As for the impressions of hate--that hate was not exactly time-invariant, shall we say.QuoteGuevara, who was practically the architect of the Soviet-Cuban relationship,[147] then played a key role in bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.[148]I suppose the impressions refer to a rather (selectively?) specific period:QuoteA few weeks after the crisis, during an interview with the British communist newspaper the Daily Worker, Guevara was still fuming over the perceived Soviet betrayal and told correspondent Sam Russell that, if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have fired them off.[149]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che#cite_ref-147Since dismissing Wikipedia (while simultaneously invariably failing to provide reputable peer-reviewed sources) is a standard mark of intellectually dishonest debate tactics, I'm going to be kind enough to preemptively provide those concerned with the cited primary sources for perusal and convenience:147 ^ Anderson 1997, p. 492.148 ^ Anderson 1997, p. 530.149 ^ Anderson 1997, p. 545.Anderson, Jon Lee (1997). Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-1600-0.BTW, TS, Kudos for actually contributing in a constructive manner and providing an extra source; note how the post-1967 criticism nicely fits with the earlier Daily Worker interview--and historical context thereof--above.

QuoteOriginally posted by: PolterTS, no, a direct reply to Cuch., not much of an axe to grind with your grandfather, really (I wouldn't exactly describe hanging a picture of a dictator as in good taste, Hitler or not, but that's quite an individual matter, I suppose--and, possibly quite unlike some, I'm a strong supporter of the First Amendment).Incidentally, the last quote was MoJo requoting a fragment: QuoteFor Cuban exiles, Castro's takeover, in 1959, is a wound that just won't heal. In the current New Yorker, William Finnegan describes the Miami's "wormholes in time" . . .Cuch, if thisQuoteChe presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system--the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.or thisQuoteothers remember the ruthless man that executed between 156 and 550 prisoners in Cuba without trialor thisQuoteThe new biographies also make clear that Guevara played a central role in establishing Cuba's new secret police, which set about the usual task of the revolution's devouring its own children. Mr. Castaneda reports that it was Guevara who set up Cuba's first labor camp, thereby ''establishing one of the most heinous precedents of the Cuban revolution: the confinement of dissidents, homosexuals and, later, AIDS victims.''is "gobblydegook" or too ambiguous (if not too nuanced) for you, then I'm afraid I can't be of much help.Brutal, indeed, but Pinochet was worse, but he was fascist, so it's OK, yes?. And that's the long and the short of it. You just don't like him because he was a communist, no skin of my nose. Just say it. As I mentioned, I was around and conscious at the time, I like history, so all the links are kind of redundant and might need to take them with a grain of salt until I know the credentials of those who wrote it.

Cuch, to put it in the Godwin's law framework (you sound like a fan): Stalin's crimes can't possibly justify Hitler's; Hitler's crimes can't possibly justify Stalin's.Hence, for me it's not really "Stalin worse than Hitler" v. "Hitler worse than Stalin" but precisely "can't be justified." No more, no less.If for someone it's just about "not liking a communist" or "not liking a Nazi," I can only conclude it's quite sad, really, but I guess it's your prerogative to claim it's "too emotive" as well--oh, well, so be it.

QuoteOriginally posted by: PaulQuoteOriginally posted by: Fermion QuoteOriginally posted by: PaulIf you are on the left wing it helps enormously if you are a hypocrite or naive. PThat's an amazingly naive thing to say. Apart from the absurdity of the one-dimensional left/right paradigm, politicians of all shades are hypocrites. It's a necessary qualification for the job. It's difficult to think of anyone involved in politics from the last several decades who wasn't a hypocrite. About the only person who comes to mind is Che Guevara. Some people might say he was naive, but I don't think so. I think he knew full well what he was letting himself in for if things didn't work out the way he hoped. (He declared his disgust for the Stalinist regimes that Cuba depended on, abandoned a cushy job as a cabinet minister and declared his intention to liberate the whole of Latin America from US imperialism, knowing full well the grandiose enormity of the task.) Perhaps the most negative thing you could say about him was that he took honesty and integrity to the extreme limits of self sacrifice. Far from naivety, it was an almost religious pilgrimage that he embarked on. He was raised Catholic (of Irish-Argentine descent) and is worshipped like a saint by the common masses throughout Catholic Latin America.Compare him to Margaret Thatcher who is also worshipped like a saint amongst the most anti-social elements of society. She had one trick, the same trick beloved of tyrants throughout history, to hide dishonesty and cruelty behind a facade of steadfast determination and leadership in the face of an imagined enemy -- in her case the "sponger". Felix Rodriguez, the CIA agent who organized the hunt for Che in Bolivia and ordered his execution after he was captured wrote this tribute:QuoteWhen I asked him if he had any message for his family, he said, "Tell Fidel that he will soon see a triumphant revolution in America." He said it in a way that, to me, seemed to mock the Cuban dictator for abandoning him* here in the Bolivian jungle. Then Che added, "And tell my wife to get remarried and try to be happy."Then we embraced, and it was a tremendously emotional moment for me. I no longer hated him. His moment of truth had come, and he was conducting himself like a man. He was facing his death with courage and grace.*Here, Rodriguez is indulging in his own fantasy. It was the Soviet Union that ordered the communists in Bolivia to disown and betray Che.Psychological projection.PStill nothing to say, eh? So you go for character assassination. And FYI I understand projection very well, having pointed it out here many times. However the key to using it in an argument is to be specific about who is projecting what onto whom.

QuoteThe cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. This still intrigues me. Even as a sentence.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Polterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che#cite_ref-147Since dismissing Wikipedia (while simultaneously invariably failing to provide reputable peer-reviewed sources) is a standard mark of intellectually dishonest debate tactics, I'm going to be kind enough to preemptively provide those concerned with the cited primary sources for perusal and convenience:147 ^ Anderson 1997, p. 492.148 ^ Anderson 1997, p. 530.149 ^ Anderson 1997, p. 545.Anderson, Jon Lee (1997). Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-1600-0.BTW, TS, Kudos for actually contributing in a constructive manner and providing an extra source; note how the post-1967 criticism nicely fits with the earlier Daily Worker interview--and historical context thereof--above.Here is the book on Amazon:Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life - Jon Lee Anderson193 reviews - 4.5 stars.You can decide for yourselves - there are other books too.I am all about intellectual honesty and contributing in a constructive manner. So I leave you both with this final thought:Panic in Detroit - David BowieHe looked a lot like Che Guevara, drove a diesel vanKept his gun in quiet seclusion, such a humble manThe only survivor of the National People's GangPanic in Detroit, I asked for an autographHe wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phonePanic in Detroit He laughed at accidental sirens that broke the evening gloomThe police had warned of repercussionsThey followed none too soonA trickle of strangers were all that were left alivePanic in Detroit, I asked for an autographHe wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phonePanic in Detroit Putting on some clothes I made my way to schoolAnd I found my teacher crouching in his overallsI screamed and ran to smash my favourite slot machineAnd jumped the silent cars that slept at traffic lightsHaving scored a trillion dollars, made a run back homeFound him slumped across the table. A gun and me aloneI ran to the window. Looked for a plane or twoPanic in Detroit. He'd left me an autograph"Let me collect dust." I wish someone would phonePanic in Detroit

QuoteOriginally posted by: PolterChe G. was quite a loathsome individual:QuoteThe cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system--the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "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. This is what our soldiers must become ..."-- and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy--a tragedy on the hugest scale.http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/cult ... uoteothers remember the ruthless man that executed between 156 and 550 prisoners in Cuba without trialhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/che-g ... oteDespite a brief interest in Gandhi, he was not a pacifist; indeed, he was a harsh, uncompromising figure who believed, with Mao, that power came out of the gun barrel. Mr. Castaneda's book includes a gripping passage about the self-serving justification Guevara made for carrying out executions within the ranks, even when he understood that the alleged offenses did not merit death.. . . Mr. Castaneda criticizes what he calls Guevara's ''tactical, simplistic and bureaucratic logic.'' He adds: ''Not too far in the future -- in early 1959 -- he held in his hands the fate of hundreds of men sentenced to death at La Cabana, and he authorized with his signature one of the most unsavory episodes of the revolution.''The new biographies also make clear that Guevara played a central role in establishing Cuba's new secret police, which set about the usual task of the revolution's devouring its own children. Mr. Castaneda reports that it was Guevara who set up Cuba's first labor camp, thereby ''establishing one of the most heinous precedents of the Cuban revolution: the confinement of dissidents, homosexuals and, later, AIDS victims.''Guevara did have his detractors, often the same people as the enemies of the New Left who saw in him not the Christlike martyr of Bolivia but a cold and calculating dictator, a proto-totalitarian in the tradition of Mao or the later Pol Pot.http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/26/books ... .htmlQuote For Cuban exiles, Castro's takeover, in 1959, is a wound that just won't heal. In the current New Yorker, William Finnegan describes the Miami's "wormholes in time": You'll be driving along a Miami freeway in 2004, listening to Radio Mambí-that's a big Spanish-language talk station-and suddenly you'll be in Cuba, 1961. Callers will be arguing bitterly about Che Guevara's misunderstanding of the sugar industry. An old man will start telling the story of his brother's violent death, at the hands of neighborhood militants, in Santiago de Cuba. He'll describe every detail, until you can taste the day. Then he'll start sobbing. The silence around his voice will grow while he tries to go on. He has wept every night in the decades since his brother's death, he says, and he prays to God that justice will someday be done ... http://www.motherjones.com/politics/200 ... o-cigarAnd that's just quoting from Slate, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Mother Jones, and The New Yorker -- sources not exactly critical of nor hostile toward the LHS of the L/R paradigm (its weaknesses and (over)simplifications notwithstanding), mind you. In this day and age it's just inexcusable not to know him for who he really was.That's old propaganda. As I recall Che was the minister who was charged with overlooking the people's courts that were set up to try the collaborators, torturers and murderers of the Batista regime. You and I might have deplored the death penalty but the people who suffered under those vicious bastards were in no mood for compromise. As regards the so-called labor camps, he spent endless hours in the sugar cane fields himself since he knew how critical it was to Cuba's survival.BTW, when are you, Polter, going to criticize the forced labor camps of capitalism, where you work or die?There is much to criticize Che the Marxist for, without having to resort to the capitalist double standard.

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnQuoteNazi Germany bears moral responsibility for HolocaustI understand this text.QuoteThe cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. I don't understand this text. It is gobblydegook. It means nothing. The dangerous part is that it contains a number of 'implicit assumptions' (for want of a better word).My English is not good enough to find the right words in this discussion, but I feel it: you found them. In an impressive precision. Good to read ...A poor try:What made the nazis unprecedented: they fulfilled their programs and manifestos uncompromizingly and machine-like, word by word, rule by rule, ..... there were no wings, no fractions, ... no questions, no interpretations, no doubts, ... p.s. I was a pointed left wing ... in my youth, but never a Che groupie .... and full of doubts, seeking the right interpretations, ...

And still, for all my issues with Slate, Huff Post, NYT, MoJo, or New Yorker, I'm going to have to agree with the "the credentials of those who wrote it" point Cuch's made--and when assessing a random poster on an Internet forum claiming something is "old propaganda", I'm going to compare his credibility relative to all the given sources, and treat him accordingly with Cuch's point.

QuoteOriginally posted by: PolterTS, no, a direct reply to Cuch., not much of an axe to grind with your grandfather, really (I wouldn't exactly describe hanging a picture of a dictator as in good taste, Hitler or not, but that's quite an individual matter, I suppose--and, possibly quite unlike some, I'm a strong supporter of the First Amendment).Incidentally, the last quote was MoJo requoting a fragment: QuoteFor Cuban exiles, Castro's takeover, in 1959, is a wound that just won't heal. In the current New Yorker, William Finnegan describes the Miami's "wormholes in time" . . .Cuch, if thisQuoteChe presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system--the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.or thisQuoteothers remember the ruthless man that executed between 156 and 550 prisoners in Cuba without trialor thisQuoteThe new biographies also make clear that Guevara played a central role in establishing Cuba's new secret police, which set about the usual task of the revolution's devouring its own children. Mr. Castaneda reports that it was Guevara who set up Cuba's first labor camp, thereby ''establishing one of the most heinous precedents of the Cuban revolution: the confinement of dissidents, homosexuals and, later, AIDS victims.''is "gobblydegook" or too ambiguous (if not too nuanced) for you, then I'm afraid I can't be of much help.Polter, people have been trying to rewrite history to blacken Che for decades. But every time they rely (like you) on guilt by association and its nearly always association with things that Che himself criticized or rejected. Was he faultless? Of course not and it's clear that he rejected the option to continue his role as a Cuban minister for reasons not too dissimilar to those you criticize him for. Like I said before, he was the only major political actor for decades that I can think of who wasn't a conniving hypocrite.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Polter<Since dismissing Wikipedia (while simultaneously invariably failing to provide reputable peer-reviewed sources) is a standard mark of intellectually dishonest debate tactics, I'm going to be kind enough to preemptively provide those concerned with the cited primary sources for perusal and convenience:147 ^ Anderson 1997, p. 492.148 ^ Anderson 1997, p. 530.149 ^ Anderson 1997, p. 545.Anderson, Jon Lee (1997). Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-1600-0.BTW, TS, Kudos for actually contributing in a constructive manner and providing an extra source; note how the post-1967 criticism nicely fits with the earlier Daily Worker interview--and historical context thereof--above.I don't have my copy of Anderson's book to hand as it's packed (we're moving house). But I do recall that soon after it was published a lot of people took stuff out of context to emphasize his criticisms of Che and distort his overall message in the exaggerated way you do. Also, BTW, there are many other biographers of Che who address all then issues you raise. So if you are going to rely on a battle of biographers I am quite sure I can outshoot you. But, again, I can't lay hands on them at this moment, because they are all packed.

QuoteOriginally posted by: PolterAnd still, for all my issues with Slate, Huff Post, NYT, MoJo, or New Yorker, I'm going to have to agree with the "the credentials of those who wrote it" point Cuch's made and treat a random poster on an Internet forum claiming something is "old propaganda", compare his credibility relative to all the given sources, and treat him accordingly with Cuch's point.Fermion's credentials are well known (he joined Wilmott in 2002) and is a formidable poster. He is one of the few here who able to argument using his own words. Another is farmer.Polter, _you_ are the most anonymous poster of them all. I would say give more of yourself less of those links (on OT).

Cuch, yes, indeed, I'm pretty sure that relative to "Slate, Huff Post, NYT, MoJo, or New Yorker" (or Jon Lee Anderson) I'm quite anonymous, indeed. Similarly, I don't find "joined Wilmott in 2002" as a particularly impressive achievement in terms of establishing credentials. Hence I'm not quoting myself (that would be somewhat narcissistic, wouldn't it?), but the articles in Slate, Huff Post, NYT, MoJo, and New Yorker (and Jon Lee Anderson).

I mean, Fermion has told us a lot about himself in the last 11 years. That's what I mean by 'credentials'. Quote Hence I'm not quoting myself (that would be somewhat narcissistic, wouldn't it?), Well maybe you should and no, giving an honest opinion has nothing to do with narcissism. Strange associaton, btw. Quote "Slate, Huff Post, NYT, MoJo, or New Yorker" (or Jon Lee AndersonI plead ignorance. I don't read any of this stuff from anywhere. Everyone has agenda. Do you read Daniel Henninger?

QuoteOriginally posted by: exneratunriskQuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnQuoteNazi Germany bears moral responsibility for HolocaustI understand this text.QuoteThe cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. I don't understand this text. It is gobblydegook. It means nothing. The dangerous part is that it contains a number of 'implicit assumptions' (for want of a better word).My English is not good enough to find the right words in this discussion, but I feel it: you found them. In an impressive precision. Good to read ...A poor try:What made the nazis unprecedented: they fulfilled their programs and manifestos uncompromizingly and machine-like, word by word, rule by rule, ..... there were no wings, no fractions, ... no questions, no interpretations, no doubts, ... p.s. I was a pointed left wing ... in my youth, but never a Che groupie .... and full of doubts, seeking the right interpretations, ...Words (and symbols) can be used to brainwash people. Was Orwell's 1984 == Applied Whorfism?