Thread: EPA uses Che Guevara to promote Hispanic Heritage Month

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EPA uses Che to promote Hispanic Heritage Month

Internal email even plagiarizes content from another website

Published: 8 hours ago
An email from the Environmental Protection Agency to employees about Hispanic Heritage Month was a copy-and-paste production that included the image of Che Guevara, the insurgent who helped bring Fidel Castro to power in Cuba and is thought to have ordered hundreds of people executed during that time.

A report in the Weekly Standard highlighted the work of the federal bureaucracy that apparently copied text and images from Buzzle.com.

And U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, was outraged.

“I am aghast and upset that a federal agency would send an email depicting el Che Guevara in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month,” she wrote today in a statement on her website. “This administration just doesn’t seem to get it. The image of Che is an insult to countless people who lost family members because of his evil and twisted acts.”

At historyofcuba.com, Guevara is called “an intellectual and an idealist, able to speak coherently about Aristotle, Kant, Marx, Gide or Faulkner.” The site credits Guevara with “an important role in converting Castro to communism.”

Ros-Lehtinen, however, uses different words.

“El Che was a blood thirsty, vengeful, cowardly, sadistic, two bit delinquent who used his position as enforcer in chief of the Castro brothers to send countless innocent persons before the firing squads. His role in the early part of the disastrous calamity that befell the Cuban nation known as the Castro Revolution is well documented and those who ignore it do so willingly so as not to tarnish their love affair with the dictatorship of the Castro brothers.

“Surely, the EPA could have chosen the image of a Hispanic person who really possessed the attributes that showcase our proud Hispanic heritage,” she continued. “This sad and unnecessary episode encompasses all that is wrong with this administration: Their priorities are backwards and their allegiances border on the fringe of society with a leftist fanatical slant that is worrisome and not descriptive of our great nation.”

The Standard report said the email was from Susie Goldring and the subject was Hispanic Heritage Month.

Under the headline “Hispanic news you can use!” was the copied text about the events beginning on Sept. 15, the anniversary of independence for five Latin American countries – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

It features the image of a horse and carriage passing an image of Che on a billboard.

BuzzFeed Politics noted both the image of the “Marxist revolutionary” as well as the “plagiarism.”

The “text and the photo appear to be lifted word-for-word and without attribution,” BuzzFeed reported.

EPA uses Che to promote Hispanic Heritage Month

I just don't get this infatuation many have with Che. Have seen numerous Che t-shirts worn by young people, like it is some kind of fad. And the EPA too? What is going on?

Our own government sends yet another clear signal it has been compromised by Chinese communists working with Latin American communists and Islamo fascists.

W

At least one congresswoman understands what Che stands for. The little reconquista that works at the EPA should be fired. JMO
EPA: Staff-wide Che Guevara email an ‘inadvertent error’


Published: 3:13 PM 09/14/2012
By Caroline May/Daily Caller

Environmental Protection Agency staff opened their inboxes Thursday to find an agency-wide Hispanic Heritage Month email featuring a prominent picture of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, and largely plagiarized from the website Buzzle.com.


According to the EPA, the email — which heralded the beginning Hispanic Heritage Month on Saturday and offered cultural details about Hispanics — was an accident and the employee responsible has apologized.

“The email was drafted and sent by an individual employee, and without official clearance. Shortly after sending the email in question the individual apologized to her colleagues for the inadvertent error,” an EPA spokesman emailed TheDC in a statement.

While it was a mistake, the email caught the eye and ire of Foreign Relations Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who called the image of Guevara “insulting.”

“I am aghast and upset that a federal agency would send an email depicting el Che Guevara in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. This Administration just doesn’t seem to get it,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement.

“The image of Che is an insult to countless people who lost family members because of his evil and twisted acts. El Che was a blood thirsty, vengeful, cowardly, sadistic, two bit delinquent who used his position as enforcer in chief of the Castro brothers to send countless innocent persons before the firing squads.”

Florida Republican Rep. David Rivera expressed similar sentiments.

“Americans of Hispanic descent have made important and valuable contributions to this country throughout generations,” Rivera said in a statement. “It is nonsensical and extremely disheartening that the EPA chose to showcase a killer as part of their celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. At best this is further proof of how out of step and tone deaf the Obama Administration is with the Hispanic-American community.”

Fox News Latino reported that some Florida state representatives were also upset, saying they were “insulted” and “outraged” by the memo.

“Che was a cold-blooded murderer who killed so many innocent victims,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, Florida Republican and a Cuban-American, said in an email to Fox Latino. “This Administration has granted visas to Mariela Castro and other top Cuban regime officials, offered the Castro brothers unilateral concessions, and now sends an E-mail with a image of an anti-American mass murderer.”

This story was updated after publication to include comments from Florida Republican Rep. David Rivera.

Read more: EPA: Staff-wide Che Guevara email an 'inadvertent error' | The Daily Caller

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen makes a good point about Che Guevarra. I have to think that people are are not fully aware of what Che Guevarra stood for and part of that was his hatred of The US. I see violence when I see a Che Guevara worshipper and feel that the image of Che is a visual hate statement. JMO

Getting to know Che: from Conservapedia:Che Guevara

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Ernesto "Che" Guevara (b. June 14, 1928, executed October 9th, 1967) was a Marxist guerrilla leader, with Fidel Castro, during the Cuban Revolution. He has become a cultural icon for liberals, leftists, socialists, communists, illegal aliens^[1], and white "hipsters".^[2] Despite being a freedom fighter, his image is still used as leftist propaganda which adorns millions of t-shirts and dorm room posters.

Early Life
Guevara was the eldest of five children born in Rosario, Argentina. His schoolmates nicknamed him "pig" (Chancho) because he rarely bathed, and smelled bad.^[3] He also enjoyed enjoyed killing dogs.^[4].
Cuba Revolution

In 1955, while living as a hobo, Guevara met Raul and Fidel Castro to plot the overthrow of the US-backed Fulgencio Batista government in Cuba. Their first revolutionary plan was an assault on Cuba from Mexico. During the war Castro promoted Guevara to commander status, and Guevara won the Battle of Santa Clara. This defeated Batista's forces and allowed the bearded guerrillas to march on towards Havana. On New Years Eve 1958, Batista's forces were defeated and on New Years day, Batista fled to the Dominican Republic. Castro and Guevara became Cuba's new socialist revolutionary leaders.

Castro's Cuba
Guevara was appointed commander of the La Cabaña Fortress prison.

He oversaw the trial and execution of many former Batista regime officials. Roberto Martin-Perez was imprisoned for 30 years in Castro's dungeon prison. Roberto says "Castro ordered mass murder ... in order to consolidate his power." Guevara, as Castro's chief executioner, relished the slaughter of defenseless men and boys.^[5]

Guevara became feared for his brutality and ruthlessness. During the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro ordered Guevara to take up a command post in Western Cuba. He never saw any fighting and did not participate in the Cuban victory. However, he dropped his pistol and shot himself in the face. Guevara was the main proponent of missiles in Cuba and urged Khrushchev to nuke the United States.^[6] In December 1964, he gave a speech before the U.N. General Assembly mocking the imperialism of the USA.

The number of executions he ordered is unknown, with conservative estimates ranging from 400 to 2,000 over his lifetime. Unfortunately, lack of records mean that the exact number will probably never be known. What is clear is that he was a violent Communist who thought nothing of killing anyone who opposed him. (Amazon)

“

“Hatred as the central element of our struggle! Hatred that is intransigent…hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine...We reject any peaceful approach. Violence is inevitable. To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow! The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him! These hyenas are fit only for extermination. We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm! The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!” -- Ernesto "Che" Guevara speaking about Americans, April 1966 Message to the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba

”

South America

Guevara authored an insurgent booklet entitled Guerrilla Warfare. ^[7]

He left Cuba to lead a Communist guerrilla movement in South America. Bolivian soldiers, trained, equipped and guided by U.S. Green Beret and CIA operatives,^[8] hunted him down in the Bolivian jungle where he was captured. He cried out "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead." ^[9] However, the U.S. and Bolivia knew better. He was executed by Mario Terán 2 days later, and his hands were chopped off and put into a jar.

Quotes

"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality."

"In capitalist society individuals are controlled by a pitiless law usually beyond their comprehension. The alienated human specimen is tied to society as a whole by an invisible umbilical cord: the law of value. This law acts upon all aspects of one's life, shaping its course and destiny. The difficult thing for someone not living the experience of the revolution to understand is this close dialectical unity between the individual and the mass, in which the mass, as an aggregate of individuals, is interconnected with its leaders."

VIDEO:
The Victims of Che Guevarra

• The Victims of Che Guevara See Above
• Glenn Beck exposes the murderous Ernesto Che Guevara image

Books

• Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him, Humberto Fontova.
• Exposing the Real Che Guevara: The Liberal Media's Favorite Executioner, Humberto Fontova, Sentinel, April 2007 ISBN-10: 1595230270 [1]
• Che Guevara Planned Attacks Against the U.S. Humberto Fontova, Newsmax.com, November 21, 2007

References

• ↑ Illegal Immigrants Rally For Dead Marxist Che Guevara
• ↑ Che-Mart
• ↑ Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Forty Years, Still Dead The Jawa Report, October 8, 2007
• ↑ Exposing the Real Che Guevara: and the Useful Idiots who Idolize Him, By Humberto Fontova
• ↑ Che Guevara: Mass Murderer and Coward Frontpage Magazine, June 13, 2007
• ↑ Hari, Johann Should Che Be an Icon? No
• ↑ Mugshot of a Murderer Yaf.org
• ↑ The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified The George Washington University
• ↑ The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified The George Washington University

Che Guevara - Conservapedia

The illegals come here with thier hands out wanting more and worshipping Che Guevara the SYMBOL of Anit Americanism worldwide. The only "better life" they are here for yours. JMO
Che Guevara: Mass Murderer and Coward

By: Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Cuban-born Humberto Fontova, who left Cuba in 1961 at age seven, has written for several conservative magazines and is the author of Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant. He has appeared on many radio and television shows and is active in the Cuban American community. He is the author of the new book Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him.


FP: Humberto Fontova, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Fontova: It's my pleasure. Let's face it: how many media outlets are there for the truth about the Cuban Revolution and the murderous Cuban regime? Frontpage is among the few and the proud. And I'm among the grateful for that.

FP: Well thank you. We try our best.

So what made you write this book?

Fontova: The 50 year blizzard of BS in the MSM and Academia about Castro/Che and their "ideals" and "accomplishment" etc. simply drove me to mount a counterattack, in whatever modest capacity I could manage. We're talking about a regime that jailed more political prisoners (as a percentage of population) than Stalin's and for twice as long; that murdered more people (in absolute numbers) during its first three years in power than Hitler's regime murdered in it's first six; that drove out 20 percent of the population from a nation formerly inundated with immigrants.

Then I'm supposed to sit by placidly while constantly hearing my parent's generation, (middle class folks much like the readers of this magazine) who fought that regime, who include the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, who lost everything they'd worked for, who sacrificed all to see their children grow up free--I'm supposed to acquiesce in slanders against them as "gangsters, filthy-rich scoundrels," among other choice descriptions by the international left--and Michael Moore in particular?

Well, I'm not about to put up with it.

Mainstream Media and academic depictions of Cuban-Americans constantly fascinate me: If one of us gets down to work and raises a family, he's an effete dispossessed millionaire. If he engages in politics, he's an underhanded rascal. If he takes up arms to free his homeland, he's a terrorist. We can't win.

Now we see the Today Show reporting from Havana. Amazing. North of the Florida straits and in front of Republicans no question for these "reporters" is too rude, irrelevant or offensive; no demeanor too haughty, combative or insolent.

But just let these "reporters" cross the Florida straits and find themselves feted by a Stalinist regime. Then Eddie Haskell's addressing of June Cleaver seems combative in comparison.

FP: I feel you my friend. I come from the Soviet Union and for a lifetime listened to leftists around me praising a regime that persecuted my family and massacred millions of my people.

So what accounts for Che Guevara’s international heraldry? What exactly did he accomplish

Fontova: He accomplished exactly nothing. As I document in the book, Ernesto Guevara failed spectacularly at everything he attempted in his life--except at the mass-murder of defenseless men and boys. But he had the great fortune of linking up with the 20th century's top publicist: Fidel Castro, who hatched and propagated (with the aid of his ever-faithful media and academic accomplices) the Che legend, of which nothing is true.

FP: Most say it was Che’s "idealism" that made him attractive. But just what were those ideals?

Fontova: That's the beauty of it. We don't have to speculate about Che's ideals. They're on full display 90 miles south of Florida--a Stalinist police state where the regime mandates what its subjects, read, say, earn, eat (both substance and amount), where they live, travel or work. Che's dream wasn't to convert Latin America into Sweden--he wanted to convert it into Stalin's Soviet Union. In fact he often signed his early correspondence, "Stalin II."

This KGB-trained and worshiping hangman named Che now serves as the idol of "do your own thing" radicals and the slogan that adorns Che posters under T-shirts is "Resist Oppression." The mind boggles. It really required a sense of humor to write this book--otherwise I'd have gone nuts.

FP: Tell us about Che's violence and sadism.

Fontova: In my book, Roberto Martin-Perez who served almost 30 years in Stalinist Cuba's dungeons says "Castro ordered mass murder, but for him it was a utilitarian slaughter, in order to consolidate his power. A classic psychopath, the butchery didn't seem to affect him one way or the order. But Che Guevara, as his chief executioner, relished the slaughter. You could see it in his face as he watched men yanked from their cells and tied to the execution stake."

Che also loved toying with the distraught and sobbing mothers who came into his La Cabana office to plead for their (innocent) son's lives. He loved to pick up the phone right in front of them and bark" "Execute the Fernandez (or whoever) boy tonight!" As Mr Martin-Perez concluded: "There was something seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara." Alas, Che's sadism found a useful outlet as Castro's chief hangman.

FP: What did Castro think of Che?

Fontova: Castro initially found Che useful, let's put it that way. It's hard to say if Fidel Castro could ever think highly of anyone except himself. I conducted interviews with people who saw them together and all say that Fidel loved to berate Guevara savagely, and in front of the other Communist leaders, similar to how Che toyed with those poor, distraught mothers. It must have been a power ploy, by Fidel. But it's clear that by 1964 or so, Che's usefulness to Castro had run it's course. There's evidence he was under house arrest briefly in 1965.

FP: So all these distortions and outright lies regarding Che Guevara's altruism and heroism have lasted almost half a century. What does this say about modern day academics and pundits? About modern culture in general?

Fontova: It says we should be very careful about what we read by these organs. Look how long it took for the truth of the Soviet Union to finally sink in. I loved Robert Conquest's quip after the Iron Curtain fell and the truth started emerging and abundantly confirming everything he had written in his books, The Great Terror, etc.: "I told you so, you bleeping idiots!"

Sadly, Che's cachet as the worldwide symbol of Anti-Americanism let's him get away-- not just with murder--but with Mass-murder. That Anti-American cachet (the gallant David's against the American Goliath) seems to excuse all the horrors of the Cuban revolution for much of the worldwide intelligentsia. When, in fact, as I document in this book, the Castro/Che rebels were aided by the U.S. State department and CIA and after Oct 1962 the Castro/Che regime enjoyed U.S. protection as pledged by JFK to Khrushchev.

FP: You claim that Fidel Castro himself--via the Bolivian Communist party--helped seal Che's doom by feeding information to the CIA regarding Che's whereabouts in Bolivia. This is quite a revelation. The evidence? Have any of Che "scholars" broached this issue?

Fontova: Some have danced around it a bit. But none have tackled it head on. I got the evidence for Che's betrayal by Castro from a primary source --actually from the primary source: the Cuban-American CIA operative who was in overall charge of the hunting down Che in Bolivia. he was the one getting the info from the Bolivian Communists who were getting it from Castro.

FP: The real guerrilla war in Cuba, you write, was fought not by Fidel and Che--but against Fidel and Che and mostly by humble rural rebels. That strikes one as similar to the Contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Doesn't this fly in the face of leftist legends regarding Latin America?

Fontova: You're absolutely right. It wouldn't be so bad if what we heard and read regarding the Cuban Revolution was merely wrong. Instead the academic/MSM version is the exact opposite of the truth--it completely upends the truth. A savage anti-communist insurgency by humble rural folk was waged for six years 90 miles from our borders. But it might have occurred on another planet for all we read about it in "scholarly" tracts.

An anti-communist insurgency just doesn't fit their mental template of insurgencies--especially as it was fought against Che Guevara. I interviewed among the very core of these rebels who survived the communist massacres that finally crushed the rebellion. Their bravery awed me. Yet these people have been completely ignored by historians, scholars, reporters, etc. I try to rectify that injustice with this book.

FP: And thanks you for trying to rectify this injustice. You are doing a great service to history, freedom, truth and to the heroes that fought for Cuban freedom – and to all those who died and suffered because of its non-existence.

Let me ask you for an analysis of the psychological mindset that is involved here in terms of the Left.

Let me set the foundation here:

I know many leftists Mr. Fontova. I have even recommended this book on Che to those of my acquaintances who live their lives dedicated to this mass murderer. They won’t read it of course. But to several of them I made the comment that there is no point for them to read it, because even if the truth was proven to them regarding what a monster this sadist and executioner was, they could never accept or admit it. That’s because they couldn’t lose all of their friends and their entire social communities. They would also have to re-examine and change their entire identities, which are interwoven with seeing Che as a hero. Leftism is, after all, a social life, and it is a depersonalization of personal neuroses – and usually very pathological and malignant neuroses at that.

I have bluntly asked some of these people: “how many friends would you have left if you realized that Che was a fascist and began saying such a thing?”

I have received a eerie silence in response to this question every time.

Let me just say here, Mr. Fontova, that, throughout my life, I argued with gizzilions of leftists about communism, trying (naively) to convince them of many things. During my doctoral years in the field of Cold War History, I spent much time debating my colleagues about who was responsible for the Cold War.

My colleagues found my views very amusing. I was ridiculed. They reserved special mockery, and howling fits of laughter, for my respect for Reagan’s reference to the Soviet system as an “Evil Empire.” Till this day I remain confused as to what is so funny about it.

In any case, when the Soviet archives were opened after the fall of the Soviet regime in 1991, I devoured all of the revelations in declassified KGB documents. They all confirmed and substantiated what conservatives had been arguing for decades – that the Soviets were totalitarian and malicious expansionist aggressors that started and prolonged the Cold War.

When I approached my colleagues with this new evidence, ranging from everything from the issues of the Korean war, Berlin, Soviet espionage, American communists’ links with the Soviet regime, etc., I showed how I had been correct on every issue that we had argued about for years.

And yet, instead of hearing a mea culpa, a stated regret or admission of some kind of lesson learned, all that I received were smug disinterested facial expressions and callous and apathetic shrugs of the shoulders. These colleagues brushed me off and even told me that all of this was “old” and “ancient” and suggested that I stopped chasing “old ghosts” and “engaging in necrophilia.”

And these were historians.

I have a feeling that the leftist milieu will greet your revelation and evidence in the same way.

Give us your psychological profile of this pathological mindset.

Fontova: Well, I'm no psychologist or psychiatrist but the term "battered-wife syndrome" certainly comes to mind when contemplating Western Commie-lovers and apologists. As you probably know, these are women who refuse to see what's in front of their face, even when it's a fist three inches from bashing them in the eyes and approaching at warp speed--the same fist that bashed them 100 times before. For some reason these women keep returning to the man attached to that fist. After having their dreams pummelled by Lenin then Stalin, then Castro, then Che then Pol Pot, etc., etc (so many broken eggs, such consistently putrid omelets) these "battered--leftists" keep returning to some communist paramour in the same manner. "In denial" is a psychobabble term I generally loath. But it strikes me as ideal to describe Castro and Che fans and apologists.

During the 30's (the "Red Decade") Stalin was whooped up by everyone from Hemingway to Lilian Hellman to Dashiell Hammett to Auden to Malroux. The Spanish Civil War had much to do with it, then his cachet as victor over Hitler cranked up Stalin's heroic cachet even higher. But Khruschev's "Secret Speech" before the Soviet Congress in 1956, finally shook some foreign Stalin fans. Then, of course, Khrushchev's own invasion of Hungary had even more Western Communist lovers leaving the ranks--however slowly and grudgingly.

Nothing even remotely of this sort has taken place regarding the romantic cachet that still surrounds the Cuban Revolution and hence Fidel and Che. Many of those finally disillusioned with the Soviet Union in 1957 (Jean Paul Sartre comes to mind as a shinning example) then put all their hopes on Cuba's Communist regime--which jailed political prisoners at a rate slightly higher than Stalin's! Cuba's secret police where inspired, trained and counselled by the KGB and STASI! Almost 50 years of proof that the Castro/Che regime is Stalinism rehashed in the tropics simply will not shake the faithful.

And it's that "anti-American" cachet attached to Che that accounts for the thundering block-headedness of so many otherwise rational people.

The legend of that handful of long-haired, bearded beatniks who overthrew a "brutal U.S.-backed dictatorship that repressed and impoversished Cuba," (When in fact Cuba had a higher standard of living in 1958 than half of Europe, a larger middle class than Switzerland, a more highly unionized work force than the U.S., more doctors and dentists per capita than Great Britain, more cars and televisions per capita than Canada or Germany, was inundated with immigrants.... I could go on--but will instead refer readers to my book for these statistics and the corresponding documentation.)

If those conditions represent "Yankee-exploitation" then other Latin-American nations should have been half as lucky as Cuba.

And if a Stalinist police-state that mandates a monthly salary of $12 dollars a month and food rations lower than Cuban slaves ate in 1848 for its subjects, and where donkey-powered rickshaws have become a luxury item, and where the hottest items on the black market are styrofoam (to build a raft) and ping pong paddles (to paddle away with)--if conversion into such a place constitutes "liberation"....well. As I said, I wrote this book to try and dispel the mountains of outrageous humbug on Cuba we get from Academia, Hollywood and the MSM.

FP: Humberto Fontova, thank you for joining us. And thank you for being such a brave, tenacious and wise soldier for the truth and for liberty.

Fontova: Thank you Jamie.
FrontPage Magazine - Che Guevara: Mass Murderer and Coward

September 17, 2012 4:00 A.M.
by John Fund
National Review

Violent hatred is not something to emulate — or wear on a T-shirt.

The stern photo of revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda in 1960 is one of the most reproduced images on the planet, appearing on posters, flags, postcards, T-shirts, and even bikinis. Sadly, the ubiquitous appearances of Che — hailed today usually by his first name only — demonstrate the near-total failure to educate people about the blood-soaked cruelty he really represented.

But there are, thankfully, some limits to the use of Che’s famous image — if people complain. A recent e-mail sent by the Environmental Protection Agency to mark Hispanic Heritage Month included Korda’s image of Che along with the slogan “Hasta la victoria siempre,” or “On to victory, always.” After facing criticism, the EPA said the e-mail had been “drafted and sent by an individual employee, and without official clearance.”

Nonetheless, it’s unsettling to see Che’s image appropriated by a government agency that has a notorious reputation for violating property rights and imposing arbitrary controls on growth. Just last March, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that an Idaho couple seeking to build on their land had their rights violated when the EPA imposed fines of $75,000 a day without giving the couple the ability to challenge its rulings.

Also this year, the EPA regional administrator Al Armendariz was forced to resign after he described his enforcement philosophy in a public speech: “Find people who are not complying with the law and you hit them as hard as you can and make examples of them.” He compared the tactic to that used by ancient Roman soldiers: “The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”

That sounds a lot like how Che operated. After Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, Che was instrumental in setting up forced-labor camps for dissidents, gays, and devout Catholics. He was put in charge of La Cabaña Fortress prison for five months. There are varying accounts of how many people were executed under his command during that time, and how many deaths are attributed directly to Che as opposed to the regime overall, but some sources say that more than 100 journalists, businessmen, and followers of the previous regime faced death by firing squad at La Cabaña, under Che’s jurisdiction.

Violence was at the core of Che’s philosophy. Shortly before his death at the hands of Bolivian troops in 1967, he wrote “Message to the Tricontinental.” In this essay he advocated the effective use of violent hatred:

Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.

A decade earlier, when he murdered Eutimio Guerra, he recorded in his diary: “I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain. . . . His belongings were now mine.”

Nor was Che’s violence directed only against Cubans. Author Humberto Fontova points to evidence that Guevara, the chief instigator of Castro’s revolutionary efforts overseas, was involved in a November 1962 terrorist plot to use 1,200 pounds of TNT to blow up Macy’s, Gimbels, Bloomingdale’s, and Grand Central Station on the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year. Such an act could have rivaled 9/11 in its destruction. This is hardly a man who deserves to be honored as a hero on T-shirts.

The Obama administration deserves credit for distancing itself from the EPA’s flirtation with Che. But Obama acolytes haven’t always been so sensible. During the 2008 campaign, a Houston TV station taped the inside of an Obama get-out-the-vote office that featured a large Cuban flag on the wall, with the image of Che stamped onto it.

The spokeswoman for the Obama office who sat down with the TV station for an interview repeatedly called questions about the Cuban flag “a distraction” and a “waste of time” and said, “I don’t have time to talk about the Cuban flag.” Or Che, for that matter.

But it’s time we start to talk about Che. He may have died 45 years ago, but his pernicious philosophy is still very much under debate in Latin America. On the one hand, even liberals such as Rory Carroll, the Latin American correspondent for the Guardian in Britain, acknowledge that the Cuban model would have been a “debacle” if exported to other countries. “To challenge the U.S. empire, Che dreamed of creating ‘many Vietnams,’ not least in his Argentine homeland,” Carroll wrote. “Who today can seriously wish he had succeeded? . . . Who needs Che?”

But while overt Communism isn’t on the march in Latin America, Che-style thinking is ascendant in the anti-American authoritarians who today rule Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. Che is much more than an image on a T-shirt to leaders in those countries: He is an inspiration on how to seize and maintain power. It’s for that reason that we should push back whenever and wherever Che’s image surfaces. If people wore T-shirts with images of Nazi butchers, most of us wouldn’t let them pass by without comment. The same should be the case with Che, whether his image shows up on college campuses or in EPA e-mails.

Re-branding Guevara: Che the Butcher - John Fund - National Review Online