>>A seminar was organised by the Progressive Youth Front (PYF) to commemorate the 83rd birth anniversary of South American Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara here on Sunday.>>

See: http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=55794&Cat=4&dt=7/4/2011

Many years ago on the campus of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, I saw students protesting against the death penalty. I had no quarrel with them. After all, I’m against the death penalty myself.

But they were all wearing Che Guevara T-shirts! It struck me like demonstrating against Apartheid while wearing a Hendrik Verwoerd T-shirt. Or, in Australian terms, like demonstrating in favour of a carbon tax while wearing a Tony Abbot T-shirt.

I wondered whether the protesting students actually knew that Che Guevara was Fidel Castro’s executioner. I asked them but they looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

How did this happen?

How did the executioner of a blood-thirsty tyrant become a symbol for – well what exactly?

Why do so-called "progressive" organisations all over the world revere a mass-murderer

"Why do so-called "progressive" organisations all over the world revere a mass-murderer"

For the same reason that teen-agers drink, smoke and take drugs: THEY WERE TOLD NOT TO.

The South-African Apartheid regime was so fearful about communists that anyone (even whites) caught with a photo of Che Guevara at home would disappear for years in the secret-police's torture cellars. Having one was therefore like an extreme-sport, and showing it to a friend was the ultimate proof that you really trusted them.

The iconic Che symbol is about a struggle against oppression and authority. It's a symbol for rebellion.

The details about his life are irrelevant, it's what that part of him represents.

Maybe that's why you'll never see anybody wearing a T-Shirt celebrating the the oppressive Batista regime that he helped overthrow.

>>Maybe that's why you'll never see anybody wearing a T-Shirt celebrating the the oppressive Batista regime>>

No. Apparently we'll just see poor deluded sods wearing a T-shirt celebrating the oppressive Castro regime.

Wobbles,

Do the socialists have any successful leaders that weren't mass murderers?

SM,

How about - Tolstoy, Gandhi, Orwell, Chomsky, Karl Marx, Eugene Debs, Martin Luther King Jr., Moses, Golda Meir, Lech Walesa, Vytautas Landsbergis, Jesus, to name just a few.

Lexi,

I used the term successful social leaders. Most of them were not socialist, successful, or leaders.

Nice try to co opt Jesus and Moses, you are really grasping at straws.

Gandhi did not consider himself a socialist,
Golda Meir is hardly an Icon, whose socialism nearly lost Israel the Yom Kippur war and was tossed out.
Lech lead a revolt against the Socialist government, and as a PM was an epic failure.

Martin Luther King and is probably the only valid candidate you put forward

Lexi,

Yeah ! Jesus was in my party branch. I didn't know about Moses though, what branch was he in ?

Every time somebody rolls out the Socialist Boogey-Man word, I'm reminded that they usually don't know what they are talking about.

It's become a generic scare word for everything that rampant free-market capitalism is not.

Meanwhile I sent my kids (who were born in a Socialist Public Hospital) to a Socialist Public School on a Socialist Government Bus that drove on a Socialist Public Road and they later completed their education in a Leftist Socialist University where they now continue to make a real contribution to this Socialist riddled society and pay their taxes to keep the whole show on the road and build other Socialist assets for future generations - including those evil Eco-Terrorists who care about what happens not only tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow as well.

After all, it's those Socialist-built things that enable Capitalism to go about its business.

Extremism however, exists on all sides.

wobbles

Forget "socialism."

How do you explain the "Che" phenomenon?

How does a mass murderer, the former sidekick of a ruthless tyrant, become a symbol of, well, what exactly?

stevenlmeyer,
As I mentioned previously, it's merely symbolic of rebellion and a struggle to overcome (what was then) oppression.

Indeed ALL communist revolutions have come about because of opression, not just on some populist whim. The Russian and Chinese ones even had some self-interested corporate help from the West in order to succeed.

All symbolic historical figures, including Gandhi, Mandela and even the Dalai Lama have unsavory personal flaws which we all tend to ignore because it doesn't support the popular myth we have created around them.

They are symbols too and represent different aspirational aspects that many are drawn to.

It's just a logo - not a political statement.

>>It's just a logo - not a political statement.>>

I half agree.

Che is a logo.

But wearing a Che T-shirt is a political statement just as wearing a hammer and sickle T-shirt or a swastika T-shirt would be.

Like taking up smoking to "rebel" and shock the establishment.

The communist revolutions were about replacing one oppressive regime, with a better organised and more oppressive regime.

"...replacing one oppressive regime, with a better organised and more oppressive regime."

Exactly, but we keep doing it over and over again. It's like Bahtra's theory on economic cycles - one "age" invariably follows the other and it's probably humanity's fate.

In the end it's about a small number (usually behind the scenes) controlling a much larger group for little more than self-interest and it's always masquerading as principle.

Somehow I think the Che image sells a lot more T-Shirts than a Gillard or Abbott one ever will.

SM

Agree with Wobbles. It is just a symbol, like that one with a man nailed to a crucifix that many people wear hanging around their neck or may even been seen gracing the walls of hospitals, some governments, some schools - I understand that that symbol is not about supporting torture leading to death.