And I defy you to tell me differently.
A group of Venezuelans shattered a glass monument to Cuban hero Che Guevara built by the government of leftist President Hugo Chavez, an area mayor told state television on Friday.
Jesus Espinoza, a municipal mayor in the mountain state of Merida, said “on Wednesday night (a group) from outside of the municipality inconsiderately destroyed the monument to Che Guevara.”
Local media reported that a group identifying itself as the Patriotic Command of the Plateau took responsibility for destroying the 8-foot-(2.4 meters-) tall glass monument inscribed with a message to honor the Argentine-born icon of Cuba’s 1959 revolution.
“We do not want a monument to Che, he is not an example for our children,” the group said in a note left at the scene of the monument shattered by six gunshots, according to the El Universal newspaper.
Oh, of course, Che is not an example for THEIR children; that would be Adolf Hitler. Che, on the other hand, fought against fascism, which is something these bogus “patriots” would be only too happy to impose–by brownshirt measures, as we can see. Antifascism–such a dreadful example! Better to set the ineffably noble example of thuggery, eh?
I wonder who this “Patriotic Command” will ultimately be unmasked as being, and who their financiers and weapons suppliers are. My bet is that the backers and commanders will turn out to be big cheeses in the opposition, and the so-called “command” will be just small-time mercenary hoodlums on the make (or is that the take?)
The dangerous thing is that this band of brigands might just end up aping their idols, the German Freikorps, and turning into a real brownshirt army at the disposal of powerful capitalist interests (and the would-be political leaders they endorse). Gotta love how the Reuters article fails to mention the rather stark similarities they’ve got going on there.
I love, too, how the Reuters article closes with a weak attempt to qualify this act as somehow representative of a grand democratic trend: “But polls show close to 40 percent of the population opposes [Chavez’s] self-styled socialist revolution.” Nice backhanded way of saying that more than 60%–a landslide, in other words–is in favor of Chavez, and does not support the self-styled “Patriotic Command” of the opposition! Way to tip your hand in favor of the brownshirts, Reuters!
