Russell Brand and Che Guevara Have Much in Common

Russell Brand and Che Guevara Have Much in Common

Former Mr Kate Perry (and current British multi-millionaire-comedian) Russell Brand devotes much of his new book and stage routine to denouncing capitalism. The book itself is titled “Revolution” and courageously confesses to the following: “I’m a big fan of Castro and Che Guevara and all their beret-wearing cigar, gun-totting, cigar-chuffing pals. They were sexy, cool, tough.”

Brand is reportedly worth about $9 million so this “incongruence” between what he practices and what he preaches makes him an easy foil for British conservatives, who ridicule him as a classic “champagne socialist.” Just this week, for instance, while leading demonstrators for “affordable housing” in London, Brand threw a tantrum on camera. A British reporter (who seemed to take his job title seriously) asked Brand about his own habitation, namely the monthly rent.

'I'm not interested in talking to you about my rent, mate,” Brand, who reportedly rents an extremely plush and ritzy bachelor pad, snarled inches from the reporter‘s smiling face. “Snides like you, mate, undermine it.” Brand added. “You're a snide.”

Heaven forbid that a smart-mouthed hipster like Brand should encounter actual snideness-- when aimed at himself, that is.

In his vaudeville act Brand doubles-down on his Che-worship by equating Che Guevara with Gandhi and Jesus Christ. Instead Brand should equate Che Guevara (in some respects) with Russell Brand himself. Take these two’s mutual hypocrisy regarding crassly capitalistic material perks. Granted, mainstream media “disclosures” regarding Che Guevara give no hint of any such hypocrisy. To wit:

“Nothing could be more vicariously gratifying than Che Guevara’s disdain for material comfort and everyday desires,” read Time’s encomium to Che Guevara in 1999 while hailing him among the “Heroes and Icons of the Century, alongside Mother Theresa—and, naturally--Gandhi.

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“Che was aided by a complete freedom from convention or material aspirations.” (Philip Bennet, Boston Globe.)

"The emblematic impact of Che Guevara is inconceivable without its dimension of sacrifice. Che renounces comfort for an idea." (Jorge Castaneda, Newsweek)

But in fact: “Che’s house was among the most luxurious in Cuba,” wrote Cuban journalist Antonio Llano Montes about the mansion-estate Che Guevara “acquired” promptly upon entering Havana in January 1959. After a hard day at the office signing firing-squad warrants and blasting teenagers’ skulls apart with the coup-de-grace from his .45, Che Guevara retired to his new domicile just outside Havana on the pristine beachfront. Until a few weeks prior, it had belonged to Cuba’s most successful building contractor. Today, the area is reserved exclusively for tourists and Communist party members.

“The mansion had a boat dock, a huge swimming pool, seven bathrooms, a sauna, a massage salon and several television sets,” continued Llano Montes. “One TV had been specially designed in the U.S., and had a screen ten feet wide and was operated by remote control. This was thought to be the only TV of its kind in Latin America. The mansion’s garden had a veritable jungle of imported plants, a pool with a waterfall, ponds filled with exotic tropical fish and several bird houses filled with parrots and other exotic birds. The habitation was something out of A Thousand and One Nights.”

The “austere idealist,” Che Guevara, hadn’t done too badly for himself in this real estate “acquisition” (read: “hand over all your property, Mr. Cuban contractor, or face a firing squad.”)

Not content with hailing Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Russell Brand seeks to dazzle us with his erudition on Cuban history. Apparently he’s up to snuff on all the slogans and bumper-stickers. To wit:

“Until the Revolution the U.S. ran Cuba as a virtual colony,” he writes. “Batista was a corrupt U.S. puppet.”

“But Humberto?” Some readers ask. “Why bother? Why are you preparing to factually debunk the ravings of a jack-*ass like Russell Brand?”

Because Brand’s idiocies on Cuba perfectly mirror the “enlightened,” even the mainstream, version of Cuban history, however amazing and asinine it sounds to actual Cubans who lived it or to any person who bothers to investigate the issue beyond what issues from Castro’s agents of influence, on the payroll and off.

In brief, you hear and read the identical KGB-concocted buncombe everywhere from The History Channel to PBS, to Jon Stewart to U.S. Democratic Presidents. Let’s take John F. Kennedy as exhibit A. Here’s an excerpt from an interview “the most popular U.S. president in modern history” (according to Gallup polls) granted journalist Jean Daniel on October, 24^th, 1963:

"I believe that there is no country in the world, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime…I will even go further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the U.S. Now we shall have to pay for those sins.”

Kennedy was describing a nation with a higher per capita income than half of Europe, the lowest inflation rate in the Western Hemisphere, the 13^th lowest infant-mortality on earth and a huge influx of immigrants. Crazier still, in 1959 U.S. investments in Cuba accounted for only 14 per cent the island’s GNP, and. U.S. owned companies employed only 7 per cent of Cuba's workforce.

Now regarding that “U.S.-backed” Batista:

“Me and my staff were all Fidelistas,” boasted Robert Reynolds, the CIA’s “Caribbean Desk’s specialist on the Cuban Revolution” from 1957-1960.

“Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except (Republican) ambassador Earl Smith.” (CIA operative in Santiago Cuba 1957’59, Robert Weicha.)

"Without U.S. help Fidel Castro would never have gotten into power,” flatly testified former U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, Earl T. Smith during Congressional testimony in 1960.

But no alternative media was around in 1963 to rub Kennedy’s face in the KGB-hatched and media-spread propaganda he was echoing as gospel. Instead the Communist-hatched lies were accepted as truths by millions of often well-meaning Americans who the liberal media monopoly of the time had rendered none the wiser.

In brief, Russell Brand is simply echoing the sentiments of the most popular U.S. president in modern history. Sad but true. So let’s hand it to the KGB. Their propaganda confections about Cuba became script for comedian moonbats but also for liberals, “moderates,” and indeed, “The Best and Brightest.”