I have great reservation writing this response to Paul Murty's Tuesday column because I'm afraid it will give his ignorance an air of legitimacy. The letter was the most fallacious, logically incoherent and misleading piece the Alligator has published in months.
Murty's letter, titled "Che is a hero, not a terrorist," condemns the College Republicans for their "No Che Day" protest on the argument that rather than being a terrorist, Che Guevara was a great leader for the poor and oppressed.
As he so curtly states, "Just because you don't agree with someone doesn't make him a terrorist."
This is true. I don't often agree with Barack Obama, but he's certainly not a terrorist.
However, when the person is actually a terrorist, things become quite different.
Guevara admitted to hundreds of mass executions in the name of his "revolution." He was a bloodthirsty revolutionary who got off to murdering anyone who disagreed with him.
"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary," Guevara said. "This is a revolution. And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."
Guevara's motives may have been selfless and saintly, but I'm sure Guevara himself would tell you that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. His ends were the slaughter of innocents who happened to be associated with the people Guevara disagreed with. And that doesn't include the thousands who died in the "revolutionary" wars he tried to start through Latin America.
Most high school juniors could tear through the reasoning Murty presented in Guevara's defense. Just because someone spouts off a selfless quote at the end of his life does not preclude him from being a terrorist. Likewise, just because someone was a doctor does not mean he was a saint.
Murty finished his joke of a column by defending this murderer as a "fight[er] for the oppressed" and calling the College Republicans' protest "ridiculous."
No, protesting this revolutionary is not ridiculous. Not when thousands of hipsters, "progressives," hippies and spoiled white kids walk around with his face on their T-shirts every day. Most of them don't have a clue who Guevara was, what he stood for or his murderous rampages.
To make things worse for the hippies, Guevara was also a racist.
"The black is indolent and fanciful, he spends his money on frivolity and drink; the European comes from a tradition of working and saving which follows him to this corner of America and drives him to get ahead," he said once.
If anyone at UF said this, they would be run out of town on a rail. When Guevara said this, liberals put his face on a T-shirt.
People don't walk around with Hitler or Osama bin Laden on their T-shirts, but these are two people who, like Guevara, felt strongly about their beliefs and dedicated their lives to (in their view) making the world a better place through whatever means necessary. Guevara did the exact thing they did - murder and kill - and yet people idolize him.
We protested on Friday to raise awareness about Guevara and the false beliefs that abound about him. He was a murderer, a racist and a savage killing machine who had no tolerance or compassion for anyone who disagreed with them.
People who are completely uninformed and who defend this killer - people like Murty - exist; and that is why we must protest.
Johnathan Lott is the vice chairman of the UF College Republicans.
