The Real Che

A helpful article from the London Spectator shining the light of truth on that icon of soi-disant college radicals:

The essential fact about Che was that he misunderstood his own experience, and then tried to apply it as a rule for the whole world, with predictably disastrous results. He was a savage ideologue, a mesmeric fool and, in the end, a poetic blunderer, possessing some extraordinary qualities, certainly, but without the judgment and humility to make those qualities count. … In the ramshackle, amateurish conflict in the Sierra Maestra, where Castro’s forces were numbered in dozens and, at most, hundreds, Che was a man who did not mind getting his hands dirty. If a man was accused of being a traitor, or an informer, or even of defeatism, Che could, and often did, condemn him to death. He was not averse to carrying out the sentence himself. Pistol to the temple, pull the trigger, has to be done…. The peasantry soon learnt to fear him. Che wrote in his memoirs: ‘Denouncing us did violence to their own conscience and, in any case, put them in danger, since revolutionary justice was speedy.’

In addition to being a cold-blooded killer, Che proved an inept manager of the Cuban economy:

Moving on from his role as Castro’s Fouquier-Tinville, he took charge of Cuba’s economy. According to his ‘Theory of Value’, which Fidel supported, the value of an object was defined not by supply and demand but by its moral and social worth. Che was left to decide which priorities should be followed. His years in command of the Cuban economy drove it to ruin. … He was undaunted by the deaths he had ordered and the errors he had made. He had larger dreams than the fate of the Cuban economy.