So, Augusto Pinochet has passed away; his soul flies like an Andean condor to a heaven where Franco and El Duce have tee time at noon. The media in the world attack him, as they should. Pinochet was bad. He is to be reviled, ad infinitum. But, there were worse murderous idgets. Che Guevara,for example. A strict moralist, he would have shot all of those who sport his image on baseball hats and t- shirts.Odd, most of the people I know who love Che, smoke pot. I have no problem with people who smoke pot. To me, it's boring. Theres no drama in pot. I like drugs with drama, melodrama, action, fisticuffs and weeping.I like drinks. Pot is too utopian,too flat line,too lowlight,too nothing. Its too much like the grey that permeated communist states.
Humberto Fontova, described Guevara as "a combination of Beria and Himmler." Anthony Daniels once quipped, "The difference between [Guevara] and Pol Pot was that [the former] never studied in Paris."
If you don't know, Beria was head of the NKVD,the Soviet equivalent of the Gestapo...only the victims of the NKVD are in the 30-60 millions.
Che, while never killing more than many thousands, including whole villages of every man, woman and child for the crime of being "capitalist"( if you had one too many cows or pigs or ears of corn, this would get you a quick dirt nap by Che) The NKVD did the same under their de-kulakization program---kulak is the epithet the Soviets gave every peasant who had more potatoes than their neighbor.
Che once said that the Soviet system was the most humane in the world. You cannot call him ignorant. He was educated. He was a true believer. He knew of the purges---6-11 million dead for speaking their minds, he knew of the Gulag system,(untold millions dead--30 million is a good number, Che knew of the state orchestrated famine where 6 million died of starvation. When asked what to do
with the peasant problem, Stalin is known to have barked: kill them all.
Che had drug dealers and users executed en masse. Homosexuals were lynched on his orders.
Pinochet?Under Operation Condor he had 3,000 dissedents murdered. Another 30,000 arrested. R.J Rummel, expert on genocide and a sexy survivalist Kris Kristofferson look alike prof . at the University of Hawaii gives the estimate of 73,000 deaths by Castro. These arent military actions. This is for speaking your mind, smoking a doobie, drinking too many beers and sucking a strangers face in public, being religious, being an anarchist, not wanting to work or laughing too much. In short, not following the law set down by the handsome lad from Buenos Aries could and would get you imprisoned or killed. What I do not understand is this:
Why does one murderer get a t shirt and his own place in popular hagiography and another one is "Hitler-lite".
It has to do with looks. Che was handsome.But, so is Richard Ramirez. So was Horia Sima, the head of the fascist Iron Guard of Romania. He was hot. No, Ches record is as sullied as Simas', as rotten as Pinochets'.,,or worse.
Handsomeness and communism.Communism, even though it killed far more people than fascism,is still seen in a positive light.Well, if not "positive" than "excused". Like communisms blueprints are correct but the builders...well, they built wrong.People dont look at communism as being inherantly false and murderous. But, it is.Heaven on earth is a very persistent but infantile idea.
Utopia.No more hunger.No more oppression.Brotherly love. O.K. What about no more diarhhrea, no more rent and longer erections?
And, I want to get paid millions .But, reality says nyet.Reality is a bitch.And, what communism does from the start is to deny reality.Lies.
Like Che, Communism is handsome..purdy...but, in reality , a mass murderer.
Brad Pitt with a cocked beret and a garden full o' cadavers.Che's motley army of admirers run from the drug addled to the academe educated,from the movie star to the rock star.An image.Communism deserved the end that Che had: a violent death.Ceucsecu got it. Unfortunately, bigger fish got away.
This rarely happens to murderous thugs like Che. Usually, they die peacefully like Idi Amin,like Stalin,Mao etc...
Trust me, if Osama looked more like Omar Sharif rather than an Amish Mexican basketball player, thousands upon thousands of Westerners would be converting to Islam, wearing his visage on dirty t- shirts and naming their pets after him.
Alas, we have Che.
