Cult ‘hero’ cold-blooded executioner
I walk into a store on Stephen Avenue Mall and start browsing through the various knickknacks on display.
Then I stalked—not walked—out.
Prominently on display were Che Guevara sweatshirts and caps. Seething, I head to the nearest bar. And just as quickly, head out again.
The fellow be-hind the bar was wearing a Mao Zedong sweatshirt.
Why my disgust?
Well, to the uninitiated—to the uneducated—Che Guevara and Mao were two of the most evil mass murderers of the 20th century.
Guevara was named as “Fidel Castro’s executioner” by Cuban writer Humberto Fontova, and it is estimated Mao slaughtered as many as 80 million of his own people.
Two of Fontova’s appraisals Che Guevera: Assassin and Bumbler and Fidel: Hollywood’s Favourite Tyrant should be read by all who idolize these monsters.
Guevara actually served the same purpose Soviet secret police chief Felix Dzerzhinsky did for Vladimir Lenin, Lavrenty Beria for Josef Stalin, and Heinrich Himmler for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. All signed the death warrants for thousands of innocent men and women, and sent millions to labour camps Children were torn from their parents to be re-educated in the Communist or Nazi persuasion.
Yet the naive or uncaring treat him as a folk hero.
After seizing power in 1959, Castro quickly appointed Che his chief executioner. Dissident Cuban prosecutor Jose Vilasuso estimated Guevera signed 400 death warrants in the first few months. Basque priest Laki de Aspiazu, who was often asked to perform last rites at the executions, says the figure was 700.
Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who first met Guevera in 1954, wrote in his book Yo Soy El Che that Guevara sent 1,897 to the execution wall. Daniel James in Che Guevara: A Biography documents Guevara boasting to him of ordering “several thousand” executions in the first year of the regime.
Guevara often enjoyed personally executing the condemned with a shot in the head.
He also made it a policy to parade the families and friends of the executed before their corpses—in order, as Lenin would have put it, to spread terror.
Trials were a mockery, usually lasting only minutes. Interrogations were done at night, because, Guevara claimed, the accused were more easily cowed at night.
Yet this man, who detested everything for which freedom stood, is now idolized by those for whom he had such contempt in the free western democracies.
Mao, whose Communist party took power by force, never allowed a free election.
Aside from murdering some millions, he sent millions more to labour camps.
As in Cuba, there is no free press in Communist China. Everything is censored. Internet access is too expensive for all but the elite and it is illegal to have an Internet link-up in your home.
You have to go to what we’d call Internet cafes, with authorities watching.
Mao’s fabled “Great Leap Forward”—aimed at industrializing Communist China—was a debacle. It took the economy back 10 years. His ‘Cultural Revolution’ spread terror amongst the entire populace. They conformed, or were shot or jailed.
Today, Castro’s Cuba isn’t the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere because of the U.S. embargo.
It’s due to the Castro regime’s utter commitment to state control of the economy. Cuba could trade with any nation except the U.S, but it has nothing to sell. Products, including food, for Cuba’s own people, are severely rationed.
Manufacturers who produce Che or Mao products, store owners who sell them, and the naive individuals who buy them should hang their heads in shame.
How long before we see Adolf Hitler’s image grace—rather disgrace—the backs of the great unwashed and uneducated of our society?
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