Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him
✍ Scribed by Fontova, Humberto
- Book ID
- 106904253
- Publisher
- Sentinel HC
- Year
- 2008
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 180 KB
- Category
- Fiction
- ISBN-13
- 9781595230270
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
From Publishers Weekly
Fontova gets right to the work of debunking familiar notions of Argentinan revolutionary Ernesto ''Che'' Guevera; by the end of the preface, he's pinned 14,000 executions on Guevera and credited positive portrayals to the public relations work of Castro and the laziness of biographers. The critical attack continues throughout, combining the testimonies of former revolutionaries and Cuban refugees to assemble a damning portrait of a man lauded by everyone from Jean-Paul Sartre to Jon Lee Anderson. According to Fontova, the real Che was ''a revolutionary Ringo Starr'' who ''fell in with the right bunch and rode their coattails to world fame.'' Presenting a failed physician, an inept guerrilla and a hapless sycophant, Fontova adds insult to injury by claiming Che was ''deathly afraid to drive a motorcycle.'' Fontova's charged language keeps things interesting, if occasionally dubious; midway through the book, after asserting that Che enjoyed killing dogs, Fontova concedes that, ''You might put down your book here and think, this has to be propaganda.'' Though propaganda probably colors any consideration of this controversial figure, Fontova makes a convincing case that, in the words of one former political prisoner, ''There was something seriously wrong with Che Guevera.''
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Product Description
A critical biography of the iconic communist revolutionary, and an expose of the liberals who lionize him.
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.