“This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”
--Che Guevara
Red Planet Cartoons starts a timely discussion on the appearance of Che Guevara posters among Barack Obama's supporters. It's a humdinger, so we'll join in, too.
RPC kicks off the fun with the image above: Che Means Change
To paraphrase David Bowie: "Che-che-che-changes, turn and face the strain."
We weren't the only ones to notice the striking similarities between the pop art Obama campaign posters and the 1960s Che ones.
Rebels and activists the world over still take inspiration from Guevara. But the image has lost something; Che’s face on a poster in 1968 isn’t quite the same thing as it is on a mousepad 40 years later. Perhaps it is precisely that loss — the shedding of Che’s radicalism and ideological rigor — that renders him so supremely marketable today. Things are not going well these days. Kids don’t want revolution so much as, um, something different.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that L.A. artist Shepard Fairey, in his design for a Sen. Barack Obama poster, looked to Korda’s Che. Fairey’s Obama is not wearing a beret, and he’s looking left instead of right, but his face tilts at the same angle as Che’s. His jaw is set with the same willfulness and strength, and he too is gazing recognizably upward into the future (hasta la victoria siempre . . . ). Obama’s eyes, though, are filled not with righteous anger but with vague and lofty hope.
--LA Times:Capitalizing on Che Guevara's Image
The LA Times goes on to say that the Che posters are all about young kids looking for something "different". Then how to explain the following photo of Lorrain County (OH) Common Pleas Court Judge James Burge?
No offense, but Burge's no kid. Maybe the LAT could explain what kind of "different" Judge Burge is looking for?
How many kids work at the Houston Obama campaign office? Obviously the women in the photos aren't kids. As Little Green Footballs observed:
"Barack Obama won’t wear an American flag on his lapel, but on the wall of his Houston campaign office: a Cuban flag with a picture of Communist mass murderer Che Guevara."
--LGF: Che Guevara Flags in Obama's Houston Office
[Guevara] was a psychopath with a central role in Cuba’s 1961 mass executions in the “year of the wall.” Guevara signed at least 600 death warrants and executed children against firing squad walls; he was responsible for at least 2,000 deaths.
After that, the Argentine-born communist organized Cuba’s gulag. His violence was so over the top it scared even Castro, who eventually sent him away to fight mercenary wars in Africa.
--Investors Business Daily: Targeting Che
Red Planet winds it all up with its normal assortment of info-filled links for more reading.
Che and Obama?
It's not such a stretch to see similarities. Obama's not killed anyone, but his platform could well have the ghost of Che nodding approvingly.
Nationalizing health care, confiscatory taxing of the well-off, preaching the evils of large corporations--Che would likely have agreed heartily with them all.
Maybe that's why his pictures are so prominent these days among the supporters of Barack Obama--and just not among the kids.
by Mondoreb
images:
* Red Planet Cartoons
sources:
* Che Means Change
* Obama=Che Guevara
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