Jesus vs Che Guevara: A man who laid down his life for us or a murderous rebel?
We now have to be pleased that a man has not been sacked from his job for putting a small cross on the dashboard of his company van.
Please forgive me if my joy is muted this Eastertide. The real meaning of the Wakefield Palm Cross Affair is not specially happy.
Colin Atkinson would have been fired if it hadn’t been for the might of this newspaper – and the dogged courage of a union official, Terry Cunliffe. Many unions are keen on ‘Equality and Diversity’ codes, and wouldn’t have taken the case.
Colin Atkinson would have been fired if it hadn't been for the might of the Mail on Sunday - and the dogged courage of a union official, Terry Cunliffe
And as it’s Easter, I’d like to focus on the fact that the manager involved, Denis Doody, had a picture (perhaps I should say ‘icon’) of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara on his office wall.
Interesting.
Why? Well, what we recall at Easter is the show trial and judicial murder of Jesus of Nazareth. A mob is manipulated into calling for his death. The judge, who knows he is innocent, feebly gives in. Such things are common in the real world, to this day.
The resurrection, which some of us still celebrate today, symbolises the ultimate defeat of cruel and cynical human power by a far greater force. Among other things, Easter enshrines the idea that what we do here matters somewhere else, that there is an absolute standard by which our actions are judged.
Down 20 centuries, this idea has restrained the powerful. They do not like it. Never have. Never will.
Che Guevara (right) was an evil killer, the exact opposite of Jesus (left). There is no excuse for revering him
The worship of Christ, victim of a lynch mob and a crooked judge, is dangerously radical. What about the cult of Comrade Guevara, embraced by Mr Doody?
It claims to be radical too. But its devotees are the power-worshipping generation that now dominates our culture, using their slogan of ‘equality’ as a bludgeon to flatten opposition.
Guevara was an evil killer, the exact opposite of Jesus. There is no excuse at all for revering him.
He personally slaughtered alleged traitors to his nasty revolution.
One of these was Eutimio Guerra, a peasant and army guide. Guevara himself icily recounted: ‘I fired a .32 calibre bullet into the right hemisphere of his brain which came out through his left temple. He moaned for a few moments, then died.’
Later, when the rock-star rebel ‘Che’ was in power, he would lie on top of the wall at
La Cabana prison, jauntily smoking a cigar while he watched the firing squads below punching bloody holes in the victims of his kangaroo trials.
Guevara’s view of justice was typical of the smug Left, which knows it is right because it knows it is good. ‘Don’t drag out the process. This is a revolution. Don’t use bourgeois legal methods, the proof is secondary.’
There you have it, rather neatly expressed – the two rival forces that compete for supremacy in what was once a Christian country – the Gospel of Che, hot with hate and splattered with other people’s blood and brains in the pursuit of a utopia that never comes, and the Gospel of Christ, a life laid down willingly for others.
Care to choose?
Did Cameron vote for Labour in 1997?
David Cameron said on Friday that it was a good thing Labour won the 1997 General Election, something that a remotely awake media would have blazoned across the sky in vast headlines, but which they buried instead.
His words, spoken in Bedford, were: ‘I think we know in 1997 the country needed change.’
Do we know that? Did it ‘need’ the ‘change’ it got – 13 years of political correctness, stupid wars, tax and spending?
I hardly think so. Generally, the Prime Minister pretends at voting time that he didn’t like the Blair-Brown junta. But if it turned out that he’d voted Labour in 1997 and 2001, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
Mr Cameron, in full election mode, is now banging on (as he would call it if anyone else did it) about drunkards and illegal drug abusers claiming benefits for being drunk and drugged. He doesn’t mean it. He regards types like me, who think that you can stop drinking too much if you want to, and that people take heroin because they like it, as horrible reactionary brutes.
But unless you accept that people are fully responsible for their own actions – and modish liberals like Mr Cameron spend half their lives denying this – then the logic leads -inexorably to paying them ‘incapacity benefit’.
Likewise his opportunist moaning about judges making privacy law. They do this because Parliament (under his beloved Blair) gave them the power to do it. He knows perfectly well that this is the case.
How can I begin to tell you how much this man and his party do not deserve your support? And how much they laugh at you when you give it
to them?
Lewis and a drugs cover-up
The issue of psychobabble versus common sense – linked to the dangers of antidepressant drugs – is increasingly important.
If you think that people are unhappy because bad things have happened to them, and that giving them mood-altering pills is wrong, you find yourself viewed as a heartless monster.
More from Peter Hitchens...
- PETER HITCHENS: Leave it aht, Dave! Nobody's buying your Alf Garnett routine (and you don't believe it yourself) 16/04/11
- PETER HITCHENS: From draper's son to judge... THAT was social mobility 09/04/11
- PETER HITCHENS; We can protect a mob in Benghazi, so why not a little girl in Stockwell? 02/04/11
- PETER HITCHENS: Another wrong war . . . and another PM who treats Parliament like a neutered chihuahua 26/03/11
- PETER HITCHENS: Why can't we just let the Libyans fight it out (...and then make friends with the winners) 19/03/11
- PETER HITCHENS: I was wrong on cigarettes but believe me, I’m right on cannabis 12/03/11
- PETER HITCHENS: No-fly zones? Oh, grow up Mr Cameron 05/03/11
- PETER HITCHENS: Stupefied in the gutters of the new Gin Lane, we’re just where our leaders want us 27/02/11
- VIEW FULL ARCHIVE
In last week’s episode of the occasionally enjoyable TV police series Lewis, the detective, played as an increasingly ill-tempered and crusty figure by Kevin Whately, started out being hostile to a tricky pill-dispensing doctor. So did his funky underling, James Hathaway, played by Laurence Fox.
But the real message was different. Their boss told the younger man: ‘You’re supposed to be bringing Lewis out of the Stone Age, not joining him there.’
And lo, by the end, the seemingly nasty psychiatrist was revealed to be a saintly and honest character.
I find these days that even asking questions about the huge prescription of antidepressants in modern Britain gets me into trouble.
Actually, that’s why I keep doing it. The twitchiness of the pill-popping faction suggests they are hiding their own grave doubts.
Mr Parris civilised? I’ve got news for you
Some of you may have enjoyed my cameo appearance on Have I Got News For You, in which I was filmed sneering lengthily at the presentation of an award to the slippery ex-MP Matthew Parris.
What got my goat was the description of Mr Parris as ‘civilised’, after he had gravely misrepresented my views on a public platform and refused to make amends for this cheap behaviour. As civilised as a rattlesnake, I’d say.
As the Libya policy goes wrong, the nation’s brakes have failed. Where is the high-level criticism? Where the questioning?
The Prime Minister was interviewed at length on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and even managed to give some (duff) racing tips but, incredibly, was not asked about Libya.
Parliament has not been recalled – did you know that only the Government can do this? The main effect of our intervention has been to prolong a civil war, and the futile carnage in Misrata is largely our fault.
Having intervened supposedly to prevent a massacre in Benghazi, we may be causing one in Misrata. The only truly humanitarian course now available is to provide an evacuation fleet to get non-combatants out of that city as soon as possible.
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