Che Guevara: homophobic white supremacist, and progressive darling
Che Guevara was no hero. Let's remember the real man behind the myth.
His is one of the most profitable images in history. His beard has become a symbol of resistance and revolution to the First-Worlders who under the privilege of western democracies have never been close to the carnage he helped unleash.
Che Guevara was captured in Bolivia on this day 54 years ago while trying to introduce the murderous revolution that has been oppressing Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans for decades.
And even as the victims of these systems continue to speak out about the evils of communism from their exiles around the world, misguided “progressives” continue celebrating his image - good example of the empty, authoritarian, rhetoric-based social justice they stand for.
Even UNESCO celebrates a man that used the UN stage to tell the world he would not apologize for executing countless Cubans found guilty of the crime of not agreeing with his ideas.
Those of us who know the man behind the myth, and come from places where this myth was used to destroy our countries, have to face his face wherever we go.
Movies have been made about him, countless tattoos inked in his honor, millions of t-shirts sold in his name. Ironically, few figures have fed the capitalist machine more than this socialist’s.
You see, Hollywood left out the truth. The movies and graffitis across the world that have fed the image of a man who never existed left out key parts of the real man it was based on.
The truth was too inconvenient to the narrative of a just revolutionary who used force to overthrow the elite and bring power to the people.
Hollywood’s Motorcycle Diaries, for example, left out major parts of the book it was based on.
In reality, Che Guevara was the privileged white son of a wealthy Argentinian family who brutally oppressed anyone who didn’t abide by his strict ideals of what “the revolution” was.
The moment his revolution got to power, Castro’s allies simply created a new elite that enjoyed all the riches and controlled all power.
This meant disappearing not only dissidents but men whose mere existence violated Che’s principles. This not only included anyone who didn’t follow his definition of a socialist, but also anyone who wasn’t white and straight.
The Che adored by First-World progressives was was a white supremacist, a firm believer that the white race was fundamentally hard-working, while others were not, by design.
To Che, black people “have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing.”
While the Hollywood movie conveniently leaves this part out, Che wrote in the book the movie was based on:
“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.”
Like his fellow racist and homophobic revolutionaries in Cuba, Che believed being gay was a perversion of capitalist societies. He helped Fidel Castro send gay men to the Cuban concentration camp of Guanahacabibes, arguing that “work would make them men.” Written history about these camps say the gay men would receive the cruelest punishment of all the prisoners, as Che and Fidel were particularly offended by them.
Like Castro, Che believed that “A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.”
Reinaldo Arenas’ beautiful memoir Before Night Falls recounted how the Revolution treated gay men.
“Gays were not treated like human beings, they were treated like beasts. They were the last ones to come out for meals, so we saw them walk by, and the most insignificant incident was an excuse to beat them mercilessly.”
But it’s not Arenas, a true freedom hero who the world wants to celebrate, no. They want to wear the face of his oppressor on their chests.
First-World idealists still romanticize the dictatorship Che helped establish in Cuba. But the truth is Che helped establish a system that was deeply problematic in their treatment of minorities, and continues that way until this day, when the regime is oppressing Black-lead protests, jailing young Cubans for years for the crime of speaking up.
Che’s legacy lives on in the brutal dictatorships plaguing Latin America today, in the suffering of millions of Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans forced to live under authoritarian systems supported by those who celebrating the image of their executioner.