Che Guevara: The Sadistic Anti Hero

The swashbuckling icon of the 1960s counter revolutionaries lives on 50 years later. In Chile, Czechoslovakia, Argentina, Italy, England, Germany the USA and other countries of the world there are photos on walls, posters and T shirts of a bearded man wearing a beret and staring charismatically above us. The ultimate symbol of the liberator of the downtrodden masses of the world is Che’s omnipresent photo.

This is curious given Ernesto Che Guevara’s past. He was a handsome medical doctor who was a cold-blooded murderer. Che was from an upper class background like most leftist revolutionaries in history. As did others from Lenin to Castro to Chavez he said all the right things that the powerless poor wanted to hear while his actions were aimed at seizing power by any despicable means.

Che’s fondness for barbarity has been concealed from the public arena. His motto was, “If in doubt, kill” and his nickname was “the butcher of Cubana.” He wrote to his mother when in Guatemala demonstrating his juvenile and egotistical motivation for his revolutionary antics: “It was all a lot of fun, what with bombs, speeches and other distractions to break the monotony I was living in.” Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, Doubleday 2007, pg. 194.

Che himself admitted to ordering several thousand executions in the first few years of the Castro regime. Daniel James, Che Guevara, A Biography, Cooper Square Press, 2001. Torturing and killing others was an enjoyable diversion for Che’s boring existence. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are archaic, bourgeois details. This is revolution. Revolution must become a cold machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon (wall).” Humberto Fontova, NewsMax, “Che Guevara Assassin and Bumbler”, Feb. 23, 2004.

Che’s brutal, dark soul has been hidden by idealistic elites who get suckered into believing what a charismatic person says he stands for rather than what he does. His behavior and associations with low lives are off limits to public scrutiny. The radical left finds it imperative to protect a man like Che who inspires a Communistic vision of the world.

The same emotional rationale for the “greater good” of the powerless masses elevated the image of “Uncle Joe” Stalin, China’s Mao and the loony Venezuelan despot, Chavez. The documented oppression and slaughter of their own people is conveniently overlooked by these imposters of change “for the greater good.”

Today’s unworthy rich and famous, guilt ridden Hollywood types cannot get close enough to the Fidel’s and Chavez’s. It liberates them from the shallowness of their own phony existence. The super hero glorification, almost deification of a man who uses evil to maintain and strengthen his power is the easiest means for celebrities like Sean Penn or Dan Rather to become vicariously part of a revolutionary movement. The actions of Che must be disregarded in order for him to remain a revolutionary symbol that legitimizes modern leftist dictators.

These creative intellectual types have been and are dishonest in their appraisal of communist dictators. Their utopian worldview depends on a “slight of mind,” a disregard of anything that conflicts with their radical leftist narrative.

Ironically these same “humanistic people” who express their hatred for torture romanticize a fanatical practitioner of it. Their willingness to overlook or ignore the horrors of an uprising by an untested intellectual professional is advocacy not a search for truth. Demonizing any and all established military action regardless of its legitimacy is proof of their lack of integrity.

Through honoring this sadistic man we are spreading his fame as well as his tactics of terror. Role models do affect people’s behavior. When naïve followers learn their hero was a vicious killer it makes it easier for them to mimic that behavior.

It is up to believers in individual freedom to inform others about the brutality of Che’s life to debunk the cult myth of this evil man.

Celebrating a terrorist is not what most people believe they are doing by wearing his image on their chests. Che worshipers think they are advancing freedom. Instead they are inadvertently furthering the power of oppressing the human spirit. Ernesto Che Guevara was a selfish, sadistic anti-hero who needs to be viewed as the murdering sociopath he was.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.