Che Guevara: Hero Of The Left, And Mass Murderer

No More Che DayOver at Ace of Spades, there was a sidebar piece mocking Time’s tongue bath of a psychopathic murderer.

Maybe one day Guevara will be recognized for what he was, rather than what the Left so earnestly desires, a charismatic, handsome (I guess) revolutionary leader. The reality is somewhat different. Che was a cold-blooded killer who reveled in personally executing “enemies of the revolution” without benefit of trial.

What I find interesting, and maddening, is the difference in perception between Guevara and Menachem Begin, freedom fighter and Prime Minister of Israel. Begin’s leadership of the Irgun would follow him for his entire political career, even though Irgun’s targets were overwhelmingly military. And, most important, he subsumed his quest for political and military control into the greater cause of the creation of the state of Israel

Conversely, Guevara’s bloodthirsty behavior….taking great pleasure in the murder of all who opposed the “revolution” has been carefully scrubbed from popular accounts of his life. He killed often, and often for political rather than military goals. Internecine conflict was his forte! And what did Che accomplish? Aside from being the best-selling t-shirt in Berkeley, Madison and the Upper West Side, he sowed the seeds of a generation of bloody conflict in South America.

Begin began the liberalization of Israel’s moribund economy…shifting to a market-based system rather than the socialist mess that most of its founders envisioned. A look at Israel’s economy today is all one needs to see his success.

Oh, he also made peace with Egypt.

So what’s the difference? Sure, the institutional anti-Semitism of the Left explains part of it, but mostly it’s the simple pride in those who break the eggs. The Left, at its core, is bloodthirsty, and reveres those who have the “courage” of their convictions.