Shannon Love (angrily) argues that leftists take a simplified, cartoonish view of their ideological predecessors that can only be described as hagiographic:
Here is a representative example of Guevara’s hagiography from the current (as of today) Wikipedia entry for him.
Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included instituting agrarian reform as minister of industries, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba’s armed forces, reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism.
Contrast this with eye witness accounts of Guevara’s role in the mass executions that followed the communist victory in Cuba:
“When you saw the beaming look on Che’s face as the victims were tied to the stake and blasted apart by the firing squad,” said a former Cuban political prisoner Roberto Martin-Perez, to your humble servant here, “you saw there was something seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara.” As commander of the La Cabana execution yard, Che often shattered the skull of the condemned man (or boy) by firing the coup de grace himself. When other duties tore him away from his beloved execution yard, he consoled himself by viewing the slaughter. Che’s second-story office in Havana’s La Cabana prison had a section of wall torn out so he could watch his darling firing-squads at work.
Compare the hagiographic Wikipedia entry on the Guevera’s infamous “Motorcycle Diaries” with some of what Guevera actually wrote:
“My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any vencido [surrendered/captured enemy] that falls in my hands!”
Guevera’s military tactics were ruthless and vile. In Bolivia, he perfected the strategy of “fighting to the last peasant” by intentionally forcing peasants into the line of fire in order to “radicalize” them. He conducted fighting retreats through peasant villages intending that the following army would destroy the village and kill villagers in pursuit of his forces. Worse, he committed atrocities against military personnel, even killing their families, and then framed innocent peasants for the acts for the sole purpose of drawing down a horrific vengeance down on the innocent peasants. Needless to say, he had no compunctions about killing any peasants in his zone of control who did not kowtow to him.
Guevara was a vicious, megalomaniacal sociopath who wanted to be the next Stalin or Mao. (Indeed, Stalin in his younger days was a figure very much like Guevara.) He overtly and clearly stated his desire to destroy America and to exterminate millions of Americans in the process.
Yet today he is considered to be a figure worthy of admiration by the far (20% most) left in America. Go to any college campus and you will see admiring posters and t-shirts. Even Robert Redford, one of the few leftists who actually spent tens of millions of dollars of his own money on charitable causes, made a hagiographic movie about Guevera.
The vast majority of leftists, however, know nothing about the real Guevera. All they know is the hagiography that came straight out the Cold War-era Soviet propaganda mill. Worse, they don’t even bother to question the hagiography at all. If you try to confront them about their mindless adoration, they will reflexively change the subject to some real or imagined evil of non-leftists somewhere in the world’s history. They are emotionally incapable of thinking about Guevera in anything but positive terms.
Should one be any more exercised by fools on the left giving Che “props” than by tools on the right giving away “Peace Prizes” to war criminals (e.g. Kissinger) and narcissistic man-boys (e.g. Obama)?
A lot of these “prizes” (books, awards, movies, t-shirts, sympathetic lectures and movies) are simply self-congratulatory cultural backslaps, and eminently ignorable.