With apologies to Mia Farrow and Mayor De Blasio: Exposing the Guevara cult reveals how dangerous it is.

"It is a sad reflection of our time that Che Guevara is seen as a hero." - Nigel Jones ( 2009)
 

New York Mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Bill de Blasio engaged in political malpractice today, quoting communist revolutionary Che Guevara at a political rally in Miami, Florida. This led to an uproar and the mayor apologizing. However, hours later Mia Farrow posted the above tweet highlighting famous people quoted speaking favorably of Che Guevara. The furror presents an opportunity to examine not only Guevara but how this image and the philosophy it represents is promoted.

First and foremost, famous people say a lot of silly things and looking back over time it can harm their legacy. This often happens when visiting totalitarian regimes and being manipulated by them.

De Beauvoir and Sartre were wined and dined by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Cuba in 1960.

For example, Susan Sontag downplayed the rounding up of homosexuals in Cuba by the Castro regime. “Suspicious as we are of the traditional puritanism of left revolutions, American radicals ought to be able to maintain some perspective when a country known mainly for dance, music, prostitutes, cigars, abortions, resort life, and pornographic movies gets a little up-tight about sexual morals and, in one bad moment two years ago, rounds up several thousand homosexuals in Havana and sends them to a farm to rehabilitate themselves." 

Other important figures saw through the propaganda and early on had a critical view of the Argentine revolutionary. Guevara had been killed and just months before he himself was assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. told his staff to combat the “romantic illusion” of Che Guevara style guerilla warfare among young radicals concluding: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now.” 

However by 1971 Susan Sontag had begun to change her mind and denounced the persecution of Cuban writer Herberto Padilla by Fidel Castro along with Sartre. By 1982 Susan Sontag had developed a radical critique of communism:

Fascist rule is possible within the framework of a Communist society, whereas democratic government and worker self-rule are clearly intolerable and will not be tolerated,'' she concluded.

'I would contend that what they illustrate is a truth that we should have understood a very long time ago: that Communism is Fascism - successful Fascism, if you will. What we have called Fascism is, rather, the form of tyranny that can be overthrown - that has, largely, failed. 'Facism With a Human Face' ''I repeat: not only is Fascism (and overt military rule) the probable destiny of all Communist societies - especially when their populations are moved to revolt - but Communism is in itself a variant, the most successful variant, of Fascism. Fascism with a human face.''

Nevertheless both Sartre and Sontag are quoted by Mia Farrow, without offering this context. It is unfair considering what we now know about Ernesto "Che" Guevara in his own words:

1. “Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!” (1953)

2. “Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.” (1967)

3. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!” (1959)

4. “A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!” The Wall is a reference to the wall where Che’s enemies stood before his firing squads.

5. “I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady, I am all the contrary of a Christ … I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man dead so that I don’t get nailed to a cross or any other place.” (1956)

6. “If any person has a good word for the previous government that is good enough for me to have him shot.” (1967)

7. Che wanted the result of the Cuban missile crisis to be an atomic war. “What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”

8. “In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm.”

9. "The negro 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."  (The Motorcycle Diaries)

Guevara's legacy and philosophy of hatred, war and death is a recipe for violent failure. Even if the Guevarist disciple is successful on the battlefield the so called victory will be a dystopian nightmare for all that to cite Susan Sontag creates a perfect variety of fascism with a human face.

What is most frightening is not that Mia Farrow trying to help the New York mayor attempts to lessen the outrage, but that the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)  decided on June 18, 2013 to add “The Life and Works of Che Guevara” to the World Registrar. UNESCO is providing funds to preserve Che Guevara’s papers and promoting both his communist ideology,  and advocacy for guerrilla warfare  that also views terrorism as a legitimate method of struggle against an enemy.

The Guevara cult is not just a Hollywood phenomenon but is being underwritten and promoted by international organizations such as UNESCO.