Hearts and Minds on the legacy of Che…
Oliver Kamm is sparing tonight with Eammon McCann on the topic of Che Guevara, (thoroughly discussed earlier on this thread). According to Oliver (not renowned for pulling punches):
McCann had the bright idea to claim simultaneously that Guevara’s taste for revolutionary violence was (a) taken out of context, and (b) comparable anyway to the activities of the ANC under apartheid. In case you want to check the second assertion, you should note that Nelson Mandela has never shot without trial teenage members of his own organisation for petty pilfering, or authorised the execution of his party comrades on grounds of their ideological deviation.
Comments (78)
“As for your vast smoke-screen, Che was what he was—a petty, peasent Beria to Castro’s Stalin.” – Dread Cthulhu
What smokescreen? I asked the same question of you in regard to the UK that you asked of Garibaldy in regard to Che: “What ‘context’ do you have to ameliorate that unvarnished description?”
You avoided the question. Probably because consistency in your disdain would cause you to feel the same contempt for the UK in regard to the exact criteria that you specified as the basis of your contempt for Che (“summary executions, a disdain for legal processes, etc”) and expediency prevents you from doing so. So, what value has morality if it is only to be applied selectively and at the discretion of the indignant party?
In regard to Che, I offer no defence of him.
DC,
Ethics are situational. They have not been unchanging over time. Therefore how else are we to judge people, if not by their own standards? That’s why I juxtaposed two examples, from two widely different eras. It seems however that this has angered you for some reason.
Che is not here and now. We are talking about 50 years ago in the case of the Cuban revolution, and 40 years in terms of his death. I then talked about a here and now issue, where I judged people living in the here and now according to our standards, and apparently it’s whataboutery.
As for the relationship between the politics of historical actors and my attitudes towards them. I try not to judge people from the past by my standards, but by their own.
Of course I have my favorites but I don’t engage in pointless moralising about people who would not have recognised the terms of the debate. I’m honest enough to admit that in the place of some of the people from the other side, I’d have done the same thing they did.
Garibaldy: “Ethics are situational. They have not been unchanging over time. Therefore how else are we to judge people, if not by their own standards?”
Ah, but when you have to set the way-back machine to the Dark Ages to find a situation to fill your argument, you’re gilding the lily at best. Che was not some medieval lord. Now, admittedly, he was a socialist / communist, so perhaps you have a point — socialists have not been all that big on the sanctity of human life — Stalin (purges, starvation of the Ukraine), Mao (agricultural “reform), Pol Pot (killing fields), the suppression of those nations behind the Iron Curtain, etc.
Garibaldy: “Che is not here and now. We are talking about 50 years ago in the case of the Cuban revolution, and 40 years in terms of his death.”
And your defense of him requires you and Sherman to introduce Norman knights into the discussion?
As for the rest, I would remind you that your own argument for Castro, logically, is an argument in favor of making Zimbabwe Rhodesia again.
DC,
You’re really hung up on this use of the past. I chose two widely different periods for illustrative effect. And because, in the case of the early modern lords, there is a very specific Irish context: people use this behaviour to suggest the British used famine regularly as a weapon against the Irish. I had already mentioned other historical examples and was trying to vary them. I could equally have chosen, say, mustard gas.
As for the siege thing. It was the first example that came into my head of another siege that wasn’t from the C20th. I might have chosen say Derry or some other examples from early modern Europe.
I also used much more modern examples, from the 20th and 21st centuries, which you dismissed as whataboutery. But continue to ignore those and fixate on the medieval part if you wish.
The situation in Zimbabwe may well call for a change of policy or of government. The logic of my argument does not call for a return of Rhodesia. I was responding to the suggestion that Cubans thought things were better under Batista than they were now because they wish to leave now.
I’ve met many Cubans, both pro- and anti-government, and none of them has ever suggested things were better under Batista. I don’t think even the nutters in Miami now make that argument.
Darth
One of these t shirts would clearly get a reaction from the hard cores and the trendies.
..only a laugh, Phan..
)
In honor of this discussion, I plan on buying a couple of anti Che t shirts. I’ll be in London in a month, and they could make a nice fashion statement there, n’est-ce pas?
Garibaldy: “The situation in Zimbabwe may well call for a change of policy or of government. The logic of my argument does not call for a return of Rhodesia. I was responding to the suggestion that Cubans thought things were better under Batista than they were now because they wish to leave now. ”
And by the measures you chose, the same can be said for white-ruled Rhodesia when compared to black-ruled Zimbabwe. Longer life expentancy, standard of living — hell, the actual presence of food in the stores, a lack of hyper-inflation, etc.
Garibaldy: “I also used much more modern examples, from the 20th and 21st centuries, which you dismissed as whataboutery. But continue to ignore those and fixate on the medieval part if you wish. ”
Mayhap because it’s such a silly argument, esp. from you, Garibaldy. It amounts to “gee, morals were different 800 years ago, so Che wasn’t a butcher.”
Cuba is a totalitarian dictatorship. Che and the Castro brothers built it on a mountain of bodies. Castro had options, better options than Mandela, actually — I find it interesting that folks are willing to describe disappointment in Mandela, but forgive Castro’s pissing away of his opportunities, as if Castro going Stalinist was a good thing and Mandela’s unwillingness to nationalize everything in South Africa was somehow a failure, despite the fact that it was Castro’s nationalization that led to his difficulties with the United States.
Unlike Mandela, who had an armed and undefeated white population to contend with and the eyes of the world upon him, Castro had the opportunity to go in whatever direction he cared, creating whatever government he wanted. He initially destroyed the standard of living, taking one of the Caribbean’s best industrialized economies (admittedly, a one-eyed man in the kingfom of the blind) and reducing it to an agricultural economy, partly through putting feckless Che in charge of industry.
Hell, if Fidel had a better fast-ball, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Dread
Most here will not get the reference. There have long been rumors that Castro, a serious baseball fan ( he’s Cuban after all ) wanted to play professional baseball and had a tryout with a US major league team. The story is apparently untrue , but you never know….
“Hell, if Fidel had a better fast-ball, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Most amused.
As for my argument, it’s that morals vary at different times. As it happens, I don’t think Che was a butcher for the simple reasons that the executions he was responsible for took place within the context of fighting a civil war, or in the very initial stages of securing the new regime. Moreover, he was not indiscriminate. Had he gone on to indiscriminately murder lots of people then I might be inclined to accept the argument. It’s certainly one I’m happy to accept for Pol Pot, who had people killed for who they were, not what they had done.
In saying that, I think I’m applying the standards of his time, when people were more accepting of a level of violence than they are now, and not our standards.
As for Mandela, I think nationalising everything would have been the wrong thing to do as it would have produced a needless civil war. However, that does not excuse the abject failure to provide the basic amenities to the townships that were the backbone of the struggle against apartheid, and suffered most under it.
I think Gari above has hit on something – many of the attitudes of the ’60s were “more accepting of violence” in the sense that violence was seen as a manifestation that something was wrong with the state, rather than an intrinsic feature of a anti-state group or ideology.
This manifests in less violent forms as well – take for example, sit-down protest.
The sit-down protests here in ’68 and ’69, batonned off the streets. What was the problem? Peaceful protestors or a reactionary state?
The world thought the latter was at fault.
Shift ahead 15-20 years and we have sit-down protests at Greenham Common – the wider public saw these as lesbian/communist agitators and extremists – it was the protestors who were the problem.
Shows how time changes perceptions of the same street tactics. Thus the perceptions of violent men like Che change. Little is known by many of anything beyond the image.
Very interesting point I wonder. Spot on.
Garibaldy
Castro took part in an armed attack on a military barracks in Santiago. He was not summarily executed. He was given a trial. And released not long afterward.
Compare that with the treatment Che gave to soldiers who had surrendered.
You can say that not all the attackers were given trials, and that some were tortured and killed-and you’d be correct to say that. But I think that Che and Castro upped the ante of violence a notch–while permanently taking away from the population their rights to speak and associate freely.
I wonder posits a theory.
Garibaldy: “Very interesting point I wonder. Spot on. ”
*nods*
Hell, even I’ll buy that… and it didn’t even require a suit of mail or trebuchet.
Although, I’d be curious where you draw the lines, Garibaly.
Dread
The matter I mentioned is not an old chestnut, it is just you do not wish to go there. Instead here you are raging against Che whose real crime in your eyes is that however haphazardly he went out and fought for a better world, refusing to accept the status quo that leaves 2/3 of the worlds population in poverty and ignorance.
When todays mass killers like Bush etc are getting away with murder. Which seems to be something that troubles you not a jot, here you are arguing over matters that you have no control over.
I’m out of here.
All the best
DC,
I assume you mean the lines between legitimate and illegitimate use of violence. Depends on each individual situation I guess.
It’s a point I have made before, in another arena.
*smiles coyly*
It can be extended to look at recent world changing phenomena – such as 9/11. “What caused this?” is one reaction. “What were the causes and the circumstances that led to this?”
These questions typify one reaction to those catastrophic events.
The other reaction, with which we are familiar, says: “To Hell with those questions – lets HIT those bastards.”
The latter reaction is the more “modern” reaction to violence – and it has consequences, with which we still live. However else this reaction may be described, it cannot be said to be ameliorative.
Mick Hall: “The matter I mentioned is not an old chestnut, it is just you do not wish to go there.”
Sure I will — hell, you should know me better than that. hell, we’ve already danced this dance once.
The death-count for the two atomic bombs paled in comparison to the deaths that would have arisen from the invasion. Operation Olympic would have had a million Allied casualties and 10 million Japanese and that was only for the main island. Tactics involved included nerve-gassing the areas selected for beach-heads by the Allies and human wave assaults by Japanese militia armed with little more than bamboo spears and household implements.
None of this accounts for the millions of Japanese soldiers still under arms in Manchuria or on the other islands that make up the nation of Japan. The main alternates — naval blockade, conventional bombing, etc., all would have inflicted more death and misery than the bombs. Throw in the two locations status — Nagasaki as a military port and Hiroshima as a production center in the decentralized Japanese production network, made them legitimate targets of war. As such, the bombings were moral, insofar as they were perceived as a necessary evil.
No moral supremecy can be claimed by the Japanese, insofar as their use of biological warfare in China and elsewhere, including plans for a plague bombing of the West Coast. and their own pursuit of atomic weapons.
In other words, your outrage is almost entirely manufactured and is based upon faulty logic and misplaced emotionalism.
Garibaldy: “I assume you mean the lines between legitimate and illegitimate use of violence. Depends on each individual situation I guess. ”
*snort*
No
Che, with 300+ extrajudicial killings, “for the good of the state,” you deem acceptable.
Pol Pot, with 3 million extrajudicial killings “for the good of the state,” you generously concede, is too many.
Where do you place the breaking point?
Me: “”A friend went to Cuba recently: Female doctors there have to go on the game (prostitution) to make enough to keep going. I’d go abroad too in that situation.â€
Mick Hall: “How gullible are you mate, sure it was not a friend of a friend please. Show some respect towards Cuban women, Or does a sexist bastard like you believe the only things women can think of to make ends meet it to sell their bodies. ”
I have no reason not to believe my friend, who at least had been there. Feel free to retreat to personal insults if it makes avoiding the truth easier for you. My friend also mentioned the 3 currencies – the local one, the tourist one, and the almighty dollar. It sounds like a fscinating place to visit, but it must be awful to have to live there (unless a member of Fidel’s monarchy, of course)
Oh Mick – you can do a quick online search if it helps. Funny how fast I could back up my friends story:
“In 1998, Cuba’s GDP was a mere $1,560. Because of Cuba’s low GDP, Cuban prostitution “is characterized by women in professional and vocational careers who are unable to meet basic living costs from their local current salary,” according to the United Nations.” Source: http://www.american.edu/TED/cubatour.htm
DC,
That looks a lot like legitimate and illegitimate use of violence to me. But even if you don’t want to call it that, my answer remains the same. It depends on the circumstances. And if I recall correctly I saw documentary footage of BBC 4 of revolutionary courts. So not sure if that’s what you mean by extrajudicial or not.
And my point is 300+ extrajudicial deaths was judged as acceptable at the time, and not just by Cuban or other revolutionaries. Certainly nowhere close to achieving the status as a butcher.
DK
Apologies if you felt I insulted you, but think about what you wrote. what you did was make a dreadful generalization about women who work in the cuban medical profession. Whether Cuba is a paradise or hell on earth is another argument, all I am saying is it is wrong to make sweeping generalizations about people.
Now In all probability there has been a woman from every profession who has gone on to become a sex worker, but that does not mean that this is the trade that all of the female members of that profession would turn to if money got short.
Perhaps we would do better to look at the sex tourist industry than blanket condemn a section of cuban society who have in general got a good reputation.[medical workers not sex workers as I have no knowledge of them ;}
For the fact is almost all third world nations who have sea and sun are becoming caught up on this wretched sex tourism. It matters not a jot whether they have left or right wing government. It is as if all the perverts and lechers fill there pockets full of coin and go to these countries.
Still that is capitalism I suppose every thing is for sale, even the bodies of children and young people.
–Still that is capitalism I suppose every thing is for sale, even the bodies of children and young people.–
Oh, no good sir. What is spoken of here is a side effect of a socialist system that fails do create any wealth. Do not blame this on capitalism.
Capitalism makes wealth creation possible, and if some slob from Toronto or Munchen uses it to buy a prostitute on the Malecon, don’t bust Adam Smith’s chops about that. Blame human nature, blame the John, blame your boy Marx.
I doubt you’d see American or German or Japanese “professionals” work as prostitutes (sorry, I don’t use the euphemism “sex worker”) because those are countries that create wealth and which can pay teachers and nurses etc some kind of a salary.
But in a state-controlled economy like Cuba if a nurse who is a single mother cannot live on a salary paid in bullshit Cuban pesos, jiniterismo may be quite literally the only means of gaining additional income. She won’t be allowed to open a private store or restaurant even if she had the seed money to start one–they’re effectively banned — and she can’t get a second job with a private employer — as there are very few private jobs, and what few there are are reserved for the politically reliable.
Assuming the medical worker’s salary was inadequate–what legal option would exist to supplement that income?
And I don’t doubt that this phenomenon does indeed exist there.
Garibaldy
*Chile under Pincohet remained a brutal regime in ways that are not, and never have been, true of Cuba, right to the end.*
That is terminological inexactitude of the highest order, or to put it plainer; bollocks on stilts.
After the initial overthrow and killing was over Chile was no worse or no better than other dictatorships, not a pleasant place to oppose the government but largely peaceful and prosperous. Pinochet siezed power in 1973, he oversaw a remarkable economic recovery and after twenty years handed over power peacefully leaving a free, prosperous, democratic society with a free press and the rule of law.
Contrast this with Castro’s siezure of power in the 1950′s he too initiated a purge of the former rulers – but never stopped. Today a half a century later Cuba is an economic basket case of a police state without democracy, a free press, independent judiciary or freedom of expression or private property, he has never even considered handing over power to a freely elected government instead installing his brother – his brother for fuck’s sake, a socialist who forbids the inheritance of private property simply hands his brother the presidency! Millions of innocent civilians have been forced to flee his hellhole in the most horrific circumstances (funny how the only asylum seekers the Left feels comfortable vilifying are Cuban ones) and yet you still maintain Castro is a more benign ruler than Pinochet was.
Frankly speaking you’re off your trolley, and unlike Darth I am not being ironic!
Capitalism and democracy are the best systems because they give the most freedom to the individual. I’m not so sure that capitalism is the cure for poorer countries, however. If the entire world was capitalist, then capitalism would fail, since it relies on unequal distribution of wealth to succeed, making it an elitist doctrine– effectively it is colonialism (the extraction of wealth and recourses form other countries) without the foreign territories. The limited nature of nature itself also acts as a limitation to the adoption of full-blown capitalism by the world’s poorer countries. It probably has about a few decades left before some modifications are needed on a global scale. If nothing else, poorer countries using antiquated technology to billow out carbon dioxide into the ozone layer will force the richer countries to stop preaching it to the poorer ones in their usual sanctimonious manner, causing modifications of the system to occur.
And it may be noted that Chile is a prosperous country today. Old Pinochet didn’t do everything wrong.
Organizations arrange individual atrocity. A gang rape is still a rape despite the corporate consensus.
“I think that’s true for individuals, but not necessarily for movements or wars.
Posted by Garibaldy on Oct 11, 2007 @ 11:11 PM”
Murder is murder, for example, the UDA are a coalition of drug dealing, pimps and moral rejects etc.
Their ideology was derived via Cruithin race identity myth-building, pornography & muscle-building magazines moderated with right wing drivel using easy to spell words.
it is not possible to finance them into a civilized or valid construct.