economic exploitation--laying the ground for a New Wave re-invention of the man whom Sartre once called the most complete human being of our era.

An angry letter from a cuban. (http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com//seabright/487/blazquez.html)As always the vission of something is not absolute.

A text from peruvian author Alvaro Vargas Llosa. "The Killing Machine" (http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/seabright/487/alvaroing.html).
Guevara might have been enamored of his own death, but he was much more enamored of other people's deaths. In April 1967, speaking from experience, he summed up his homicidal idea of justice in his "Message to the Tricontinental": "hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine." His earlier writings are also peppered with this rhetorical and ideological violence. Although his former girlfriend Chichina Ferreyra doubts that the original version of the diaries of his motorcycle trip contains the observation that "I feel my nostrils dilate savoring the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood of the enemy," Guevara did share with Granado at that very young age this exclamation: "Revolution without firing a shot? You're crazy." At other times the young bohemian seemed unable to distinguish between the levity of death as a spectacle and the tragedy of a revolution's victims. In a letter to his mother in 1954, written in Guatemala, where he witnessed the overthrow of the revolutionary government of Jacobo Arbenz, he wrote: "It was all a lot of fun, what with the bombs, speeches, and other distractions to break the monotony I was living in."
Guevara's disposition when he traveled with Castro from Mexico to Cuba aboard the Granma is captured in a phrase in a letter to his wife that he penned on January 28, 1957, not long after disembarking, which was published in her book Ernesto: A Memoir of Che Guevara in Sierra Maestra: "Here in the Cuban jungle, alive and bloodthirsty."
An earlier letter to his former girlfriend Tita Infante had observed that "if there had been some executions, the government would have maintained the capacity to return the blows."
In January 1957, as his diary from the Sierra Maestra indicates, Guevara shot Eutimio Guerra because he suspected him of passing on information: "I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine."The quotations from his diary continue. This is all from the hand of Vargas Llosa a respected authority in latin american literature.

Guevara's Diary on Bolivia (great part of the diary is in a moderate lenguaje, so don't expect to find any reference to a sadist in it)Note: the translation is from google, so it will not be good. (http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.patriagrande.net/cuba/ernesto.che.guevara/bolivia/diario.htm&prev=/search%3Fq%3Ddiario%252Bche%252Bguevara%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D).
JANUARY 18

The day amaneció storm cloud, reason why I did not inspect of trenches. They left for Urban gondola, Ñato, the Doctor (Moor), Inti, Aniceto, Braulio. Alexander did not work to feel ill.

In the little short while it began to rain abundantly. Under the heavy shower the Parrot arrived to inform being expert into many things and offering themselves to collaborate with us, for the cocaine or what is, showing in that what is the suspicion that there is something more. I gave instructions him to the Parrot of which it jeopardizes it without offering to him much; only the payment of everything what carries with his jeep and to threaten it of death if it betrays. Due to the strong thing of the heavy shower, the Parrot left immediately to avoid that the river surrounded it.Read the source if you've any doubts on the references. The same source but in spanish (http://www.patriagrande.net/cuba/ernesto.che.guevara/bolivia/diario.htm)

Edit: Some corrections.

Edit:
Nothing to correct about political leaders, they all make mistakes and cause the deaths of innocents. They all have a tendency to lose sight of what the common good is in the pursuit of thier idealogical philosophy.I wouldn't qualify many of those political movements as "mistakes", they're certainly full of intention, though many are separated from the object when the subject is behind a desk. But certainly political ideology is not a necessary nor sufficiet prequisite to talk about "mass murder" if you want to see it that way (though the literal meaning of mass murder is other).

[Alexanderofmacedon]

I was waiting for him to post...

:laugh4:

[Soulforged]

I was waiting for him to post...

Were you waiting perhaps for a simple "Viva el Che" or perhaps a "¡Dale che cerrá esta discusión!"? :laugh4:. Well.....:idea2: ¡Viva el CHE! :oops:

[Incongruous]

Wow! a lot of people here really don't like Che...

But I suppose they all wept when Reagen died.

[Soulforged]

Wow! a lot of people here really don't like Che...

But I suppose they all wept when Reagen died.
Is not bad to wept for anyone, they're people after all, they all fall, we all fall, we all are tempted, no one can judge the other over moral superiority. And a lot of people sure do the same with Guevara, that's because we try to remember the good in someone and not what he or she has done wrong, to the point that after death an ideal image is formed, usually completelly strange to the real one. This is not bad at all, it's only human nature.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Perhaps I'm just an ignorant, brain-washed American righty, but I can't understand the comparison between Ronald Reagan and Che Guevara. Ronald Reagan was legitimately elected by the US voting populace. I was under the impression that Guevara personally executed people for the "revolution" and had others executed as well. While the Usual Suspects will disagree, I don't think Reagan was as bad as a murderer.

Of course, I might be wrong. (~:rolleyes:)

[Kaiser of Arabia]

Che's a chunk of fertilizer right now.

If I could go back in time and abort him, I'd be pro-choice ~:)

[Incongruous]

Oh yeah, Batista was a real nice guy...:dizzy2:

Fricken righties:wall:

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

No one even mentioned Batista. And even if one did, Batista's cruelty and general badness does not justify anyone else's wrongdoings.

Fricken strawman.

[Soulforged]

Perhaps I'm just an ignorant, brain-washed American righty, but I can't understand the comparison between Ronald Reagan and Che Guevara. Ronald Reagan was legitimately elected by the US voting populace. I was under the impression that Guevara personally executed people for the "revolution" and had others executed as well. While the Usual Suspects will disagree, I don't think Reagan was as bad as a murderer.

Of course, I might be wrong.And you're. The Castro's regime was supported from the beggining by positive action and direct activities of the persons wich participated in the movement. You can't expect that a revolution is made over the basis of conservadurism, however to say that the process was unilaterally resolved and performed is rubbish. And this is truth even in an ideal society were the opressed part is the minority, or at least the political active one. In such hipotetical case it will be just, at least in my opinion, to perform a large scale movement to change the face of a whole society based on the injust conditions of a few.
The cuban revolution, as well as the Red revolution (at least until the point of adquiring the power), are just revolutions, because the cause that originates such actitudes is unjust. Now what was performed after the formal process of uprising and seizing of power, could be called unjust and amoral, and probably were.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Ernesto Guevera was not very effective as a revolutionary leader. His efforts in Africa and South America all failed. He was an effective enforcer for the Castro regime in the early days after siezing power, but most of the "legend" has attempted to emphasize his martyrdom in order to win points on the political front. He was probably far more effective for the revolution dead than he was alive. So in my eyes, he ranks up there with other "greats" like Horst Wessel.

"Che" couldn't hold a candle to Attaturk or Adams and Garibaldi would have kicked his ass and taken his lunch money.

[Proletariat]

Excellent post, Seamus.

[KafirChobee]

SoulForger, got your facts right. Good posts.

I had a Professor that wrote a book on Che' ... said he knew the man back in the day .... (his wife claimed to be related to Che', too). He admired him for the tenacity of wanting to better "workers" lives ... and the spread of the Marxist revolution ["workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains"].

One of Che's premises:
Those that are of a secure "class" or family, that believe that what ever material means they have will always remain theirs .... will not realize 'til it is taken from them how renuace reality truely is. The Wealthy Jews of Germany in 1934 had no clue that "Mien Kamph" (ms) was about them.

Che, took the terminologys of Castro, Lenin, and Marx ... extended them, bastardized them for his own means and used them. In all probability - Castro pointed Che' out to the Federalise and CIA ... after all he was becoming more popular than the "fearless" leader. Who knows (beside the CIA), or even cares today?

I have a cartoon of Che' on my fridge, he's wearing a Bart Simpsom T-shirt. :scastle: It fits, today. The youth don't remember him, and those that do still don't grasp what he was about. More's the pity, but he had his chance.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

One of Che's premises:
Those that are of a secure "class" or family, that believe that what ever material means they have will always remain theirs .... will not realize 'til it is taken from them how renuace reality truely is. The Wealthy Jews of Germany in 1934 had no clue that "Mien Kamph" (ms) was about them.
So they deserved what they got.

Soulforged - if I understand you correctly, you are arguing that Guevera didn't do anything wrong during the revolution from a moral standpoint, but afterwards was unjustified in executing political enemies? It still makes Guevera a thug.

[Soulforged]

Soulforged - if I understand you correctly, you are arguing that Guevera didn't do anything wrong during the revolution from a moral standpoint, but afterwards was unjustified in executing political enemies? It still makes Guevera a thug.The revolution is justified as long as the cause is just. What's done during the revolution might not be always justified, but correcting it in the process is not possible, also we could interpret that the revolution didn't ended really just with achieving the power formally, but also it needs of the disponibility of such power, wich might create an space for extremists political behaviors (like executions) just for the sake of keeping the regime alive for the "common good" (if such things exists). If you're arguing that he was a "thug" I can see in what sense you mean it, but he really had to faces, the doctor, an educated middle class man who wrote books and practicioned medicine, and the revolutionary, who cared more about the cause than the lives involved in the process (including his own life).

[Redleg]

Edit:I wouldn't qualify many of those political movements as "mistakes", they're certainly full of intention, though many are separated from the object when the subject is behind a desk. But certainly political ideology is not a necessary nor sufficiet prequisite to talk about "mass murder" if you want to see it that way (though the literal meaning of mass murder is other).

I was not refering to the political movements as "mistakes." I was refering to the actions of the political leader (the individual)of the movement or the individual in charge of governing (the individual).

[Alexanderofmacedon]

From previous post:

This is what is on my friends shirt:
http://vamos-a-cuba.viabloga.com/images/che.jpg