Nearly four decades after his death, it’s impossible to avoid the image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara everywhere from T-shirts to cartoons. Liberals consider Che a revolutionary martyr who gave his life to help the poor of Latin America. Time named him one of the one hundred most influential people of the last century. And a major Hollywood movie is about to lionize him to a new generation.
The reality, as we learn from Cuban exile Humberto Fontova, is that Che wasn’t really a gentle soul and a selfless hero. He was a violent Communist who thought nothing of firing a gun into the stomach of a woman six months pregnant whose only crime was that her family opposed him. And he was a hypocrite who lusted after material luxuries while cultivating his image as a man of the people.
Fontova reveals that Che openly talked about his desire to use nuclear weapons against New York City. Such was Che’s bloodthirsty hatred that Fontova considers him the godfather of modern terrorism.
Exposing the Real Che Guevara is based on scores of interviews with survivors of Che’s atrocities as well as the American CIA agent who interrogated Che just hours before the Bolivian government executed him.
Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him is a critique of Che Guevara and those who support him. Travel author Rolf Potts, in a review of the book for World Hum, noted that "taken in selective doses", the book puts "some well-placed holes in Che’s presumed humanism and military competence." However, Potts said that what "is meant to be a polemic against Guevara’s t-shirt-certified mythology" actually ends up showing "how Che’s reputation benefits from the myopic fury and misguided political influence of those who hate him the most." Potts said that the book's "slightly schizophrenic tone" meanders off into subject matter that has little to do with the book’s premise, that the book seems "less an indictment of Guevara than the New York Times or John F. Kennedy. Ultimately, Potts states, the book is "less about Che Guevara than the King Lear-style resentments of the Cuban-Americans who hate him — and the effectiveness of its argument suffers as a result."
Commentator and former Research Director of the Adam Smith Institute Alex Singleton reviewed the book for the Social Affairs Unit. He said that ""Fontova's book aims to challenge the mythology surrounding Guevara. At the very least, it will provide useful factual ammunition for conservatives and libertarians."" Singleton differed with Fontova's view on libertarian opponents of America's Cuban embargo, saying that, "The embargo has been completely ineffective but created an excuse for Cuba's poor economic performance." Nevertheless, Singleton concluded that the book was an important one, having earlier in the review expressed the hope that it would "encourage scholars to reanalyse the conventional wisdom."
Humberto Fontova
Humberto Fontova (1954) is a Cuban-American author, blogger, political commentator, and conservative polemicist. Ardently anti-communist, many of his works attempt to correct the record to what he contends is the unreported and accurate point of view. He 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.
Личен сайт: http://www.hfontova.com/