Remember when President Trump was running the show, and the U.S. had a real "red line" in the sand, and he sent tier-one military units to track down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who promptly detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and several of his own children?

And then The Washington Post referred to the dead terrorist as an "austere religious scholar"?

Well, the History Channel has taken it up a notch.  In the left-wing media's latest display of perverse obsession with figures of mass slaughter, Che Guevara is once again painted as a chic and charming hero.

In Dec. 1951, Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna hopped on the back of his friend Alberto Granado’s motorcycle. The trip made an impact on the young Che by exposing him to social injustice, economic inequality, capitalist exploitation and political repression.

— HISTORY (@HISTORY) September 16, 2022

The tweet highlighted a recycled article, which described Guevara's rise to murderous dictator as a "coming-of-age" tale.  It recalled his early life as an ambitious and dedicated medical student, with "intellectual curiosity" and a "hunger for adventure[.]"  But then get this: the author quotes historian Paulo Drinot, a professor at the University College London, who said Guevara possessed the virtue of "social consciousness."

I'm sorry, what?  Doesn't "social consciousness" imply that a person is attuned to the plight of suffering people?  In what world would that describe Che Guevara?

When discussing the absurdity of this piece, one of my American Thinker colleagues relayed to me two stories about Guevara, both of which I was previously unaware of.

1. During Guevara's reign of terror, a distressed mother arrived at the secret police headquarters, looking for her son. Guevara directed the mother to where the boy was, and "ordered the son shot" right in front of her.
2. He had a large picture window installed in his office so he could watch the executions without missing an administrative beat.

A true voyeur of death.

Then the reader is treated to a gross attempt to humanize the monster, lamenting the fact that poor Guevara "had a rough start" to his well known motorcycle ride.  Poor respiratory health led to him contracting the flu (aw, let's all pity the despot) before he had to "nurse" a broken heart after a break-up.

The rest is quite typical of the media drivel to which we're unfortunately all so well accustomed.  The article ends by announcing Guevara's graduation from medical school and touts his undying loyalty...and completely fails to mention his despicable track record of violating unalienable human rights.

This repurposed content exhibits a seriously dangerous trend in the historical discipline (although I'm not so sure many people really consider the History Channel an academic authority).  Nonetheless, the general tendency of historical academicians — like the referenced professor as well as the author of the article — is to run cover for Marxism.  The failed doctrine cannot stand on its own merit as a legitimate and prosperous political philosophy, for obvious reasons.  What other ideology has a body count that numbers in the hundreds of millions?  No others are even close.

The author of the piece, Christopher Klein, appears to be an accomplished writer and describes himself as a "total history geek."  Yet he's clearly flouting all convention, and abandoning the most sacred principle of historical writing, which is the noble pursuit of objectivity.

Throughout his piece, there is a heavy emphasis on the economic and social suffering of the people, many of whom were treated like "second-class citizens."

And of course, the only ideological outlet to combat exploitation is Marxism!  It was Guevara's burgeoning desire to care for the less fortunate that led him towards unsullied and altruistic communism.

What.  A.  Joke.

Image: René Burri (1933–2014), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.