Throughout my high school and college career, I have been bombarded with posters, T-shirts, stickers, buttons, various accessories and, most shockingly, tattoos sporting the mug of mass murdering radical revolutionary Che Guevara. Every time I see this nonsense, I just want to yell “Do you know who that is? Do you know what he did? Do you know his true political views and motivations?” So, for the sake of civility, I took to the keys of my laptop  to materialize my thoughts. It is much more polite and far less embarrassing than shouting at strangers

The myth of Che Guevara is of a selfless, handsome and charismatic Argentine who helped Fidel Castro’s guerrillas liberate Cuba from Fulgencio Batista’s military dictatorship in 1959. Afterwards, he became a global revolutionary icon inspiring the oppressed men and women to rise up, even personally leading rebel warriors in the Congo. After his escapades in the Congo, he moved on to Bolivia. It is there he was executed by firing squad, carried out by Bolivian soldiers in 1967. Sometimes Guevara is shown as a half-naked corpse riddled with bullet holes nailed to a cross, similarly to depictions of Jesus Christ. For the last forty years, Guevara has been seen as a symbol of equality, righteous revolt, selfless humanitarianism and the pursuit of social justice. Truthfully, he was ego maniac extremist, whose “liberations” were meant to satisfy his own insatiable ego.

The way I see it, Guevara was a thrill seeker looking for a place in history as a liberator of the oppressed. Guevara’s tool of  “liberation” was the Stalinism ideology, named for Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who murdered over 20 million of his own people.  Stalinism is a form of communism that has often been described as totalitarian and tyrannical. It has been used to describe regimes that destroy dissent through violence, imprisonment, and the killing of civilians.

As one of Castro’s top lieutenants, Guevara helped steer Cuba’s revolutionary regime in a radically repressive direction. Soon after overthrowing Batista, Guevara organized the executions of hundreds of Batista officials without any fair trials. He thought nothing of summarily executing his fellow guerrillas suspected of disloyalty and even shot one himself. I guess you could say Guevara’s idea of due process was “if in doubt, shoot it.” While in Cuba he organized the arrests and executions of many teachers, including college professors, and intellectuals, branding them threats to society. In reality, they were merely threats to his ego.

Many view him as this “freedom and equality for all” activist. In truth, Guevara was a purist political fanatic who saw everything in black and white. Therefore he opposed freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, protest, free elections or any other rights not completely consistent with modern day North Korean-style communism. Guevara also sought to control the interests of the people, as well as their lifestyles.  How many rock music-loving teens sporting Guevara T-shirts today know their hero supported Cuba’s 1960s repression of Rock n’ Roll? How many homosexual fans know he had gays and lesbians jailed? Probably none.

Adding to the ludicrous of his celebrity is the fact that he was an utter failure at everything he did. Before he became a “revolutionary” Guevara tried his hand in the medical profession. He never had a successful practice and some say that he killed more patients than he saved. When he was put in charge of Cuba’s economy under the new Castro regime, he completely ran it into the dirt. Even the so-called revolutions that he organized in Argentina, Africa and Bolivia resulted in catastrophic failure and the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands, of naive pawns that he had enthralled.

Guevara’s private life was as much as a sham/failure as his global crusades to liberate the little man. Though he preached sexual purity, he was a rampant adulterer who abandoned at least two spouses and several children, many of them illegitimate. It seems to me that this champion of the people fits the profile of a foolish teenager who would rather run from his responsibilities than man up and fulfill them.

So why do so many educated, intellectual Americans still admire this lowlife? Are they simply ignorant of his detestable record of failure and single mindedness and instead drawn to the image of the charming young rebel? Or are these American Guevaraistas (yes, that is a word) truly dangerous radicals who seek to emulate their narcissistic icon and destroy our free, democratic capitalist society? Ask that guy wearing the Che T-shirt.