Fisking Che Guevara

Peter Calder in the NZ Herald writes about the outrage from some on the left after he effectively fisked the romantic legend of Che Guevara and Cuba, pointing out that the former became a “Stalinist revolutionary thug who summarily executed dissenters; who founded the forced labour camps that would later hold dissidents, homosexuals and people with Aids; who ached for the Cuban Missile Crisis to escalate into purifying nuclear holocaust; who abandoned the revolution because he thought Castro was a sissy; and who died in Bolivia organising a peasant revolution that failed to enlist the support of so much as a single Bolivian peasant”.

What I find most interesting is the email sent to Calder which expressed surprise that “a journalist with liberal credentials” would write what he wrote. He notes the comment reveals an assumption that runs through his critics