Che Guevara: Homophobic Racist? Feat. Steven Crowder & PragerU | BadEmpanada

che guevara one of the absolute worst people in history a truly terrible man who committed so many unspeakable acts and held so many terrible views of the long long list of crimes commonly attributed to che lately there's been a particular focus on his purported homophobia and racism especially the homophobia part in conservative in liberal circles it's often said that Che Guevara was very very vocal about his homophobic views and that he even put gay people into camps there's plenty of these articles around talking about this dark side of Che Guevara it's also very recently been covered right here on YouTube he is conservative YouTube comedian Stephen Crowder saying this sort of stuff in a recent video of his Che Guevara anti-gay behavior ideology hurting them up putting them in concentration camps saying that they were absolutely useless by the way he was also racist didn't like black people thought they were lazy and another one by Prager University where they asked random college kids on campus if they knew about these reported facts on Che Guevara Che Guevara who you know put a lot of homosexuals in prison in Cuba they seemed very assured in these statements don't they so they must be basing them off some pretty damn solid evidence let's take a look at it so steven crowder and well whoever this guy in the preggers TV do is make a lot of claims among them is this one from Crowder which I just wanted to highlight first of course they know that you know Che Guevara was basically an evil dictator so Che Guevara a dictator after the Cuban Revolution deposed Batista Che Guevara was at times the Ministry of Economy the Minister of Industries and the head of the central bank but he was never the head of state nor anything close to it now he probably could have held some degree of power in Cuban politics for a very long time if he had wanted to but by all accounts he just wasn't very interested in that after only five years as a politician Che Guevara quit his government posts and left Cuba that's not really what someone who wants to be an all-powerful dictator would do you could however make the argument that Fidel Castro was a dictator I personally would argue there to be more complicated than that but I can understand the logic behind it but Che Guevara no calling him a dictator is utterly nonsensical and this is an excellent example of a very common phenomenon people who were against the Cuban Revolution and who don't really know much about it beyond hearsay project every negative thing they believe about it onto Che Guevara himself the dictator that they're thinking of is Fidel Castro but for them che who was not even Cuban is some sort of weird amalgamation of the Cuban state Fidel Castro and dozens of other people and so he's personally responsible for every single negative thing that they'd ever heard about Cuba and this is specifically relevant to what Prager you Crowder and all the other people who are parroting this stuff are saying they're equated some of the worst actions and statements of Fidel Castro and his government specifically with Che Guevara so firstly let's address the allegation that Che Guevara was homophobic and that he purportedly threw gay people into camps and oppressed them for their sexuality something a lot of people don't know is that Che Guevara ironically it was very very anti-gay I mean rapidly anti-homosexual so the article that crowdy cites here from Daily Beast is about Fidel Castro not Che Guevara so right away we have that exact conflation it mentions Guevara twice first to say that he frequently called gay people are common slur roughly analogous to the f-word which by the way Crowder uses himself in this very video I should I should remind who's practicing Democratic trip okay well yes Stephen I'm sure you're genuinely concerned with homophobia mmm so anyway the article doesn't actually provide a source for this claim so I went and looked through the extensive writings of Che Guevara where I found a total of zero users of the word in question isn't it kind of way that someone who frequently used that slur doesn't seem to have actually made any verifiable use of it it's almost like they just made it up so they could have an excuse if Oh Jake of re in there as well and funnily enough if you google Che Guevara and the slur in question the only results are actually from people calling Che Guevara said slur kind of tells us a little bit about what these people are actually like when they're not just pretending to be against homophobia to score some points and the other part of the article that mentions che is about the deportation of the American poet Allen Ginsberg from Cuba so what did Che Guevara have to do with this well probably nothing because Che Guevara was not actually in Cuba when Ginsberg was according to the diaries of Ginsberg he was there in January and February of 1965 che Guevara left Cuba for the USSR on November 4th the previous year and then went on a long diplomatic tour of Europe and Africa he didn't return to Cuba until March 14th and upon returning che immediately retreated from public life and went into hiding so he clearly had no involvement in this it wasn't some ridiculous thing where Ginsberg offended Che like the article wants us to believe it was in fact by that point Che Guevara had influencing Cuba's domestic affairs he'd given up most of his government duties for a combination of reasons firstly che was outspoken in his opposition to Soviet involvement in Cuban affairs which was very inconvenient for Fidel Castro who wanted to develop closer ties with the USSR and to chain ever really wanted to be a politician anyway rather he wanted to leave and try to start more revolutions elsewhere in April 1965 just one month after che returned to Cuba he went to the Congo about a hundred Cuban soldiers who joined up with the local Congolese forces to transfer evolution there so this brings us to the common claim at Che rounded up gay people and put them into camps and they they Herald someone like Che Guevara as a political hero as a revolutionary when really he imprisoned homosexuals the camps in question were called goo maps or military units state production these camps were run from 1965 to 1969 as an alternative to conscription for people who didn't want to or want allowed to join the Armed Forces like in most countries at the time openly gay people were not allowed to serve in the military so rather than being conscripted they were instead forced to work in these camps where they were subject to frequent abuse now obviously this is really bad indefensible and I'm not going to defend it but it is important to put it within historical context and there's no better nation to compare it to you than the USA since well most crew citizens of Cuba come from the USA and the USA in Cuba have a very long standing well let's call it a rivalry gay people also couldn't openly serve in the US military until 2011 and the USA was also actively conscripted people into the Armed Forces during this same period since the draft for the Vietnam War began in 1964 and people who refused the draft including conscientious objectors were sentenced to prison for it most of them for five years now none of this makes what happened in Cuba okay I'm not deflecting here by saying well the USA was also bad haha it's still absolutely awful that they did this not just for gay people but also to everyone else all that I'm highlighting is that in historical context this was unfortunately not out of the ordinary for the time pretty much every country in the world committed terrible and justices in their past and kuba is no exception remember while this was ongoing so was the u.s. civil rights movement and the Stonewall uprising a watershed moment against the oppression of LGBT people in the USA only happened in 1969 and guess what gay sex was decriminalized in Cuba in 1979 meanwhile it's still technically illegal in 13 US states but people talk about these abuses in Cuba as if there was something especially unique something that other countries were above the sad fact is that's simply rubbish both societal and systemic homophobia was incredibly common all around the world at a time and the clear double standard is being applied specifically to Cuba in 1969 the EMF system was closed rumor was that the higher-ups in the government hadn't known about the extent of the abuses taking place there and took action as soon as they were informed now that could just be a lie and regardless that doesn't just magically absolve them of responsibility they still set the system up and they were the ones who allowed it to continue for four years and Fidel Castro himself also agreed with that in 2010 he took full responsibility saying if someone is responsible for the abuse of gay people after the Cuban Revolution it's me no deflection no denial a simple admittance of guilts you might hate Fidel Castro you might think he was a dictator but there's not many homophobic people from that era who would be so willing to admit that they were wrong and the actions were repulsive so you might be wondering hey isn't this video about Che Guevara none of that has anything to do with him a student my friend none of it has anything to do with him after che left Cuba for the Congo in April 1965 he never returned to public life in any capacity and never again held a position in the Cuban government and well in 1967 he kind of died in Bolivia during another attempt to spur a revolution unless you think that che was calling the shots while fighting in the jungle we were smelly little band of guerrillas maybe I'm like a telephone or something I don't know then there's simply no way that he was involved in the new map system as the idea was first proposed in November of 1965 when he was long gone Che Guevara was involved in the establishment of one campbellot called Wanaka Bevis nailed it but that camp had nothing to do with the repression of gay people or the repression of any specific group of people really John Lee Anderson who wrote one of the most well-regarded biographies on Che Guevara described it as such if someone had practiced nepotism intentionally covered up a mistake or had an affair or a comrades wife he was called before che who gave offenders an opportunity to accept that punishment a steam and quanta Cohibas or else to the ministry if they did their time and show that they had learned the error of their ways they could return with no black mark on their record if they refused they were out of a job now is that a pretty extreme form of workplace it's a plan absolutely I think it's utterly ridiculous and clearly abusive but hey as conservatives would say if you don't like it just get another job still this isn't throwing gay people nor anyone into camps giving people who would otherwise have been fired the option to instead accept this punishment in exchange for keeping their job he's a far far cry from rounding gay people up and putting him into camps this pretty much has nothing to do with that at all really I just wanted to mention it to make sure that no one can be all hey hey buddy so what about the other camp so che clearly had nothing to do of the oppression of gay people in Cuba but was he personally homophobic there's one single homophobic quote attributed to Che in the Articles that I mentioned earlier and it's repeated ad nauseam they say that che called gay people sexual perverts or Burt of Aikido sexuales as it would be in the original Spanish it can be found basically all over the Internet it's in this daily wire article about the prior you video so mater as well as this pop sited 2017 Huff Post op-ed which was by the way written by an employee of the right-wing libertarian think-tank Cato Institute if you click the source in the article itself it takes you to a blog post by one Nicolas Marquez who is Nicolas Marquez let's check his Wikipedia to find out Nicolas Marquez is an extreme right-wing ultra conservative Catholic fundamentalist free-market capitalist who describes himself as alright and shockingly he appears to himself be well known for open and proud homophobia now that's what I call an honest reliable source I went one further than the rider of the Huff Post article and when found the original source of this quote rather than you know leaking to an outright blog like the author did I mean I guess it makes sense that she couldn't find the original source it's only from the most popular fing Che Guevara ever wrote the motorcycle diaries which were written in 1952 here's the full version of the quote rather than just cutting it down to two words he was an introvert and probably gay too the poor man was drunk and desperate because they hadn't invited him to the party he began to yell and insult people until some of them beat him up and gave him a black eye this episode bothered us because apart from him being a sexual pervert and a bore we liked him so yeah definitely homophobic but guess what it's also the only homophobic feeling che guevara ever wrote seriously I challenge you to try and find something else from an actual primary source that he wrote himself I spent hours looking and there's simply nothing and that's precisely why everyone just takes this quote and repeats it and repeats and repeats it they don't have a single other example considering that steven crowder said this about che we're very anti-gay oh and rapidly anti-homosexual for a guy who meticulously kept Diaries and wrote plenty about his thoughts you'd think he maybe might have written about these very rapidly anti-gay forts more than just one time fifteen years before his death they clearly have nothing else to support the completely false narrative they've constructed this is a really uniquely devious sort of lie the actions of the Cuban state and the homophobic statements of Fidel Castro emerged with one singular quote from Jay taken far far from its original context to try and paint him as some sort of incredible homophobe who oppressed gay people the people spraying this lie aren't doing it because they care about homophobia for them it's nothing more than a mo to use against LGBT people who don't hate Che Guevara an easy gotcha ha ha look at you idiots that guy have gotten your shirt he was actually homophobic ha ha gotcha yeah I mean so we're blatantly lying to you and we're also really really homophobic ourselves rebuttal time you bearded fat sure so this is really a little more than I was projecting our own homophobia onto a historical figure who we demonstrated we know absolutely nothing about gotcha Wow huge win in the marketplace of ideas so was Che homophobic beyond that one passage that he wrote as a 24 year old possibly I mean it wouldn't be surprising since I think most straight men of this time are probably homophobic but nowhere near enough evidence exists for us to make a judgement like that all that we could do is speculate like we would for pretty much any historical figure who never wrote extensively about their opinion on something for that matter I've seen absolutely no evidence that Che Guevara wasn't one of those terrible evil people who prefer their method dousset but hey I guess innocent until proven guilty and all that okay folks so let's move on to part two of the title was Che Guevara a racist as our good friend steven crowder says here by the way he was also racist didn't like black people thought they were lazy so we're apparently meant to believe that this guy genuinely cares about racism now yeah anyway let's take a look at some of the evidence provided by those who make that claim since Crowder as usual provides no evidence himself I went googling and boy let me tell you there's really no shortage of op-eds that always cycle the exact same quotes so to stay on theme I'm gonna pick another article from The Huffington Post this time it's not a writer from the Cato Institute no no no it's a writer from the Heritage Foundation very different The Huffington Post really has a diverse array of right wing think-tanks writing about Che Guevara I've got to hand it to him this article conveniently for us references the to check words that are by far the most commonly cited examples of his purported racism the first example provided is pretty damning che purportedly said we're going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution by which I mean nothing so where's this quote actually from the article just says it's from 1959 but provides no source how curious interestingly almost none of the many spanish-language sources that call che racist make reference to this quote in fact the Spanish translation doesn't even have a full page of Google results if who were real it would logically be reference more in its original Spanish or at least more than like five times but it's not because the original source of this quote is not Che Guevara rather it's from a 2007 blog post from some guy named Frank Warner a self-described liberal for liberation it seems that Frank here invented the quote himself or perhaps he heard it from someone else who did either way no primary source exists of Che Guevara ever saying such a thing from there it seems have been picked up and sped around by some other blogs and posted on some discussion forums until it made its very first appearance five years later in a more official publication that was in 2012 in this exact Huff Post article then it made its way into the conservative commentary sphere with the height of its career being a citation by US congressman Marco Rubio so a good job there Frank corner you fooled a major American politician and hey if my own research isn't good enough for you the fact-checking website political Act also looked into this quote and couldn't find any original source so a big congratulations to The Huffington Post there on being two for two on printing straight-up fake news the other quote in that Huff Post article is by far the most cited evidence of Che Guevara is purported racism and I'd say much lack of the claims that Jay was some sort of rabid homophobe the fact that they keep printing one quote over and over again kind of shows that they don't really have much more to go off here it is in its full context also from the book The Motorcycle Diaries this is a quote that I am reading me - not my own words please don't take this out of context the black people the same magnificent specimen of the African race that have maintained a racial purity by not paving enough have seen it a main trespassed by a new kind of slave the Portuguese and these two old races has tiled a hard everyday life by fighting each other for every little thing contempt and poverty unites them but they are completely separated in the way that they face it indolent and dreamy black people spend their money on frivolous things whereas the European people have a tradition of working hard that follows them to this corner of the Americas and helps them progress regardless of their own individual goals is that passage racist absolutely no question but there's a whole lot more context here that's being left out at the time Jay was a 24 year old on his first real trip outside of Argentina and he was writing a daily diary about just everything that he was seeing the views that he expressed here were definitely not out of the ordinary for a young sheltered upper-class Argentine man at least I'm it's extremely unlikely that chainu many black people before his trip do to his country of origin and also his socioeconomic background and it definitely seems like he held many of the preconceived racist ideas that you'd expect of such a guy I mean I don't need to mention again that we're talking about the Jim Crow era here do I so how long was Che Guevara races for after that then well apparently very long at all for the final leg of that trip chase spend 30 days in Miami his first time ever in the US a biographer John Lee Anderson notes that upon returning home to Buenos Aires just weeks later he was complaining to his friends about the racism that he witness against black people in the USA clearly he changed his tune pretty fast and that's in line with the declaration that he made at the end of the motorcycle Diaries where this quote is from the person who wrote these words died upon landing once more in Argentina I am NOT me at least I'm not who I was before this aimless wandering around our Great America has changed me more than I thought so then after che declared himself a change man how did his use and race evolve well quite a lot right after the Cuban Revolution che was the primary figure in the Cuban government advocating for the integration of Cuban schools in 1959 the first year of the revolution and five years before universities in the USA were finally forced to integrate he gave a speech at the Central University of Las Villas so what must I say about the university's fundamental duty its article number one in this new Cuba what I must say is that the university should color itself black and color itself mulatto and not just as regards to students but also professors two years later at a diplomatic meeting in Otto gray chase Booker against racism once again among our first task was the abolition of racial discrimination which existed in our country in a somewhat subtle form but it existed the beaches of our island were not for blacks or the poor to swim at because they belong to some private club visited by tourists he did not like the scream of black people our hotels Havana's great hotels which were built by foreign companies did not allow black people as guests because tourists from other countries did not like it that is the way our country was he also spoke out against racism in the USA in that same speech democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy with discrimination against blacks and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan or with persecution that deprived the world for years of the marvelous voice of Paul Robeson Robeson was a black American musician he was blacklisted and the McCarthyism for his pro-civil rights opinions and he he is speaking out against apartheid and white supremacy in South Africa in 1964 at the UN this time narrated by the man himself una vez mas la vamos travaux par alert are al mundo sobre lo que esto corriendo en su de Africa la brutal political report ed say applicant a los ojos de la nación a del mundo de Africa 7 Avila God owes a support arcane sa continent a toda via officially say la stupid dinner rasa sobre otra que se hace Cena in Kuna meant a el nombre de Superior adapter hacia la nación a who neither nor another but in Peru and just for good measure one more quote from that same day those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the color of their skin those who let the murderers of blacks remain free protecting them and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand a legitimate rights as free men how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom take a guess what country he was referring to so we have one authentic racist quote from che when he was a young sheltered rich kid against a plethora of very different and he races quotes and actions from later on in his life which deserves more way personally I'll go the latter but well it's up to you I want to address one more thing on the question of chased racism it's frequently assumed that Che Guevara said racist things about his allies that he fought with in the Congo including in my own youtube comments on my previous video about Che Guevara which asked the question about whether he was a murderer you can watch that next if you like this is also a huge reach it's true that Che Guevara didn't have a high opinion of many of the Congolese people that he fought with but he never implied that it had anything to do with that race I'll illustrate this with another quote that US congressman Marco Rubio provided when asked for evidence about Che Guevara supported racism since this was the best example that a US congressman could muster I think it's fair to say that this is probably the worst thing that che said about the congolese given the prevailing lack of discipline it would have been impossible to use Congolese machine gunners to defend the base from air attack they did not know how to handle their weapons and they did not want to learn so che said that the Congolese soldiers who he fought with lack discipline and didn't know how to use machine guns properly there is nothing there about their race at all for more context the Cuban troops that che brought with him to the Congo were almost all black out of a contingent of about 110 around 100 Afro Cubans yet che had no negative remarks about them only his Congolese comrades clearly his problem was with that performance as fighters not with the color of their skin an effete still enough for you chase translator Freddie Linga who accompanied him pretty much everywhere while he was in the Congo said of che that he showed the same respect to black people as he did to whites so in conclusion Che Guevara was not Fidel Castro nor was he the Cuban state itself many of his most vocal critics rely on using him as some sort of composite character who is to be personally blamed for every little thing that was ever done or said in Cuba rather than you know looking at the verifiable facts about the man himself if he was homophobic beyond the one verifiable homophobic King that he ever wrote we have no way of knowing but he was certainly not a rabid homophobe and he had nothing to do with putting gay people in Coober into camps and yes he was racist up until he was about 24 years old from then on he was pretty much the exact opposite of erases from everything that we have to go on about him people like Steven Crowder and organizations like Prager you the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation don't give a single crap about wherever Che Guevara was actually homophobic or racist especially considering how open some of them are with their own homophobia they're just you need to own the libs by taking a few quotes out of context and making no real effort to ascertain the facts and honestly I doubt then even know how to do proper research even if they wanted to do it I mean somehow the only source that steven crowder managed to find about Che Guevara was actually about Fidel Castro Crowder the you know I had to do it to him pray you kid and others like them possess no critical thinking skills whatsoever and their commentary is about on the same level as the boomer Facebook means that my momma ambitionally believes what a world we live in that so many people get sucked in by this out of garbage all right guys we just finished up at UCSD and we found that some students like Che Guevara some students didn't but most students had no idea who he was and so once I actually educated them and told them about it and give them information they were shocked to know that there was a cafe on campus called the che cafe yeah dude thanks for informing everyone your little [ __ ] that's you know the video folks thanks for watching if you like this video like share subscribe and all that sort of stuff if you really like my work and you've got the cash to spare please consider supporting me on patreon or sending me a one-time tip on Kofi the more support I get the more time that I can dedicate to making these videos and the better equipment that I can get to make them just that little bit better it also helps to bring me a little step further towards my dream of one day doing full-time YouTube you also get some nice rewards like your name in my videos credits and access to exclusive previews now I just like to thank all of my amazing patrons for their support and especially the following leftist tech support self-critical Marxist Leninist Inga Leah Nora Kira be key to the fields teacher Lee Curtis gullet lautaro ordinate fawn alejandro industrial robot jaime the commie since Yanni Braz go BJ Hansen Daniel s Diego ah Salvati Malatesta the Intifada and Nico that's it see you next time

Channel: BadEmpanada

Views: 179,721

Rating: 4.5850949 out of 5

Keywords: che guevara, cuba, guevara, che, prageru, prager university, crowder, badempanada, steven crowder, history, politics, breadtube

Id: F5eFPgvhS60

Length: 29min 27sec (1767 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Hotel_Oblivion]

What a time to be alive when there’s a veritable cottage industry dedicated to demonstrating that the loudest conservative voices don’t know anything about anything at all.

[u/BingIngo]

I actually believed the reactionary propaganda for years

[u/anarcho_guitarist]

So basically Che had the 1960s equivalent of a couple of old racist and homophobic tweets that he later disavowed.

[u/jedijbp]

Man the number of times I've unwittingly listened to someone parrot crowder talking points and wasn't armed with info to shut that shit down...

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/masterpikachu_]

Bad empanada is a great youtuber and he deserves more subs

[u/unreservedhistory]

So this is what Cold feet Crowder has been up to?

[u/[deleted]]

Just wanted to say thanks for introducing me to BadEmpanada. His channel wasn’t one I was familiar with, and while Guevara himself is a relatively familiar subject for me (a friend tore down many of the right wing myths around him for me a couple of years back), I learned loads I didn’t know about Latin America from a few of the other videos on the channel. Definitely going to keep following!

[u/beerusmeowmeowsuper]

as the t-shirt is based on a work of art by andy warhol i always thought the t-shirt wearer was saying, 'i like the aesthetics of revolution,' but with an ironic self-awareness that commodifying che's face is like a weird form of iconoclasm. and smart cool people wearing the t-shirt were saying 'isn't this appropriated revolutionary imagery fucked up? perhaps we should have a revolution!' i was wrong as usual, they just thought it was a cool t-shirt.

(i know it doesn't have much to do with the video, just dumping.)