File under ideological insanity – Rothbard gives props to the people’s poseur, Che Guevara, whom even the anarchist left today has rejected:

“What made Che such an heroic figure for our time is that he, more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, was the living embodiment of the principle of Revolution. More than any man since the lovable but entirely ineffectual nineteenth-century Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, Che earned the title of “professional revolutionary.” And furthermore, to paraphrase Christopher Jencks in a recent perceptive, if wrongheaded, article in the New Republic, we all knew that his enemy was our enemy–that great Colossus that oppresses and threatens all the peoples of the world, U. S. imperialism.

Trained as a physician in Argentina, witnessing CIA-fomented counter-revolution by the thug Castillo Armas in Guatemala, Guevara dedicated the rest of his life to the Revolution. He found a promising field first in Cuba, where, as everyone knows, Che was second only to Fidel Castro in waging and then winning the revolution there.”

and this:

But in his mighty heart Che could not refrain from leaping a whole raft of stages, from plunging romantically but recklessly into the premature adventure of armed struggle in Latin America. And so, with tragic irony, Che Guevara, in his daring and courage, was betrayed by the very Bolivian peasantry whom he was trying to liberate, and who barely understood the meaning
of the conflict. Che died from violating his own principles of revolutionary war.

And this, enthusiastically quoting from Fidel Castro’s praise of Che:

“Newspapers of all tendencies have univermlly recognized Che’s virtues… . He is an almost unique example of how a man could win the recognition and respect of his enemies, of the very enemies he faced with his arms in his hands, of those who have been ideological enemies and have nevertheless expressed feelings of admiration and of respect toward Che.”

Murray Rothbard, “Ernesto Che Geuvara: RIP,” Mises.org http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_3/3_3_1.pdf

See also this article from a strict anarcho-capitalist position about Rothbard’s misrepresentation of his views to placate or mislead followers: The 10 Points Of The Libertarian Party Abolitionist Caucus.pdf.

Note – My main objection to an-cap positions is that they are easily manipulated by the state (national and transnational) for its own ends. An an-cap world is possible, but only spottily.

Now, in contrast to Rothbard’s glowing portrait, here is a more candid assessment of Che’s actual record from the anarchistlibrary.org (Che Guevara: why anarchists should view him critically):

Organise, Issue 47, Winter 1997/1998
flag.blackened.net

QUOTE: “After all, the Che cult is still used to obscure the real nature of Castro’s Cuba, one of the final bastions of Stalinism.”

QUOTE: “He demanded the death penalty for “informers, insubordinates, malingerers and deserters.” He himself personally carried out executions. Indeed the first execution carried out against an informer by the Castroists was undertaken by Che. He wrote: “I ended the problem giving him a shot with a.32 pistol in the right side of the brain.” On another occasion he planned on shooting a group of guerrillas who had gone on hunger strike because of bad food. Fidel intervened to stop him. Another guerrilla who dared to question Che was ordered into battle without a weapon!”

QUOTE: “With the Castroite victory in 1959, Che, along with his Stalinist buddy Raul Castro, was put in charge of building up state control. He purged the army, carried out re-education classes within it, and was supreme prosecutor in the executions of Batista supporters, 550 being shot in the first few months. He was seen as extremely ruthless by those who saw him at work. These killings against supporters of the old regime, some of whom had been implicated in torture and murder, was extended in 1960 to those in the working class movement who criticised the Castro regime. The anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists had their press closed down and many militants were thrown in prison. Che was directly implicated in this.”

QUOTE: “Photo opportunities with the peasantry and proletariat, good looks and a dramatic death in no way exonerate him from his historical role in the suppression of the popular classes, state terror and capitalism, and changing Cuba from the semi-colony of one great power the US, to another, the USSR.”

QUOTE: “I’d like to confess, papa, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing” “Hate will be an element of the battle, a merciless hate for the enemy, that will inspire the guerrilla-soldier to superhuman efforts of strength and changes him into an effective, violent, selected, in cold blood killing machine”