You ever met one of those completely pacifist and peaceful people...

[Type Username Here]

who worship or idolize Che Guevera?

They will talk about how we need to be peaceful, and condemn war, violence, and aggression....

but turn around and post pro-Che pictures on facebook?



Do these people read?

Don't get me wrong, I like many aspects of Che, but he definitely was not a peaceful person. He was as authoritarian as anyone.

 

[The Real]

Most (not all, of course) pacifists in the US tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds and are white. Pacifism comes with a certain price that you don't really have to pay when you're not among the primary targets of state/social violence in society. I don't want to simply dismiss or simplify pacifism, but that's how I see things nowadays among most self-identified pacifists.

I also think Che appeals to middle-class/privileged white people because he took the same path they want to take. He was a privileged white guy/Spaniard who was moved by the plight of poor, mostly-native Central and South Americans and Latino Caribbean people, joined them, and became an icon to them.

 

[zerozero]

Most (not all, of course) pacifists in the US tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds and are white. Pacifism comes with a certain price that you don't really have to pay when you're not among the primary targets of state/social violence in society. I don't want to simply dismiss or simplify pacifism, but that's how I see things nowadays among most self-identified pacifists.

I also think Che appeals to middle-class/privileged white people because he took the same path they want to take. He was a privileged white guy/Spaniard who was moved by the plight of poor, mostly-native Central and South Americans and Latino Caribbean people, joined them, and became an icon to them.

Trotsky used to appeal to me in the same way

He was a commander but also a blazing intellectual

but I've realized just how blood soaked his methods were and that he wasn't all that different from Stalin

this is the contradiction of the 20th century left, a lot of idealist intellectual young people got caught up in it but ended up in the meat grinder of brutality on both sides all across the globe

that's not to say that the status quo was okay or should not have faced resistance, just that there was a lot of darkness and waste

 

[Type Username Here]

Most (not all, of course) pacifists in the US tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds and are white. Pacifism comes with a certain price that you don't really have to pay when you're not among the primary targets of state/social violence in society. I don't want to simply dismiss or simplify pacifism, but that's how I see things nowadays among most self-identified pacifists.

I also think Che appeals to middle-class/privileged white people because he took the same path they want to take. He was a privileged white guy/Spaniard who was moved by the plight of poor, mostly-native Central and South Americans and Latino Caribbean people, joined them, and became an icon to them.

He also murdered people, some just for having a different opinion or being homosexual, committed violence indiscriminately and was extremely racist.

He wasn't the Buddha. Not even close.

 

[daze23]

who worship or idolize Che Guevera?

They will talk about how we need to be peaceful, and condemn war, violence, and aggression....

but turn around and post pro-Che pictures on facebook?

Do these people read?

Don't get me wrong, I like many aspects of Che, but he definitely was not a peaceful person. He was as authoritarian as anyone.

I know what you're saying, but I wouldn't call him "authoritarian"

 

[The Real]

He also murdered people, some just for having a different opinion or being homosexual, committed violence indiscriminately and was extremely racist.

He wasn't the Buddha. Not even close.

Most people idolize revolutionary figures without reading about them.

 

[Type Username Here]

I know what you're saying, but I wouldn't call him "authoritarian"

You wouldn't? Damn.

While I give him credit from opposing the Stalinesque government of the Soviet Union, Cuba's governance style has his fingerprints all over it.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

The reason I could never be a straight-up Marxist is that type of society will always necessitate the system being enforced by the barrel of a gun from an authoritarian government imo. I would like to believe in the stateless society Marx envisioned but I can't see it. Not without some drastic change in the human condition...maybe one artificially engineered like A Brave New World.

 

[Type Username Here]

The reason I could never be a straight-up Marxist is that type of society will always necessitate the system being enforced by the barrel of a gun from an authoritarian government imo. I would like to believe in the stateless society Marx envisioned but I can't see it. Not without some drastic change in the human condition...maybe one artificially engineered like A Brave New World.

Agreed. You have to become the beast to slay the beast type of event.

I like Che, I've read a lot about him, but he fell victim to the very ideas he despised.

 

[TrueEpic08]

The reason I could never be a straight-up Marxist is that type of society will always necessitate the system being enforced by the barrel of a gun from an authoritarian government imo. I would like to believe in the stateless society Marx envisioned but I can't see it. Not without some drastic change in the human condition...maybe one artificially engineered like A Brave New World.

That's the thing about Marxism, the very tenants of it (especially its economic tenants) are rooted in the type of capitalist society that it wants to deconstruct, therefore it will always have some of that ideological residue within it. As much as I study it and find it useful despite that, it's really nothing more than capitalism's mirror in some respects.

Because of this (if it's the mirror of something you're trying to deny, you can't exactly change the society, it's base ideologies and philosophies and its economic methods in THAT radical of a way), you get reductions to the highly bureaucratic and hierarchized methods of something like the Third International and its successors.

If socialism/communism is going to manifest itself, its going to have to do so in a form similar to that theorized by the Situationists, the Autonomists, or Paul Lafargue (who had a very, VERY different interpretation of work than most Marxists). This would require a very radical reconstruction of the very philosophies upon which a society constructs itself.

But maybe that's just my beliefs bleeding in there . All I know is that most Che-deifiers don't exactly think of something like this.

 

[daze23]

The reason I could never be a straight-up Marxist is that type of society will always necessitate the system being enforced by the barrel of a gun from an authoritarian government imo. I would like to believe in the stateless society Marx envisioned but I can't see it. Not without some drastic change in the human condition...maybe one artificially engineered like A Brave New World.

well that's like me saying I prefer to live in a society where we don't need laws because everyone does the 'right' thing. it seems unavoidable that any form of government will be "authoritarian" in some way

 

[Bud Bundy]

who worship or idolize Che Guevera?

They will talk about how we need to be peaceful, and condemn war, violence, and aggression....

but turn around and post pro-Che pictures on facebook?



Do these people read?

Don't get me wrong, I like many aspects of Che, but he definitely was not a peaceful person. He was as authoritarian as anyone.

they don't know what they are talking about.

 

[88m3]

who worship or idolize Che Guevera?

They will talk about how we need to be peaceful, and condemn war, violence, and aggression....

but turn around and post pro-Che pictures on facebook?



Do these people read?

Don't get me wrong, I like many aspects of Che, but he definitely was not a peaceful person. He was as authoritarian as anyone.

All my friends are war criminals, you feel me TUH?