One bastard versus another bastard!

When Bret Stephens wrote his first column for the NY Times, there were protests online.  A few wrote about canceling their subscriptions altogether.  If you need a refresher about that episode, click here to read his first column.

Today, he showed yet again that he knows how to pick and choose in order to advance his argument.  First, what was his column about?  To some extent, Stephens has a legitimate point, like with this one:

Do the same people who rightly demand the removal of Confederate statues ever feel even a shiver of inner revulsion at hipsters in Lenin or Mao T-shirts?

I have written about this, too.  (What have I not blogged about, eh!)  In this post, for instance, I wrote:

Che's use of violence to achieve his version of utopia is no different from how Osama bin Laden didn't find anything wrong in killing civilians. Yet, while no rational person would walk around wearing an Osama t-shirt, thousands all across the world, including here in the US, think it is cool to wear a Che t-shirt. ...
I wish the world would stop applauding Che and making a saint out of this killer and, instead, remember him for what he was

Che was a secular jihadist.

And when Fidel Castro died, the title of my post says it all: Ding dong. The dictator is dead!

So, yes, I agree with Stephens that we should denounce Lenin and Mao and Castro, with as much loudness as we demand the removal of confederate monuments.

But then, Stephens resorts to quoting the big time empire-building white supremacist bastard, winston churchill.

Oh please, churchill was not all that better than Castro.  churchill was the guy who intentionally let millions of people in Bengal die.  churchill was a passionate defender of the British right to rule over the brown-skinned even when there were plenty around him who were increasingly uncomfortable with the brutal colonization.  churchill's rhetoric was all about saving the white skin; the browns be damned!  He openly said things like this:

I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

As Shashi Tharoor says, churchill has as much blood on his hand as hitler does.  I wish people would stop making a saint out of churchill.  Fuck churchill!

Let's not cherry pick our way through; instead, let's be honest and admit that evil comes in all flavors--not merely the communist type.

Castro's come-to-Jesus moment ... not really ;)

When the current leader of the Roman Catholic faith, Pope Francis, talks about issues that the political left typically cares about, the political right jumps to label him a Marxist or a communist or whatever such red-colored labels they like to stick on him.

But, as the Economist noted in reviewing a book, a biography that traced the arc that Jorge Bergoglio took to become Pope Francis:

Pope Francis excoriates the “golden calf” of the free market, and there are echoes of Marxist or even Leninist thinking in the way he links capitalism and war. But Mr Ivereigh locates the pontiff’s roots elsewhere: in the broad Argentine movement known as Peronism, a kind of populism tinged with nationalism which trusts the wisdom of ordinary folk and resents all elites. Some Peronists went Marxist; the young Father Bergoglio did not.

That last sentence there says a lot: "Some Peronists went Marxist; the young Father Bergoglio did not."

Now perhaps you are worried about the Pope's Peronism, eh!  Don't jump to conclusions:

Nor, contrary to one version of his early life, did he have any truck with right-wing authoritarianism.

 So, what's the deal?

The pope also shows more sign than his predecessors of understanding the human dilemmas posed by abortion and assisted suicide, but still hews to the church’s teaching on the sanctity of life. Even among people who disagree with all those views, Francis commands sympathy. For his part, he has acknowledged the integrity of people, including atheists and Marxists, whose beliefs differ from his own; and the respect is often mutual. His idiosyncratic humanism, forged in a land of political and economic turmoil, seems infectious. This book explains where it comes from.

Within the religious framework, Pope Francis is a relatively freewheeling critic of capitalism and a pragmatic humanist, in contrast to the hardcore ideologue that Pope Benedict was.

If one is not an ideologue, or is rapidly running away from brutal ideology, then this papacy will look all the more friendly.  Is it any wonder then that Raul Castro met with the Pope, on his way back from a trip to Putin's Russia?  Especially after the role that the Vatican played in helping the US end its freeze of Cuba.  And, of course, as any good politician, Castro knew well what will sell in the press:

After the audience with the Pope, Mr Castro said he was so impressed by a Vatican audience with Pope Francis that he might return to the faith he was born into.
Mr Castro praised the pontiff's wisdom, adding: "I will resume praying and turn to the Church again if the Pope continues in this vein."

After ruining Cuba, and exporting its brand of communism, and making Che's secular-jihadist image a "brand" in the global capitalism that they despised, prayers the Castro brothers will need in plenty!

In a few months, there will be the return visit:

Francis will travel to Cuba in September on his way to the United States. He will be the third pope to go to the Caribbean island nation, following John Paul II's visit in 1998 and Benedict XVI's in 2012.

Che Guevara, the secular jihadist!

As a kid growing up in a left-leaning India, I remember being fascinated with Fidel Castro, and the legends of Che. At a meeting of the Non-Aligned countries, Fidel Castro went on and on, and I am now amazed at how I sat through and watched most of that rant speech on TV!

Then I grew up.

I read about the Soviet Union that Solzhenistyn wrote about, and Orwell's Big Brother.  The older and wiser me couldn't understand the violence that the Stalinists and Maoists inflicted upon their own people, leave alone those on the outside.  The communist regimes were nothing but killers and anti-democratic rulers; Fidel and Che, it turned out, were no different from the violent and maniacal Stalin.

In the decades since 1917, communism has led to more slaughter and suffering than any other cause in human history. Communist regimes on four continents sent an estimated 100 million men, women, and children to their deaths — not out of misplaced zeal in pursuit of a fundamentally beautiful theory, but out of utopian fanaticism and an unquenchable lust for power.

Che's use of violence to achieve his version of utopia is no different from how Osama bin Laden didn't find anything wrong in killing civilians.  Yet, while no rational person would walk around wearing an Osama t-shirt, thousands all across the world, including here in the US, think it is cool to wear a Che t-shirt.  I suppose Osama, too, would have gladly worn a Che t-shirt if only he weren't an infidel!

When The Motorcycle Diaries came out and people we are all gushing about it, I intentionally skipped that movie. I stayed away from engaging in discussions--contrary to my penchant for discussions. I didn't want to come across as an annoying dissenter--because commie sympathizers at any level, as much as the commie leaders like Che, do not appreciate dissenting views.

I wish the world would stop applauding Che and making a saint out of this killer and, instead, remember him for what he was:

The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster.

Image of the day: Che :)

A wonderful follow-up to my rant about Che, from almost two years ago:

Now, a t-shirt with this image I might buy ...
(ht)