Posted on 07/02/2012 7:39:36 AM PDT by george76
Galway city has been warned a proposed statue of revolutionary Che Guevara will be a deep insult to many Americans by the influential head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.
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Galways beautiful beaches and vibrant arts festival will be marred with a memorial to a man who wished to end their way of life and violently replace it with tyranny.
Che, full name Ernesto Guevara Lynch, had Irish links. A festival in his honor was arranged for nearby County Clare earlier this year.
Guevara's Irish links have been traced to Galway, and one Patricio Lynch, the founder of the Argentine branch of his family, was said to have been born in Galway in 1715. From there he spent some time in Spain before eventually settling in Argentina.
Galway City Council agreed to erect a statue in his honor but it has proven a highly controversial move.
American politicians, especially those of Cuban descent have strongly objected.
The romanticized reputation of Ernesto Che Guevara as a liberator and freedom fighter is nothing more than a myth of the Cuban revolution. In reality, Guevara was a mass murderer and a bigot. Ros-Lehtinen wrote.
Che Guevara embodied hatred.
(Excerpt) Read more at irishcentral.com ...
I agree, there was very little open anti-semitism in Ireland during the era of the Third Reich. But there was definitely sympathy for the Nazis among anti-Anglos. I have two Irish grandparents, my father’s mother and my mother’s father, both of whom died in the 1930’s, before my parents married. My father’s mother was basically uneducated shanty Irish, and I know next to nothing of her political beliefs. My mother’s father’s family was lace curtain Irish-Catholic and at least somewhat anglophilic. My grandfather lied about his age to join the Army in 1917. He traveled to Germany on a tramp steamer after failing German at MIT, and spent the summer of 1920 in Hamburg learning enough German to get through engineering school. He died in 1939, but left behind translations of some startlingly bad Nazi books. Not Nazi books in the sense that they had the imprint of the Third Reich, but Nazi in the sense that they were written by prominent Nazi “thinkers”.
Like a lot of engineers, and other educated people, he was susceptible to the half-baked gimcrack “intellectual” nonsense that was in the air in the 1930s.
As the song goes, “There are twice as many pigeons now will come and sit on me”
The problem with the Irish blaming the USA is that they continue to think that the majority of Americans are of Irish descent; therefore, all Americans support the IRA. Ridiculous! Most Americans were disgusted by the activities of the out-of-control terrorists on both sides of the issue.
Wow! Luckily, my family were all grateful to have escaped the Famine and other horrors so they were very pro-America. They did hate the English and it wasn’t until I took my mother to London that she changed her mind! I never heard a nice word about Hitler or a bad word about Jews. But, then, they all were drafted into WWII.
I went to Catholic high school and I do remember my Irish-American classmates referring to f***ing Jew bastards, but probably just to get a rise from me. I wish I could say that I refused to take the bait, but actually, I was shocked, but didn't react. If I had to do over, I would have ridiculed their inane racism.
Pic of Chavez's memorial to Che' soon after it was erected. Seems even in Venezuela they know what kind of slithering vermin that he actually was.
Wacky Irish Bump!
Did you go to school in Boston? I’m lucky that I missed most antisemitism. My High School was heavily Jewish so it never occurred to anyone to be nasty. I went to Catholic grammar school but never heard that stuff either. Maybe I suppressed it!
No, I went to high school in Queens, in the Brooklyn Archdiocese. I had Jewish friends growing up, and many, many more in college. I don’t think it was really antisemitism, they were just trying to get a rise out of me, since I was extremely “liberal” for a Catholic high school kid of my day.
Ah, got it. I went to grammer school in Queens and high school in NJ.
Nice to talk to you!
For Gods sake, if any country should know what it means to be ruled by tyranny, itd be the Irish.”
Well, blaming everything, all the time, on the British, is something very different from having a philosophy of liberty.
The Irish are basically a nation and race of begrudgers. They begrudge success, they mock initiative, they make fun of ambition, they belittle anyone who they see as too big for their boots. Envy and sloth are the main virtues of the Irish. (Though they do have sharp wits to help express it).
Che, of course, promises the “have nots” that they rich got rich on the backs of the poor, and that the poor have only the rich to blame for their plight.
So, while sure, the Irish have tasted tyranny, a thousand years from now, they are still going to be hoping for “Che” to bring them prosperity and they are still going to be blaming the British for everything....
I think its a bit ridiculous to make British rule in Ireland the benchmark for awfulness. Granted, it wasn’t all sweetness and light, but frankly, I think we can all agree that there were far, far worse examples to point to...
well said
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