The New Statesman’s Mehdi Hasan explains why Jesus was just a big lefty radical.
Never mind that they’re clearly drawing a comparison between Jesus and mass murderer Che Guavera. You’ve gotta’ admit this is the kind of image of Jesus that could circulate rather well in college dormitories.
The piece labels Jesus “a class warrior” and “a banker basher” and uses the fact that Jesus didn’t charge for His miracles as an endorsement of socialized healthcare.
Forget that liberals seem to forget that Jesus had a major run in with big government that didn’t go all that swimmingly and please show me the part where Jesus forcibly made people “share the wealth.” Jesus called us to a radical love. He didn’t force feed a secular utopia.
And are liberals really really comfortable with the idea of government playing the role of God? Oh wait. Sadly, yes. Yes they are.
December 17, 2010 at 3:01 am
A Cuban prosecutor of the time who quickly defected in horror and disgust named Jose Vilasuso estimates that Che signed 400 death warrants the first few months of his command in La Cabana. A Basque priest named Iaki de Aspiazu, who was often on hand to perform confessions and last rites, says Che personally ordered 700 executions by firing squad during the period. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book Yo Soy El Che! that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad.
In his book Che Guevara: A Biography, Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering “several thousand” executions during the first year of the Castro regime. Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-American CIA operative who helped track him down in Bolivia and was the last person to question him, says that Che during his final talk, admitted to “a couple thousand” executions.
Che ordered 27 Batista soldiers executed as “war criminals.” Dr. Serafin Ruiz was a Castro operative in Santa Clara at the time, but apparently an essentially decent one. “But Comandante” he responded to Che’s order. “Our revolution promises not to execute without trials, without proof. How can we just….?”
“Look Serafin” Che snorted back. “If your bourgeois prejudices won't allow you to carry out my orders, fine. Go ahead and try them tomorrow morning–but execute them NOW!”
December 17, 2010 at 3:04 am
executioner, murderer. Sound like the same thing in Che's case.
Why, why in the world would our Savior be compared to this abomination.
December 17, 2010 at 3:25 am
The Dutchman Says; "I have yet to find a single credible source pointing to a case where Che executed 'an innocent'. Those persons executed by Guevara or on his orders were condemned for the usual crimes punishable by death at times of war or in its aftermath: desertion, treason or crimes such as rape, torture or murder. I should add that my research spanned five years, and included anti-Castro Cubans among the Cuban-American exile community in Miami and elsewhere."
— Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, PBS forum
To which I say; Yes, John Lee's Anderson's popular lie which has been refuted as often as it has been parroted.
Instead of pointing out that Anderson's source for this claim is Castro's minister of Propaganda (go ahead, look it up) I'll let Che's own words debunk the Goebbels of the Cuban Revolution:
"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."
Now, shucks. How on earth does Anderson get off saying that he personally investigated and debunked the notion that Che executed innocent men, when Che himself actively mocked the notion of a fair trial?
Simple: Because he is deliberately revising history to glorify and evil man and his evil actions and ideals because Anderson finds them romantic, and thereby thinks that his devotion to ideals supercedes objective reality or journalistic integrity.
December 17, 2010 at 5:08 am
1] You called me a liar. Prove it. What statement that I made was false?
2] When I quoted someone, Jon Lee Anderson, I gave my source, please give your sources.
3] Jon Lee Anderson is a writer for the New Yorker, a pretty reputable publication. Do a Google search on your "firing squad" quote and all you get is hysterical right wing sites and comments on discussion boards, no authoritative source shows up.
December 17, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Actually the above quote about the firing squad comes from a book by Humberto Fontova. It is footnoted in the book and thoroughly researched because Humberto did something John Lee Anderson Didn't. He interviewed the people who fled. Anderson admits in an interview with Bomb magazine that he aligned himself only with Che's inner circle and that those people didn't ask certain questions. Anderson is a Marxist sympathizer. Which if you want to be communist fine, but the whole premise of it is to force others to be that way too, usually through force and killing, which is what Che did. Of course left wingers hate Humberto, who was exiled from Cuba. Anyway, there is no doubt in my mind that Che was a murderer. As for whether you are a liar, you are lying to yourself if you think Che is some sort of hero.
The chaplains account of the prison makes me want to vomit.
Javier Arzuaga, the Basque chaplain who gave comfort to those sentenced to die and personally witnessed dozens of executions, spoke to me (Alvaro Vargas Llosa
The New Republic)recently from his home in Puerto Rico. A former Catholic priest, now seventy-five, who describes himself as “closer to Leonardo Boff and Liberation Theology than to the former Cardinal Ratzinger,” he recalls that
there were about eight hundred prisoners in a space fit for no more than three hundred: former Batista military and police personnel, some journalists, a few businessmen and merchants. The revolutionary tribunal was made of militiamen. Che Guevara presided over the appellate court. He never overturned a sentence. I would visit those on death row at the galera de la muerte. A rumor went around that I hypnotized prisoners because many remained calm, so Che ordered that I be present at the executions. After I left in May, they executed many more, but I personally witnessed fifty-five executions. There was an American, Herman Marks, apparently a former convict. We called him “the butcher” because he enjoyed giving the order to shoot. I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy. Che did not budge. Nor did Fidel, whom I visited. I became so traumatized that at the end of May 1959 I was ordered to leave the parish of Casa Blanca, where La Cabaña was located and where I had held Mass for three years. I went to Mexico for treatment. The day I left, Che told me we had both tried to bring one another to each other’s side and had failed. His last words were: “When we take our masks off, we will be enemies.”
December 17, 2010 at 7:22 pm
An to think Che once said he'd like to squish Jesus like a bug.
December 17, 2010 at 7:46 pm
"As for whether you are a liar, you are lying to yourself if you think Che is some sort of hero."
That's the best you can do?
You slander me by calling me a liar, and then this "lie" isn't something I've actually said, it's supposed to be something I've thought?
Well, calumny is a sin. Be sure to mention it next time you confess.
December 17, 2010 at 9:37 pm
I guess they all deserved killing from Che.
December 17, 2010 at 10:35 pm
It's not slander when it's written, it's libel. And who said you are a liar. I thought you were Dutch and you were lying down.
December 17, 2010 at 11:47 pm
I guess sarcasm isn't a sin, and I suppose sarcasm has its uses, but sarcasm is a really pathetic way of not admitting that you are wrong.
I haven't lied about anything. (If I have, then show me where and I will apologize.)
You have called me a liar and you are too pathetic even to sign your name to it.
December 18, 2010 at 12:04 am
I never called you a liar, someone else above did. I just pointed out that Che was a murderer. Not all Anonymous postings are the same person. My name is Sue. I don't know the name of the person who called you a liar. And now look who is name calling. Lighten up Dutchie, it's all that anger that starts at others that makes the world end up so messed up.
December 18, 2010 at 4:29 pm
One last thing there is a list of verified victims of Che at the Cuba Archive. They believe there to be many more victims, but this list are the ones they have verified.
http://cubaarchive.org/home/images/stories/truth%20and%20memory/victims_of_che_guevara_in_cuba_9.30.2009.pdf
December 20, 2010 at 4:20 am
Hey Dutch, Just had to weigh in on your collapsing defense. It never seems to fail that when one takes a stand (in your case,that there's no evidence that "Che" was a mass murderer–and, by extension, that he's just a misundersttod "freedom fighter")that is shown to be idiotic, one attempts to change the subject. Whether you are a "liar" or not is not particularly important to me; On the other hand, that you would read Archbold's post and then take the time to defend "Che", apparently without many facts, is significant to me. It tells me you are not to be taken seriously.
December 20, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I know this post is a dead as Che's victims, but I wanted to come back and check on something: did The Dutchman own up to being wrong? I'm not saying he was a liar; he initially quoted what he thought was a legitimate source. But now, having had that source totally discredited and having read some extremely pointed and well-vetted counter evidence, I ask The Dutchman: will you admit you were mistaken?
(Does the Left ever admit to being wrong? About Ukraine, about Mao, about Che, about Cambodia? Ever?)
CJohnson
December 20, 2010 at 8:19 pm
C. Johnson:
Thanx for making a thoughtful contribution. Please examine the thread again and I think you will note that, after quoting a source that struck me as legitimate, I was offered the case of Eutimio Guerra, which a quick google search would seem to show to be a case of military justice, not murder. And then the accusations of lying began, which are completely uncalled for, as all I did was quote sources.
As for the sources offered to me, they are merely lengthy accusations without source, or highly biased right-wing accounts, and one link that causes my computer to crash every time I try it out. Jon Lee Anderson might not be an acceptable source to you (despite his writing for Time and the New Yourker?), but Humberto Fontova is not even a journalist for a reputable publication, so its a bit of a stretch for you to expect me to accept him over Anderson.
I find it rather tiresome that people criticize the Castro regime as "repressive" instead of comparing it to the brutality of the preceding Batista regime or noting that, according to the UN's Human Development Index, Cuba is faring better than any other Latin American country except Argentina. Yes, Castro's regime is autocratic and repressive, but it is probably better than any real world alternative for Cuba.
Lastly, I don't know much about Che. I honestly don't know if he is a mass murderer and would be interested in reading what reputable journalists or historians have to say about the matter. None of the main-stream references that I have looked at make any such accusations and there is usually "more to" the accusations made by right-wing polemicists (as in the case of the execution of Eutimio Guerra, a bona fide spy and traitor).
December 21, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Mr Dutchman: You sir, are a liar. There is a mountain of evidence and eyewitness testimony that Che Guevara was, in fact, a mass murderer. And still you equivocate and prevaricate. That, in so many words is lying. You continue to foster a perverse, obscene, and contemptible lie that Che Guevara was someone to be compared with Christ, when in fact he is known by witnesses and by his own statements and writings to be a homicidal monster. And still you say it is not so. That is lying. You are a liar.
December 22, 2010 at 5:20 am
You are foaming at the mouth.
I never, ever said that Che was to be compared with Christ. I just asked for verifiable, reputable proof that Che was a mass murderer.
Of course, I do see Jesus as being a lefty: "The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade."
Yes — it was the bankers killed Jesus.