Neil Clark, who usually writes for the Guardian, on his blog, mocks what he calls another commenter’s “over the top” Che Guevara analogy.
And the winner is……..by a distance- Simon Heffer in today’s Daily Telegraph.
“To wear a T-shirt with his (Che’s) image on it has also seemed to me like wearing one with a picture of Hitler on it: although there is more evidence for Che’s psychopathic tendencies even than of those of the Führer.”
Yes, Simon is comparing a man, who even if we accept the figures of his critics, was guilty of the summary execution of “hundreds” of former supporters of the Batista regime, with a man who started a world war in which 72 million people lost their lives.
Even if? Never mind that Che’s murders are well documented — is Clark making the repugnant implication that in the case of mass murder, numbers matter? If he’s not, he has no argument here.
By such reasoning, Stalin was less of a butcher than Mao because of his lower body count — and the two of them may qualify as not as bad as Pol Pot, who killed a bigger share of his population.
Finally, does anyone doubt that Che would have murdered thousands or millions if given the chance? It’s a good thing he wasn’t.
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Che Guevara was a nasty child killer who called himself “Stalin II.”
His own aspirations were thus to be like one of history’s great mass murderers, Stalin, who was on par with Hitler, and engaged in genocide towards minority peoples such as the Crimean Tatars.
He didn’t just kill “former supporters of the Batista regime.”
He killed people who wanted democracy in Cuba. He tortured and killed people, even children.
I am wearing a Che shirt right now. Of course, the face of this murderous dictator is a skull and it says “Communism Kills” on the front, but it is a Che shirt none the less.