Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him

This weeks book has been sitting on my shelf for awhile, and for some reason, I decided May 2022 was a good month to be depressed. So this weeks book…and next weeks book…are a bit of downers. So this weeks book is Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him by Humberto Fontova.

I knew this book would be a rough one, when the acknowledgements section thanks Mrs. Barbara Rangel-Rojas for dredging up her childhood memories of watching her grandfather be murdered live on television. Well, what can I say…that is the ilk that you idiots have been worshipping for 50 years. Not a fighter. Not a brave revolutionary leader. A common murderer.

Which I knew. Not the extent of his crimes, but I knew Che was not the hero the media wanted you all to believe he was. I knew it from common sense, from a healthy distrust of the media, and from interacting with Cuban American’s, none of whom had a high opinion about Che. And unlike the overeducated elites, who are all too happy to tell us all how wrong we all are, I tend to listen to the lived experiences of those who were there. Because, from a research perspective, nothing beats the first hand accounts of someone who was there.

So, some basics. Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born on June 14, 1928 in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina. Yes, the famed Cuban “rebel” was not even Cuban. And he was not even poor. He grew up very bougie, from an upper class family, his parents were Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna y Llosa. He was descended from Spanish landowners and Irish ancestry. Those are the basic facts. Anyone can look them up. Although I do NOT recommend Wikipedia as a source in this case, given that the leftists who edit that site, toe the party line and tout Che’s heroic background. This book, tells a much better story. In all it’s gutwrenching horror.

Che got his nickname because Che is the Argentinian version of Chico or Dude…he’s literally called Dude his entire life. And Che was never a doctor, despite the left’s touting him as a medical doctor, no one has ever found any record of him attending medical school or graduating medical school. He was a rich bourgeoise bum, who was basically bumming around Latin America when he met up with Castro and his sad little band of rebels. And Castro wanted to take Cuba back from Batista and create a workers paradise.

This despite the fact that Cuba was already a worker’s paradise. Seriously, the Cuban peso was on parity with the US dollar. One for one, even exchange rates. And the peso was backed by gold. Union wages were second only to the US, earning more than unions in Europe. People were fighting tooth and nail to immigrate TO Cuba, rather than the flood of refugees who even today are fighting to escape. They had virtually no racism and women were already at equal pay and equal rights. Shit, I want to immigrate to 1950’s Cuba. And they had free elections. Now, I don’t know what happened with Fulgencio Batista, he had won election in his own right in 1940, his fall from grace didn’t happen until he took over Cuba in 1952. But  he was the first person of color to sit in Cuba’s presidential palace, a feat that has yet to be repeated since the rise of Castro and the racism that is now endemic in Cuba, and one that wouldn’t occur in America for another 70 years. So Cuba, despite what the leftists would have you believe, was NOT suffering under American style capitalism.

Now Castro actually made several unsuccessful attempts to invade Cuba, spending some time in jail in Cuba before being released in 1955 to continue his revolutionary activities. Here, I think, is a reasonable point to express the paradox of tolerance, which states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. I feel like, despite being a dictator at large, Batista wanted to be seen historically as the good guy, and so he tolerated Castro’s activities. This has not ended well, historically, anywhere. In an ironic twist, the grossly intolerant left, has firmly grasped the paradox of tolerance, using it to bludgeon those of us who express a difference of thought as being intolerant of their leftist ideologies. Irony…you is here.

So Castro, released in a general amnesty in 1955, goes to Mexico and there recruits a young Dude Guevara. Ok…my husband says not to call him that. Not that he is a fan of Guevara. I think he dislikes that I call one of our cats little dude, and now Dude Guevara… I just think it’s funny that leftists are pulled in by the “cool factor” of someone who was the Argentinian version of a frat bro.

Now, interestingly, Guevara was intimidated by Castro. He was undoubtedly pulled in by Castro’s vision of a Cuba under Castro’s control, but Guevara, while undoubtedly a psychopath himself, recognized an even bigger psychopath in Castro, and remained scared of Castro all his life.

Castro and his forces, including Guevara, return to Cuba in like 1956, and they begin waging a guerilla war. Oh…Guevara’s much vaunted skills as a guerilla warrior. I probably shouldn’t say this, because I strongly suspect that, should the US ever balkanize the left will be relying heavily on Guevara’s manual for his “mad skillz.” Let them. Seriously. He was prone to getting lost in the woods, miles from his own camp. During his final campaign in Bolivia, he had two patrols wandering within a scant mile of each other and actually shooting at each other, each thinking the other was the Bolivian military. Because he was such a good tactician.

Some harsh truths provided in this book, all from primary source testimony. Guevara was a monster. He was not a member of the proletariat, and like all communists everywhere, he only believed because he was one of the ones in power. Communism rapidly loses it’s appeal when you’re in the bottom tier. So Guevara, when Castro had marched in to and claimed Havana for the revolution, immediately appropriated the grandest house for himself. Testimony provided by journalist Antonio  Llano Montes, who was arrested shortly after this for daring to print the truth.

This book highlights, in excruciating detail, all the lies told by the left about their hero….Dude…and every lie is counterbalanced with truth told from primary source testimony. Now, for those of you who don’t know the difference, primary source is someone who was there, reporting first hand accounts of what happened. Secondary sources provide second-hand information and commentary from other researchers. Examples include journal articles, reviews, and academic books. A secondary source describes, interprets, or synthesizes primary sources. Basically, this book, is a secondary source, condensing and providing primary source testimony. Arguably, Guevara’s own diaries would be primary sources. And the author does, indeed, pull some of his own book from Guevara’s diaries. Using that to bolster his own assertion of Guevara’s monstrosity. And the examples he picks are pretty solid, recounting one lovely tale of Guevara blundering through the jungle and ordering his troop to strangle a puppy the troop had adopted because the puppy was making too much noise. Nice guy. He’s a real peach as an idol.

Guevara did indeed bring equality to women…equality to be jailed and beaten and shot, just like the men who didn’t think communism was a good deal for them. He used rape as a weapon of war. Solid guy, a truly feminist icon.

He was emphatically racist and homophobic, relegating blacks to the status of third class citizen, and gays to work camps with the inspiring words “work will make men out of you” inscribed in the gate entryway. He was lauded as a lover of arts and intellectualism…in reality, as soon as he rolled in to Havana, he oversaw a massive book burning and the jailing of librarians. He disliked hipsters, rock and roll, and individual thought.

And the murders. He was responsible for the mass murder of thousands. He ultimately had to gag those he was dragging to the firing squad, as to a man these brave fighters would shout contempt at the firing squad. Viva Cuba Libre! Abajo Comunismo! Viva Cristo Rey! Aim right here!

These defiant shouts enraged Guevara, resulting in mandatory gagging. Or bleeding. He would have some prisoners drained of blood almost to death, to sell the blood to I think it was China. These unfortunates would have to be carried to the firing post.

If a mother would show up at La Cabana to beg for the life of her child, Guevara would order the immediate execution of the child, just to hear the mothers anguished screams. Generally speaking, most were thrown in to unmarked mass graves. But another form of psychological torture used was to drop the body on the doorstep of the family, and then order them not to grieve. And watchers would be set to make sure that order was followed. As young as 14 would be placed before the firing squad.

And the story of Barbara Rangel-Rojas is told in full, pp 106-109. And as a result of watching her grandfather’s execution on television, of watching the hero Colonel Cornelio Rojas standing boldly in front of those rifles and giving the order himself, her grandmother suffered an immediate and fatal heart attack, and her mother, who was six months pregnant, went in to immediate labor, delivering Barbara’s younger brother right there, next to her own mothers body. Colonel Rojas, like so many others, is buried in an unmarked grave.

For a long time, Guevara himself was buried in an unmarked mass grave. After stumbling around the Bolivian jungle, and ordering his men to fight to the last bullet, Guevara was himself caught having never fired a single shot. Full magazine in his Walther ppk. After uttering the utterly cowardly words “Don’t shoot, I’m Che, I’m worth more to you alive than dead.” Guevara was expecting a show trial, lots of tearful pleas for his  life from celebrities, college students rioting on campus, and sympathetic articles from those oh so useful idiots, the press. Instead, the Bolivian military put a bullet in his head, and dumped him in a grave near an airfield, on October 9, 1967. Where he remained until Castro found it politically expedient to pay millions to Bolivia for Guevara’s bones, so that he could erect a shrine to faithful Che in Havana, and charge tourists to see it.

At the thirtieth anniversary of Che’s death, so that would be 1997, the intelligentsia decided to throw a bunch of events celebrating his life and revolution. At UCLA, the Latin American Studies Center and Fowler Museum of Cultural History, with learn-ed speakers from all over being invited to speak about Che’s GRAND CONTRIBUTIONS to the revolution. Know who was not invited? Anyone who survived his murderous regime. But turns out, that’s ok. Back in 1997, before free speech was shut down on campus, some survivors gate crashed the event, and made sure their voices were heard. Which is good. Because honestly, until the world recognizes that communism is the same as fascism, that authoritarianism in all it’s forms means the government views the people as the enemy…we cannot truly claim to be educated. No wonder homeschooling is on the rise. At least some people are waking up.

This book was excellent. The rage and outrage that poured from every page strongly called to mind The Gulag Archipelago. And the sarcasm and open condemnation of Hollywood’s elites and the intelligentsia who have been peddling Guevara…the Dude…as a hero, are very real and they have rightly earned the disgust of the author. And me. And anyone with two brain cells to rub together. And if you are one of those idiots who have, up til now, worshiped the path upon which Guevara tread, I highly recommend you expand your horizons and learn a little something new. Maybe ponder for a minute that the press is there to tell a story, not necessarily the truth. The press exists to sell papers. And if they can push their own political point at the same time, the world can drastically change as a result of the willful obfuscation. There is a reason trust in media is at an all time low.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on May 8, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.