Che Guevara co-founded a regime dedicated to abolishing almost everything today’s millennials hold dear. Most victims of his firing squad massacres were Cuban youths in their twenties. Many as young as 16. Some even younger. Carlos Machado was 15 years old in 1963 when the bullets from a Che-commanded firing squad shattered his body. His twin brother and father collapsed beside Carlos from the same volley. All had resisted Castro and Che’s theft of their humble family farm, all refused blindfolds and all died sneering at their Communist murderers, as did thousands of their valiant countrymen. On Christmas Eve 1961 a young Cuban woman named Juana Diaz Figueroa spat in the face of the executioners who were binding and gagging her. They’d found her guilty of feeding and hiding “bandits” (Che Guevara’s term for Cuban rednecks like Carlos Machado who took up arms to fight his theft of their land to create Stalinist kolkhozes.) When the blast from that firing squad demolished her face and torso Juana was six months pregnant. Cuba’s communist regime was always a more implacable enemy of millennial behavior than were most Iron Curtain regimes. First off, notice the age of the typical half-dead Cuban rafter who washes up on south Florida’s beaches almost daily, often using his last reserves of energy to kiss the sand in gratitude. It’s rare to see one over 30. The Castro brothers and Che Guevara often outdid their Soviet patrons in outlawing and punishing typical millennial behavior. While the Rolling Stones were performing for a huge crowd of Polish kids in Warsaw in 1967, for instance, Cuban kids were being herded into forced labor camps for the crime of (clandestinely) listening to rock music, or growing long hair, or wearing blue jeans. “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates,” commanded Che Guevara. “Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.” “Youth,” wrote Guevara, “should learn to think and act as a mass!” “Those who choose their own path” (as in growing long hair and listening to “Yankee-Imperialist” Rock & Roll) were denounced by the Castro Brothers and Che Guevara as worthless “roqueros,” “lumpen” and “delinquents.” In his famous speech, Che Guevara even vowed “to make individualism disappear from Cuba! It is criminal to think of individuals!” Che the Lionhearted’s image is still ubiquitous on college campuses. But in the wrong places. He belongs in the marketing, PR, advertising – and especially – psychology departments. His lessons and history are fascinating and valuable, but only in light of Sigmund Freud or P.T. Barnum. One born every minute, Mr. Barnum? If only you’d lived to see the Che phenomenon. Actually, 10 are born every second. Here’s a “guerrilla hero” who in real life never fought in a guerrilla war. When he finally brushed up against one, he was humiliated and routed. Here’s a cold-blooded murderer who executed thousands without trial, who claimed that judicial evidence was an “unnecessary bourgeois detail,” who stressed that “revolutionaries must become cold-killing machines motivated by pure hate,” who stayed up till dawn for months at a time signing death warrants for innocent and honorable men, whose office in La Cabana had a window where he could watch the executions – and today his T-shirts adorn people who oppose capital punishment! Here’s communist Cuba’s first “Minister of Industries,” whose main slogan in 1960 was “Accelerated Industrialization!” Whose dream was converting Cuba (the hemisphere, actually) into a huge bureaucratic-industrial ant farm – and he’s the poster boy for greens and anarchists who scream and rant against industrialization! Here’s a sniveling little suck-up, teacher’s pet and momma’s boy who was the constant pride of joy of his teachers and parents (the most obnoxious sort of Limousine Bolsheviks) – and he’s idolized by millionaire delinquents such as Rage Against the Machine! Here’s a humorless teetotaler, a plodding paper-pusher, a notorious killjoy and all-around fuddy-duddy – and you see his T-shirt on MTV’s Spring Break revelers! Che excelled in one thing: mass murder of defenseless men. He was a Stalinist to the core, a plodding bureaucrat and a calm, cold-blooded – but never in actual battle – killer. His pathetic whimpering while dropping his fully-loaded weapons as two Bolivian soldiers approached him on Oct. 8, 1967 (“Don’t shoot!” I’m Che!” I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”) proves that this cowardly, murdering, bumbling doofus and swine was unfit to carry his victims’ slop buckets. (Help spread the truth about Che Guevara from the author of the internationally-acclaimed “Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him.” This book’s release in Brazil led to demonstrations where Che Guevara T-shirts were actually burned! It’s high-time for similar reactions on U.S. campuses. )
