From Reason.TV
“We’re rightly horrified by fascist murderers like Adolph Hitler,” says reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie. “Why aren’t we also horrified by communist killers?” Certainly, Che’s body count isn’t anywhere near Hitler’s. But what about someone Che idolized, someone whom he might have liked to wear on his chest?
“Che, Castro, all the communist regimes idolized only one thing that Mao personifies—violence.” Kai Chen grew up in China under the reign of Mao Zedong. Although he won gold medals for China’s national basketball team, Chen’s was far from the celebrity life of an NBA star. Says Chen, “You have no right to talk, and you have no right to think.”
And yet, like Che, Mao’s image is becoming an increasingly popular way to move merchandise. You can buy Mao t-shirts, mugs, caps—you name it. Near Chen’s Los Angeles home there’s even a restaurant called Mao’s Kitchen. “Can you imagine a restaurant called Hitler’s Kitchen?” asks Gillespie.
3 comments:
I've had a Che shirt for several years and it is one of my favorite t-shirts ever. It's a picture of Che with a dollar sign in his hat instead of a star, and it says:
"This shirt brought to you by Capitalism"
LOL
In most cases, if you want to know how heroic someone is, first gage how much the right-wing hates them. The greater the teabaggers hate him, the more heroic he/she must be. Che Guevara, (one of the most heroic individuals of the 20th century) invites a large amount of hatred, vitriol, and misinformation from the conservative wing-nuts for two reasons:
(1) He represents many of the noble attributes that their bankrupt philosophy abhors, namely self-sacrifice, helping the poor, restoring justice when it comes to great inequality, and overthrowing the oligarch puppets of plantation capitalism.
(2) Che represents everything that the right-wingers secretly wish they were – brave, determined, dashing, charismatic, intelligent, poetic, and unshakable against impenetrable odds – while they took deferments from Vietnam – Che battled armies on 2 continents usually outnumbered 20 or 50 to 1.
Another one reads: "This man killed 140,000 people, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."
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