A Guevarista Rethinks Guevara

I found it interesting to read today something by Mark Rudd, who was a leader in the SDS in the 60s and the violent leftist Weather Underground in the 70s. The speech was made this month at Oregon State University.

Rudd seems to remain on a similar page politically (as far as I can tell), though he appears to have renounced the violent aspects of his strategy (although, existing forms of socialism imply a certain amount of violence, the violence of the state, and he appears to remain committed to that) .

He said (a few quotes from the full paper, Che and Me):

“I was a Guevarista, a member of the cult of Che.  That meant not only putting up multiple posters with Che’s image on the wall in my room during college, but whole-heartedly accepting the theory that a small armed group could spark revolution by actually beginning military action.”

“One thing we hadn’t stopped to notice was that Che, in October, 1967, using precisely the same strategy that we proposed to use, had already been defeated and killed in Bolivia…Blinded by my love and admiration for ‘the Heroic Guerilla,’ as Fidel had dubbed Che, I didn’t want to see that there was a fatal flaw in the theory.  It didn’t work.”

“This is a tough thing to write, since it puts me close to the camp of right-wingers who have always attacked Che as a murderer and a terrorist, but I believe that by the end of his life, after the years of blood and to-the-death struggles of the Cuban revolution, Che had become both homicidal and suicidal.”

“…personally, I’ve long ago opted out of the cult of Che which I joined over forty years ago. It’s impossible for me to look on Che as the great revolutionary hero anymore;”

I find this interesting, because Mark Rudd was not your run-of-the-mill person who looked up to Che. He was trying to bring Che Guevara’s war to the U.S.A., he was an American Guevarista if there ever was one. The Cuban government even invited him over to visit as a delegate while he was with the SDS.

I’m certainly glad Mark Rudd’s vision was not imposed on America in the 1970s. I’m glad the Weather Underground was a failure and never got very far “off the ground” so to speak. Their case is a perfect example of  how out of touch with reality people can get in their own little subcultures.  Gee… Even the Black Panthers, Vietnam leaders, and Cuban leaders voiced major concerns and some of them warned the Weather Underground not to go ahead with this. And in the case of the Weather Underground, getting “out of touch” meant causing chaos, blowing up things, and becoming fugitives.

I’m also glad that Mark Rudd has lost his ‘rose colored’ glasses about Che Guevara. Now, if only he’d forsake socialism and its inherent violence and also stop dreaming that Obama is going to fix things!  If Arlo Guthrie became a Ron Paul fan, who’s to say Mark Rudd couldn’t come around some day and ditch socialism!