Che Guevara: Spinmeister

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was a media darling in the 1960s because of his media savvy and ability to draw attention to his exploits as a guerrilla and freedom fighter. His image remains popular to this day even if people like a college student wearing a Che t-shirt whom I recently encountered don't have a clue as to who he was.

Now comes Wretchard at the Belmont Club to put Che in perspective. It's not a flattering one:

Che Guevara is a testament to the power of a media symbol. As a purely military force he was negligible. As an organizing force and agitator of Bolivians he was an abject failure. But as an international Marxist symbol and poster-boy Che was eminently successful. . . . Guevara was the prototypical example of the triumph of image over reality. What did it matter if he wrote nothing of lasting ideological value? What did it matter if he was a comparative military failure? He was a surpassing public relations success and that made up for everything else. The power of Che lay not in his M2 carbine, which was shot out of his hands by the Bolivian Rangers. It lay in his beard, beret and his photogenic camera angles. Long before the word "spin" came into common usage Guevara was all spin -- a spin which will outlast the memory of those who defeated and slew him.