Che Guevara: pin-up or killing machine?
Posted on Monday 22 December, 2008
Filed Under International
INSIDE every geeky bespectacled leftie bloke who ever stood outside a factory at 6 am on a rainy Friday morning, signally failing to sell Trot papers to the early shift, there is a little bit of Che Guevara trying to get out.
Secretly, we’d all like to make love to numerous beautiful women before launching a string of brave but ultimately futile insurrections in randomly-selected third world countries, even if it does mean dying young. The prospect sure as hell beats sitting through yet another interminable district aggregate, and hey, the posters and T-shirts alone would guarantee immortality of a kind.
Testimony to the man’s enduring appeal is the release early next month of two Steven Soderbergh biopics, imaginatively titled Che: Part 1 and Che: Part 2. The first installment was reviewed in The Sun last Saturday, and I for one was glad to see Britain’s best-selling tabloid openly express its solidarity with the Cuban Trotskyists imprisoned by the Castro regime in the 1960s. Better late then never.
Sun film critic Grant Rollings emphasises that Guevara is personally responsible for ordering a large number of executions – somewhere between 180 and ‘thousands’ – and history indeed attests that this is the case. In some instances, he pulled the trigger himself.
What did come as news to me were a number of quotations Rollings attributes to CG, which include the following blood-thirsty sentences:
To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution. And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.
If that is not alarming enough, Guevara is said to have been disappointed that Khruschchev wussed out on the Cuban missile crisis:
If the nuclear missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the heart of the US, including New York City. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.
This, from a man who is also supposed to have said: ‘If you tremble indignation at every injustice, then you a comrade of mine.’ Now, I reckon I have got a fair – but obviously not comprehensive – grasp of the literature on recent Cuban history, and I have not previously come across these claims.
Does anybody know whether they are genuine, or simply the product of the imagination of some bourgeois exile scumbag in Miami? Is there any context to take into account? To prove your point, either cite a credible source, or else satisfactorily demonstrate that they are falsifications. I genuinely have an open mind here.
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61 Responses to “Che Guevara: pin-up or killing machine?”
should anyone be so inclined, there’s some interesting material on the Cuban Revolution from the libertarian left … prior to being forced underground by the Castro regime, Cuba had a very strong anarchist current to its labour movement (far more significant than the Trots being referenced here …)
http://libcom.org/library/cuba-anarchists-liberty-labour-movement-fernandez
http://libcom.org/library/cuba-anarchism-history-of-movement-fernandez
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_Archives/bright/dolgoff/cubanrevolution/toc.html
Although they don’t really touch specifically on Guevara’s role, it does talk about the regime’s role in persecuting dissenters within the labour movement.
Toodle Noodle always kicks bullies in the ‘fanny pants’ (I guess he must be American or something) except when they line up people in front of a ditch and shoot them.
Because, in that case, it’s clearly not bullying. The big men with the guns are not bullies. The whimpering, terrified people deserve it. All of them. Even the ones who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Executing line after line of unarmed people is the very antithesis of bullying.
Threatening to drop atomic bombs on a city is not the work of a bully. Clearly. The school children in Toodle Noodle’s memory against which s/he vents his righteous anger are/were (?) far far worse than the act of incinerating cities full of school children, poisoning the earth, air and water around those cities so that thousands of other school children die slowly.
Their hair falls out. Their skin and eyeballs bleed. They vomit up their lungs.
But this is OK.
Toodle Noodle is a fighter for justice.
He can’t stand bullying. He is a good man.
He’ll kick you in your fanny pants.
Southpawblowhard -
Well, in response to my invitation, all I can say is that you tried. I’ll give you that.
However, there is a sliver of argument in your response this time, and as that is what I have been seeking from “your side”, let me try and engage with it.
In actual fact, thus far in the discussion, I have not been defending what Guevara is quoted as having said. I entered this discussion because nobody was responding at all to SPP’s point about hypocrisy i.e. you can’t on the one hand denounce the use of political violence today whilst on the other hand endorse the necessity of political violence in the past without – and this is the key point – explicitly justifying that foreclosure. This is what I am seeking from you: some justification of the foreclosure of political violence. Without that, you have no argument.
So let’s now look at what you say. You invoke two violent scenarios: nuclear attack and political execution. Actually, I don’t agree with Guevara’s quoted statement that socialist victory is worth the death of millions of non-socialists – if by which he meant a crusade. I agree with Robespierre when he said that any attempt to spread revolutionary ideals in foreign countries assumes that one has a utopia at home – something which, surely, would never be the case. Of course, if a state is being attacked to the point where it will be defeated, you have to assume that it will use all force necessary to defend itself, including nuclear arms if it has them.
Now I will take your second point: political execution. Again, in your shrill and hysterical way, you not only attribute to me a scenario which I have never defended, but also invoke the scene of a botched political execution by making reference to those “who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time”. By bungling the clarity of your point in this way, I think you inadvertently reveal your philosophical bias. You, my friend, are a utilitarian – to the point where you have to sneak a few innocents into the line-up in order to feel confident that you have made your point. Perhaps this is the ultimate end game of utilitarianism: reducing political violence to the act of herding innocent civilians into target zones (power stations, military bases etc) in order to prevent attack. And there’s my main problem with the sort of utilitarian argument that you deploy: the more one side (say, the socialist side) internalizes it as their guiding ethical principle, the greater the gains that can be made by the other side (say, capitalism) by adjusting variables such as the distribution of innocent people throughout military targets.
One final thing word now in defence of political execution. I was completely bemused (but not surprised) by Amnesty International’s complaints about the fairness of Saddam Hussein’s trial. Their position sort of sums up the attitude of people who cannot stomach political violence – when it is exercised, they want it to be neutral and fair (or, at least, appear to be neutral and fair), even when the outcome is never in doubt. Again, we’re confronted with an arrogant mindset which says: ‘we have access to reality, we can evaluate things neutrally’. By contrast, the mindset of the revolutionary denies that such neutrality can be achieved – every act is tainted by bias. There is no possibility of giving Saddam a fair trial – the least we can do is be honest and subject him to a swift political execution.
“Bourgeois exile scumbag in Miami?”
Dave, for a supposed ‘anti-Stalinist’ you can produce some remarkably Stalinist language.
The ‘scumbags’ in Miami include all manner of people – including bourgeois, working class, peasant, black, white, women, men, young and old.
It includes a small group of ageing Battista supporters but mostly is made up of people who just wanted a better life than that offered by the Castro mafia/dictatorship in Havana.
The demonisation of the Cuban community in Miami was a central plank of the dictatorship’s propaganda campaign — no different from the attitude East European Stalinist regimes took towards defectors.
It is very sad to read you parroting the propaganda line of the dictatorship.
The comments from fantasy-leftists about the desirability of executions and political murder in the name of ‘revolution’ is a reminder that a section of the left are no better than fascists, cleansing the nation of impure elements.
What a disgusting thread.
Cuba Libre -
You’re right – this is a disgusting thread. One side have been consistently putting forward complex arguments, offering dialogue, whilst the other side have consistently offered nothing but unargued assertions, fallacious quips, mis-quotation and bullying tactics. I have a sneaking feeling that the more I make a determined effort to engage with the other side’s arguments on here, the more hysterical and shrill that side will become.
So I put out a challenge to you – or anyone else on your side of this argument – take my last comment above (in which I justify political execution) and offer a rebuttal. And if you can’t do that, then you should get out of politics, because it means that you cannot justify your positions. And, I’m sorry, but that is a completely untenable place to be politically.
@Cuba Libre
Whilst I have read stuff about the necessity (and not the ‘desirability’) of “executions and political murder in the name of ‘revolution’” above; the main bits have addressed whether violence is justified in resistance and necessary in revolution. I think it is.
Or maybe the population of Gaza should, I don’t know, organise a celebrity record – ‘Please don’t massacre us, Mr Israel’ or get Transcendental Meditation devotees to chant for peace or construct a big ring of white ribbons around their open prison to make a big photo opportunity? What do you think?
Or maybe they should get in touch with any Islamist elements in the Pakistani state and say to them, ‘we desperately need one of your nukes to threaten the Zionists’ and also use every last bullet they have against them in the meantime.
Violence is necessary and those who argue otherwise are, at best, the unwitting pawns of those who currently run the world.
And as Toodle Noodle’s last statement – as I said before the supposed ‘pacifists’ or at least those who criticise others for their views on violence are deep hypocrites.
I also actually agree with all of what FrFintonStack said save “rather than fetishising it and calling for its unrestrained use at every opportunity and in every scenario.” I haven’t read anyone above, including me, arguing for that.
@KB Just how many more ‘swallows of whisky’ overnight did it take to make you attempt confusedly to correct your odd post on Xmas morning? Can we expect further chaos on New Years Day – that is, if your liver holds out?
Killing machine? Luis Posada comes to mind. He is free, while the Cuban Five, who actually reported their findings to the US government, is in jail.
Interestingly the opposition to the Cuban Embargo is coming from the Cuban community in Florida. The parts not intimidated by the gusanos.
If the gusanos could take over in Cuba, the first thing they would do is dismantle the healthcare and education system. They would privatize everything, turning Cuba to Haiti.
Cuba does have problems; the revolution needs to be spread, working class parties be allowed on the ballot provided they don’t support private property, and the plans to move to a China model should be scrapped.
Come on, Dave! No link to this fab spoof on the SWP yet?
http://grayee.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-special-swp-and-duyba.html
There is an interesting exchange between the Cuban-American Trotskyist Sam Farber and a pro-Castroite called Saul Landau here: http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/socialist-democracy-and-cuba-after-castro/
I have a sexual fantasy with jews
[irrelevant racist comment deleted].
Sorry I didn’t think to follow this thread up – I’m surprised some people seem to think it’s the right who made this quote up.
Literally a minute on google turned up this – which fits very neatly with what I recalled in comment number one.
Anderson, Jon Lee. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, ISBN 0802116000, New York: 1997, Grove Press, p. 545: “In an interview with Che a few weeks after the crisis, Sam Russell, a British correspondent for the socialist Daily Worker, found Guevara still fuming over the Soviet betrayal. Alternately puffing on a cigar and taking blasts from an inhaler, Guevara told Russell that if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have fired them off. Russell came away with mixed feelings about Che, calling him ‘a warm character whom I took to immediately…clearly a man of great intelligence though I thought he was crackers from the way he went on about the missiles.’”