The opening of my latest column at EveryJoe:
“Chances are good that someone you know owns a Che t-shirt. Romanticized versions of Ernesto Guevara Lynch’s bearded face are popular on campuses and elsewhere — so popular that the American chain store Urban Outfitters planned to release a whole line of Che-inspired fashion items, and dozens of other websites offer a wide range of Che paraphernalia.
“Guevara was a Marxist who was born in Argentina, earned a position in Cuba as Fidel Castro’s economic minister, and died in a skirmish with soldiers in Bolivia.
“But here is the puzzle. In real life, Guevara was an equal-opportunity jailer, torturer, and killer. Whether it was advocates of free speech, homosexuals, those in favor of freedom of religion or who liked rock and roll music, business owners, or ideological enemies — and whether men, women, or children — he favored imprisoning, tormenting, and murdering them.
“‘To execute a man,’ Che once said, ‘we don’t need proof of his guilt.’ …” [Read more here.]
Last week’s column: Where are All Those Free-Market Economists Who Caused the Financial Crisis?
Excellent! “Che Guevaraism” shares the fallacy that “because A is wrong or flawed or inconsistent B is automatically right.” There’s a lot in our society that needs rebelling against – as there was in Tsarist Russia, Weimar Germany and Shah Pahlavi’s Iran. But these latter did not make Lenin (and later Stalin), Hitler and Khomeini right.