lover or a fighter?
so there's this book i saw at barnes and noble called "Exposing the Real Che Guevera and the Useful Idiots who Idiolize him." (long title, but it got my attention). i immediately was interested because i don't like what che stood for, i don't respect his philosophy on revolution: "Hate as a factor in the struggle, intransigent hatred for the enemy that takes one beyond the natural limitations of a human being and converts one into an effective, violent, selective, cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be like that; a people without hate cannot triumph over a brutal enemy".., (complete opposite of martin luther king who i agree with wholeheartedly)...
and yet i saw the movie "the motorcycle diaries" and i loved it. i loved how he absorbed the landscape and the people's stories and became a better and more selfless person out of it. but that's the Che people idolize and all those people who flaunt his t-shirts must not really know who he became later...at least i hope.
i didn't get very far in the book at all, but it was enough to really get me thinking. i don't know which extreme opposite is true about che. people loved him for being a rebel and idealist, but this author was saying he was actually a terrorist and tyrant. according to this author, he sent many people to torture-imprisonment camps in cuba--gays, people with long hair, "counter-revolutionaries..." he was head over the Cuban firing squad, and he also plotted to bomb the washington monument and one big reason he addressed the UN during that time was to scope out the area for it. i also learned that "the motorcycle diaries" book was edited and published by Cuban government. they left out the demeaning comments about blacks and other things that would not paint in him in a satisfactory light. and on top of all of that, he was fidel castro's sidekick, who's been accused of so many human rights violations. there's so much more evidenced in the book, this only scratches the surface.
it wouldn't be cool to get a kim jong-il (from north korea) tattoo, so i don't get how it's cool to rock a che guevara one. i don't see how people like al gore can give a standing ovation at the sundance film festival to "the motorcycle diaries," surely knowing what went on in cuba in the 50s and 60s. why a german magazine would call the young European peaceful revolutionaries heirs of che and gandhi:
sorry. gandhi and che are not even comparable. the advocation of nonviolence and love versus violence and hate.
it just seems like a disregard for what the cuban people have suffered.
i wrote way more than i wanted, because i just wanted to get other people's opinions about che. i might be way off on things and completely ignorant. thoughts and wisdom please?