Che Guevera, Stalin, Lenin Ho Chi Minh… the patron saints of Occupy

I picked this up from Against The Grain:

Visiting the political blog Zombie’s latest photographic coverage and commentary of the “Occupy Wall Street” protests in OWS-Oakland and similar demonstrations across the nation, I’m struck by the myriad t-shirts sporting images of Communist icons — of course, there is the ubiquitous Che Guevera, but these days even Stalin, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh are making quite the comeback. That kids would find such figures worth emulating and adoring is a testimony to their historical ignorance.

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23 Comments

  1. Theodore says:

    “What luck for rules that men do not think.” ~ Adolf Hitler (another socialist).

  2. Ray says:

    How odd, an entire generation of our youth think highly of the aberations from a previous century. Might one conclude that the education system is broken? Or could a person think that family life has crumbled to the point of being non existent? My questions could go on and on and the major theme would be a breaking down of some piece of our society. Bishop Sheen once said that anytime we have this breaking down of these important facets of our culture, we need look no further than the evil one. It is his signature for certain. If our church won’t incorporate the prayer to St. Michael after Mass as we did years ago, each of us can make it’s recitation part of our lives on and individual basis. Even more important would be our Catholic brethern rededicating ourselves to The Blessed Mother and asking for her intercession.

  3. albizzi says:

    The red beast is still alive and its health improves every day.
    Why do you think that our Lady required the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart to be performed?
    The Pope will comply but it will be late.

  4. olh says:

    I don’t think that you can hang this one around the neck of the “education system” alone. I teach world history at the high-school level and give lectures on the evil of eugenics, population control, etc. on a regular basis. The disturbing conclusion that I’ve come to is that Utilitarianism is the default philosophical system used by kids to assign value to persons. When I began teaching I thought that by focusing on the second premise the following syllogism was sufficient: 1. The murder of an innocent person is wrong. 2. A fetus is an innocent person. :. Therefore the murder of a fetus is wrong. Increasingly I’m running into entire classes where the second premise is accepted but the first is rejected. Usually it’s amongst the “cream of the crop” kind of kids too. This evil is being absorbed just by growing up in America today (in the convential way). Perhaps God is allowing the stage to be set for a Guadalupe style intervention, because I see very little to be hopeful for, naturally speaking.

  5. TC says:

    I used to wear this t-shirt until it wore out & I sometimes got hostile comments from my younger co-workers. They (all college grads, or soon to be) had never heard of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Gulag, the “Great Leap Forward”, Pol Pot, &c.
    http://www.thoseshirts.com/images/shirtsquare-lousy.jpg

  6. Ray says:

    olh:

    No one said education alone was at fault. Nor did anyone accuse you of not being a great teacher. Yet, can we eliminate the education system being one of the problems we are facing? NO!!

  7. wmeyer says:

    olh: Despite your noble efforts, there are many teachers whose practice is far less noble. To blame the education system as a part of the problem is not to condemn all those in it.

  8. jaykay says:

    There are 2 things working here, to my way of thinking:

    1) these kids don’t believe in communism (most might have trouble spelling it) but just think that such “icons” are something that will annoy and/or provoke their seniors/the System/the Man/whatever “cool” description you picked up from your middle-class-wannabe-hippie-but preferred-all-the capitalist-benefits-thank-you-very-much parents

    2) these kids actually choose to believe in communism, despite the fact that those who were forced to live in the various workers’ paradises couldn’t chuck it all quickly enough back in 1989, and despite all the available evidence of its horrific crimes being readily and copiously available in ways that were undreamed of back in the day.

    In the case of scenario 1) they’re just a bunch of klutzes, same as their parents’ generation, who are just along for the ride for the present but will blanch on being shown these images in a few years.

    In the case of scenario 2) they’re still klutzes, but willfully ignorant and potentially downright dangerous ones.

    I wonder why images of the Dear Leaders of that Workers’ paradise, the Peoples’ Republic of North Korea, never get displayed? Maybe it’s not communist enough?

  9. ContraMundum says:

    These shirts by themselves, even if they are representative of the OWS crowd, could easily represent nothing more than adolescent defiance. I doubt they wear these shirts for any reason other than the fact that you don’t like the shirts. My guess is that 2/3 of the displays of the Confederate flag are for the same reason, not for any argument about history or states’ rights or racism.

    Look, folks, the Cold War is over, and these kids know it. There are dangerous ideas still kicking around, but they’ve been out there for a very long time — at least as long as the French Revolution. It could be that a threat will arise in our future that will resemble 20th-century Communism, but it really won’t be the same thing; just as we stand a real risk of losing our liberties to a tyrant, but no real risk of losing them to the British monarch.

  10. Kevin says:

    In defence of the T-Shirt depicting Stalin, it is an edited version of this one, the idea being not to emulate/adore, so much as to mock the Communists: http://www.threadless.com/product/383/The_Communist_Party Of course, there remains the question of why this is acceptable whilst an equivalent “Nazi Party” T-Shirt – complete with prominent swastika – would not be (and quite rightly so).

  11. ContraMundum says:

    @Kevin

    Maybe for the same reason that if you call someone a devil, it means nothing, but if you call him a Nazi, it will not only be taken seriously but be unforgivable.

  12. Laura98 says:

    I have a friend who bought her then older teenage son “Che” t-shirts, because he wanted them. She rationalized it by saying it was just a phase, it didn’t mean anything, it was the style, etc. He’s 20, going on 21 now, and still wears them, even though he’s not in the OWS movement. He thinks Che Guevara was a great hero of “the people.” Guess no one has bothered to tell him the truth …

  13. Johnno says:

    Can we consecrate Russia to Mary’s Immaculate Heart now?

    You know… to show obedience to God?

    To use plain clear precise language in the consecration without any concern for political correctness and ‘tolerance’ and vague notions and false ecumenism?

    And especially to see how many of the world’s bishops still acknowledge the Pope’s authority to command them to do this in union with him?

    Does the Church still believe in a God who can perform amazing miracles that defy human rationalism?

    Will Christ find such faith on earth even amongst the ‘faithful’ when He returns?

    As we approach the 100th anniversary of the Fatima apparitions, are we doomed to follow after the Kings of France who fell to the Revolution? With everything that is going on, and the times screaming out at us to be aware how can we ignore God’s providence and His amazing foresight thanks to His Omniscience? While the current times do make us tremble, it is also comforting to know that God is indeed aware and warned us of this so long ago! So He knows! And He is there! And He is waiting for our response and acknowledgment to help us!

    Pray for Pope Benedict XVI and the world’s bishops! Pray they will use everything in their arsenal to fight against what’s coming! Both human means and especially divine means!

  14. olh says:

    I absolutely agree that the education system has share in the blame, but what I meant was that this is systemic. Our entire society has embraced the ideology utilitarianism, and soon to come will be the practices.

  15. ppb says:

    I work on a public university campus, and I have to say that very few of our ~25,000 students pay any attention to this sort of thing. The Occupier folks (and we do have them) only number a few hundred here, and are mostly well above the age of being trusted by Bob Dylan. It’s not exactly a big youth movement.

  16. Andy Lucy says:

    @ContraMundum… “My guess is that 2/3 of the displays of the Confederate flag are for the same reason, not for any argument about history or states’ rights or racism.”

    In Western Kentucky, you would be 100% wrong… around here you are weaned hearing about the Confederate battle flag and what it means, not what the media says it means. Those who display it, mean it.

  17. albizzi says:

    Johnno,
    It took exactly 100 years to see the kingdom of France overthrown: From the 1689 apparitions of the Sacred Heart to Sr Margaret-Mary and the request she conveyed to the king Louis XIV for the kingdom to be consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to the beginning of the Revolution on july 14th, 1789.
    It is highly probable that a similar delay delay was given to the Church to do the Consecration of Russia when our Lady said Sr Lucy:
    “‘Make it known to My ministers, given that they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My command, they will follow him into misfortune.”
    In the immediate years before the Revolution who in France cared about the Consecration of France?
    Right now, who in the Vatican is caring about the Consecration of Russia?
    The wake up certainly will be harsh.
    2017 is 100 years to 1917.

  18. ContraMundum says:

    @Andy Lucy

    I live in Huntington, WV right now, just miles from east Kentucky. Pretty often when I see the Confederate flag flown, it is the naval jack flown underneath the US flag, just like a state flag is flown. That one always has me stumped. Either the Confederacy was a sovereign confederacy of sovereign states, or it was illegitimate; neither side would have thought of it as a proper subunit of the Union. I generally conclude it is being displayed without much thought.

    By the way, I am pro-Confederate in my sympathies, in part because Dixie is my home (my family has lived in the South since the late 1700’s), in part because of the history of how the United States came to be, in part because the idea of democracy becomes meaningless when the country gets too big, and in part because there really is no convincing argument that breaking away from the British Empire was OK but seceding from the Union, whether wise or not, is *never* permissible.

    For its sins, the Confederacy lost the War, and the Union won the war — to punish it for it sins. “You want Federal Union, I’ll give you Federal Union until it comes out your nose!”

  19. The Cobbler says:

    I think the Pope should specially consecrate Russia.

    Then specially consecrate America.

    Then specially consecrate China.

    Then specially consecrate Africa.

    Then specially consecrate Europe.

    So on and so forth.

    As for Che, I once read that his last words were a boast that if the soldiers surrounding him know who he is they’d know he’s worth more to them alive than dead; apparently he overestimated, since they shot him without even talking it over. The really funny thing is that the vagueness of his toadies’ knowledge of his feats of rabble-rousing in a sense reconfirms the soldiers’ evaluation of his actual importance even as they wear his face on t-shirts all over well-off nations.

    On a more purely humourous note, my brother has a hilarious “this lousy t-shirt” joke that he needs to actually put on a shirt and start marketting… and which I guess isn’t so humourous to talk about online since I won’t tell you what it is so that nobody out on the interwebz gets the jump on it. Oh well.

  20. ContraMundum says:

    @albizzi

    Since Sr. Lucia appears to have been satisfied that the consecration was fulfilled, I see no need to worry about this.

    I think we should instead turn our attentions to praying for the conversion of Russia. Even if Russia has been consecrated, it certainly has not been converted. Oh, and we had better pray for our own conversion at the same time.

  21. Supertradmum says:

    I have been examining communism and socialism in my blog for weeks. I wish I had a pound, not a dollar, now worth 61 pence here, for every Che shirt I have seen on Catholics. Until Catholics give up on the socialist and Marxist lies, we are doomed. Look at the numbers of Catholics who still support potus–and his socialist agenda.

    Europe is unraveling because of socialism, Marxism, etc. The week, Hollande said that he did not like rich people. This is the language of the Left. This is evil falsified class struggle, and such groups hate the Church and anything they consider elitist. America will fall quickly, do not kid yourselves, once Europe goes.

  22. albizzi says:

    ContraMundum, you also are believing in a lie: The Consecration of Russia wasn’t made according to the requirements of our Lady. Even John Paul II acknoweldged it so (“I did what I could according to the circumstances”). But the Vatican hierarchy no longer wanting to be harrassed by that question ORDERED (yes, ordered) Sr Lucy to say this lie. The proof was given by the late Abbé de Nantes who talked with the local bishop of Fatima, Mgr Do Amaral: The bishop confided that he himself conveyed that silly order from the Vatican. In his virtue of obedience Sr Lucy complied.
    If you are not yet convinced: Where is our Lady’s promise, the conversion of Russia of which She said it would be like a miracle? Already 30 years spent and nothing in sight.
    Instead of praying for the conversion of Russia, you have rather to pray for the Consecration. This will be more efficient.

  23. ContraMundum says:

    Well, I guess it’s your word vs. “the Vatican”. I wonder who I’ll believe?

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