Carlos Eire, who lived near the mansion that Che appropriated for himself, has a theory on Che’s Irish Postage Stamp and the New, Improved, Postcolonial White Folk’s Burden
(emphasis added)
In sum, anyone from the affluent world who thinks that the repressive, soul-crushing, collectivist nightmare that calls itself the Cuban Revolution is good for Cubans but not for themselves is implicitly admitting that they are superior to Cubans in some way, be it morally, economically, intellectually, culturally or racially. It makes no difference how the differences are parsed; anyone who says that Che was a virtuous hero or that the repressive Castro regime he served is good for Cubans but not for themselves necessarily implies that Cubans are somehow different and that they are undeserving or incapable of enjoying the same political, social, and economic rights, either because they are in some way inferior or less developed, or because they are construed as simpler, purer, abnormal or uncivilized in some essential way, much like Rousseau’s noble savage. And no one can dispute the fact that most of those who tend to hold such views or who invest capital in Cuba’s tourism industry, or go there as tourists happen to be Europeans and North Americans of European stock who think of themselves as white and of Cubans as “people of colour.” Ironically, then, Rudyard Kipling, the ultimate poster boy of old-style colonialism, turns out to be the intellectual and spiritual forebear of today’s leftist ideologues, and of anyone who defends the so-called accomplishments of Che, and the so-called Cuban Revolution. It may come as a surprise and a great shock to anyone who venerates Che to hear that they are similar in outlook and attitude to Rudyard Kipling, a dead white male who embodies so much political incorrectness. But the obscene, undeniable truth is that there is virtually no difference between anyone alive today who says that Fidel and Che did great things for Cubans and anyone in days of yore who argued that European imperialism was a blessing to all those benighted “new-caught, sullen peoples,” that Kipling called “half-devil and half-child.”
The bigotry and racism of these postcolonial neocolonialists may not lead them to conquer non-white folk, but it does cause them to think that there are still “sullen peoples” who are actually happier when subjected to all sorts of repression at the hands of their own “enlightened” or “visionary” despots.
Read the whole thing.
I wonder what the Venn diagram would look like if you join the Che worshippers, the people who think Mao’s revolution made women’s lives much better, and those believing on the superiority of communist women’s orgasms.
