Recently, the Hindustan Times carried an article on Durgesh Pathak, the main organization man for AAP in Punjab. The first three sentences of the article took my breath away:
“Che Guevara is on a wall of the drawing room where he sits. The South American revolutionary is also the cover of his Twitter and Facebook accounts. Durgesh Pathak, at first impression, is more a 20-something wide-eyed activist than a politician.”
What? Che Guevara? You mean the murderer who used to take a special thrill in carrying out summary executions with his own hands? And yet Che Guevera is but a “revolutionary” and his followers are merely “wide-eyed activists”.
Folks, Hindustan Times is a mainstream newspaper. AAP is a mainstream political party. Apparently, AAP and its journalist supporters are vocal in supporting “dissent”, “free speech” and “democracy”. And one of its top leaders is totally at ease waxing eloquent about how much he dotes on Che Guevara. If this was not enough, Durgesh Pathak gladly posed for a picture in front of his living room wall, showing a portrait of Che Guevara next to his Supreme Leader Arvind Kejriwal. This is the photo that accompanies the HT article:
The glorification of a Communist mass murderer by a mainstream political party, carried proudly by a mainstream newspaper. No outrage against this, no comments or complaints anywhere. Just another day in the life of mainstream Indian political discourse. Even AAP’s critics and the right wing in general accept it with resignation, perhaps even without noticing. After all, it is common to see Che Guevara glorified. What’s new?
Except it shouldn’t be common! Glorifying Hitler isn’t common and it shouldn’t be. Glorifying the KKK isn’t common and it shouldn’t be. Glorifying Che Guevara shouldn’t be common but it is!
If you are a fan of Che Guevara, you are NOT mainstream. You are a dangerous radical element that needs to be called out. And you can’t be a mainstream politician giving interviews in a mainstream newspaper. But such is the leftist cultural hegemony that the most dangerous left wing mass murderers are routinely glorified in mainstream discourse. It is seen as “normal”. No one even complains.
All this while as Hindus are made to run in circles explaining their beliefs and put on a cross for celebrating anything from Dahi handi to Rakshabandhan. They take a fine toothed comb and dissect the patriarchal, casteist, sexist, homophobic, this-phobic, that-phobic underpinnings of every single ritual in Hindu society. What are the underpinnings of glorifying Che Guevara? We never ask. They never have to answer because we never ask.
Every single day, the BJP is put on the mat and mauled in liberal circles because some RSS leaders several decades ago, may or may not have said good things about the Nazi Party. Meanwhile the Communist Party puts up posters of Stalin in every one of its offices and no one ever asks them to explain. We never ask. They never have to answer because we never ask!
In fact, consider the term “Communist”. Consider their dreaded red flag with the hammer and sickle, symbol of death to literally millions of people around the world. Communists don’t have to seek cover, they don’t have to be apologetic for anything. They didn’t even need to change their name or their flag. Can you imagine anyone daring to open parties with names like these even if they were actually fascists or racists or Nazis:
Fascist Party of India
Racist Party of India
Nazi Party of India.
Nobody would open a party with names like that because those words have intense stigma attached to them. Even if someone did, can you imagine representatives of the Nazi Party being invited to any mainstream debate on TV or newspapers or universities or any other respectable forum? But mysteriously, there is one exception: apparently you can have the “Communist Party of India”. How? Why?
Because, no stigma attaches to the word “Communist”. Communists can freely operate under that name, openly flaunt their dreaded red flag and still be considered a legitimate part of the intellectual debate.
Just to remind people : Stalin alone accounts for 3 million dead. Mao is possibly the biggest mass murderer in history with some 20 million kills. By the way, did I mention that 20 million dead is the lowest known estimate for Mao’s massacre? Some sources put it at 45 million! And we have not even counted yet Castro and the North Korean regime. We have not even counted Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge and the mountains of human skulls they left behind.
But, such is the left wing cultural domination and so complete is the right wing surrender that nobody gasps in horror at seeing the Communist flag. A Nazi flag would draw gasps of horror. A KKK uniform would draw gasps of horror. You know, the Hindu right spends a lot of time complaining that radical Islam gets a free pass in elite society. But no, even an ISIS flag would draw gasps of horror. No mainstream political party could dare to advertise its support for ISIS. Only Communists get a pass.
We have to stand up. We have to start asking this question and demanding answers. We have to ask why a radically anti-democratic and mass murdering ideology like Communism is not being stigmatised in popular culture. No, I am not calling for a ban, unlike the bans that Communists demand on the RSS/BJP. I am asking for free people to take back the culture and stigmatise the Communists. I glorify freedom. I celebrate liberty. That’s why you won’t find any posters of Che Guevara in my house.
