Opaque Lucidity

Che, They Hardly Know Ya

Young America's Foundation is giving away posters of Che Guevara. That may seem a little contradictory since YAF is a conservative organization, but if you take a close look at the poster, you see that Che's face is made up of little pictures. They are of people who Guevara is known to have murdered and others murdered by henchmen in Fidel Castro's regime (may he die a painful death soon).

Every time I see a t-shirt with Che's face looking out from it, I want to ask the thin-armed, no-upper-body-strength having punk wearing it what he knows about Che. Almost universally, the answer is nothing. Che is just cool because, like, he was a revolutionary and stuff, man. We'll just glaze over the part where he sat as judge, jury and executioner for hundreds who fought against the Castro regime in the late 50's as the marxists took over Cuba.

You may say that Che's image has become more of a brand thing and less a statement of leftist ideology. Imagine if kids started wearing shirts with Hitler's face on them. How loud would the outcry be? Nazism in Germany died more than 60 years ago; Che's cohorts still run Cuba. Couldn't we make the argument that it's time we "got over" fascism? After all, Hitler was a rebel. And rebels are cool.