He’s the ultimate symbol of radical chic but was Che Guevara really a homophobic, racist square who personally ordered the jailing and executions of innocent men, women and children?
That’s the view of Humberto Fontova, the author of Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him. Some of those useful idiots apparently live in Durham. As noted yesterday, there’s a celebratory banner in downtown Durham that contains not only Che’s name but that of Ho Chi Minh, another communist with blood on his hands.
Fontova, who spoke in June 2005 at a John Locke Foundation Headliner Luncheon, writes that Che preceded Al Qaeda by decades in a plot to terrorize Manhattan, with the assistance, by the way, of the Black Liberation Army, several members of which are lionized on that banner in downtown Durham.
Twice, Che plotted terrorist attacks against New York City. In November 1962, the FBI cracked a terrorist plot by Cuban agents who targeted Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Grand Central Terminal. They planned to blow up those landmarks with 12 incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT the day after Thanksgiving. Several months before visiting New York in December 1964 and being feted by the toast of the city’s intelligentsia, Che hatched a plan with the Black Liberation Army to blow up the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument. The plotters were infiltrated in 1965 by a sharp-eyed NYPD cadet.
The useful idiocy regarding Che seems to have no age limit. Back when the new Durham School of the Arts first opened, I went by for a visit just to see what it looked like. What greeted me was a huge Andy Warhol-style print of Che on the wall opposite the entrance. Needless to say, I sent my kids to Riverside instead.
