The most complete human being of our age. —Jean-Paul Sartre, about Ernesto “Che” Guevara
“Tengo una remera del Che y no sé por qué,” —Argentine saying (“I have a Che T-shirt and I don’t know why.”)
Fatherland, socialism or death! —El Presidente Hugo Chavez’ rallying cry.
So I was reading Gmail the other day and saw one of those really Twilight Zone-esque ads that Google puts up above your inbox along with the news crawl, such as advertisements for golden-crusted Brussels sprouts, tips on caring for cocker spaniels, top-dollar custom-made guitar picks, or The Circumcision Center, a urology practice in Atlanta specializing in fly-in snip-snip to your willy. Don’t eat gas-inducing Brussels sprouts before your visit or attempt to pay in expensive boutique guitar picks while your manic cocker yips at the good doctor’s heels….
No, those are just ordinarily weird(?) but this ad was for Radical Jack’s T-shirts, which was downright ironic. Radical Jack, it seems, is an aging ’60s radical (ex-SDS, etc.) who has embraced capitalism to bring merch to the progressive masses… merch bearing the smiling likeness of Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, Subcommandante Marcos, etc., anti-Bush merch, etc. This is the place you can get the acne-pocked face of Leftist dictator du jour Hugo Chavez along with a bunch of guys that are handy with red, blue and yellow face paint printed on a t-shirt of your very own. Note to Jet Set Leftists: Good old Hugo has been showing his true colors in the coming Dec. 2 capstone of his autogolpe, taking plays straight from the playbook of Stalin and Hitler: Shooting student protesters, widely intimidating voters, calling for the execution of former allies, etc. (Bolivár in the end ruled as a dictator, too.)
Well there is a place in Marxist thought to make use of the techniques of the enemy against him and I would be hard-pressed to think of a more crassly capitalist mushroom than a online merch store, well except maybe this. From the “about”:
Welcome to RadicalJack.com – A place for radical T-shirts, books, films and gear. Most progressives and revolutionary activists agree that putting messages on T-shirts is a very effective way of popularizing the movement’s message. At RadicalJack.com we are seeking to offer a broad selection of progressive t-shirts and other cultural items designed to get your message across and stimulate discussion. Please browse our site and let us know what you think! All of our proceeds go to support the progressive movement, so the money generated by your purchases will be used to support the struggles you believe in!
That’s right, folks, if your cause is, oh, mass death of tens of millions by famine induced by collectivization and crazy forced industrialization followed a decade later by a fit of pique which lead to a million and a half additional deaths, do we have a T-shirt for you! A notable asymmetry: While the classics of Lenin, Trotsky, and Chairman Mao (“Mao More Than Ever“), appear all over Radical Jack’s, Comrade Stalin, defender of Marxism from 1928 (or so, depending on how you count it) until he dropped dead in 1953, gets no love, no love At All…. =>:{( (That’s a sad Stalin smiley, in case you were wondering.) I didn’t see a shirt for Zimbabwe’s strongman Robert Mugabe, who’s managed to turn what was arguably an African success story into a hellhole in less than a decade, but I’m sure that’s just an oversight. Like Chavez, Mugabe had his foreign jet-set claque (not so much these days). He also had his Night of the Long Knives/Dirty War mashup in Ndebeleland. No love for Middle Eastern anti-American tyrants either, or either of the Kims, père or fils—I guess Kim Jong Il’s official biography and Elvis ‘do is just too weird even for Radical Jack’s. Challenge to readers: Post your favorite oversights in the comments!
Naturally there is much Che to be had. Che was incredibly photogenic to be sure—he had a Brad Pitt boyish handsomeness about him—but not a nice guy, having been, among other things, commander of La Cabaña Prison in Cuba which made the likes of Abu Ghraib look like summer camp… we’re talking about a place where an unknown number of “enemies of the revolution” went in to receive a bullet to the back of the head. Che’s tenure there makes George W. Bush’s exercise of clemency, or, rather, lack thereof, in his years at Texas governor downright lenient. He also managed to run the relatively thriving Cuban economy into the ground during his brief tenure as Minister of Economy through the ever-popular collectivization (though I bet anyone likely in that position would have done the same). In other words, Che was Castro’s Lavrenti Beria or Heinrich Himmler and wearing a T-shirt of him should be seen to be roughly similar to wearing one of those fine gentlemen on your chest. Suffice it to say that Che—like famed Waffen SS member Otto Skorzeny or ringleader of the 911 hijackers Mohammed Atta—is proof-positive that courage is a tool; it matters to what end you put it. (Oddly enough, Skorzeny was, in fact, banging Eva Peron when Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Che was supposed to have been interacting with Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Evita. I should also note that, so far as we know, Skorzeney fired his guns at combatants, not helpless civilians.) Che is, as a recent stories indicate, so protean a figure that I hear tell even German neo-Nazis carry signs with him on it claiming he was “a nationalist,” which is patently ridiculous. (I can’t seem to find a reliable link, sorry.) You used to be able to buy Che stuff at Target and he is, of course, nearly ubiquitous coffee shop decor. And a lock of Che’s hair goes for big bucks these days. He’s even become Saint Ernesto in Bolivia. Sainthood, it seems, is pretty darn protean, too. I’m quite certain Radical Jack makes most of his money (“used to support the struggles you believe in!”) on Che (and anti-Bush stuff). Remember, Che urges you to Chenge the World… in a fetching powder blue scoopneck T. Even Marxists it seems are not immune to the lure of a stupid double ententre… a sure sign they’ve embraced their inner retailer.
Now, if I were getting a T-shirt, I’d want two:
- Two dead radicals, thereby giving Stalin his due.
- The Hoff in, unarguably, his finest moment:
I have to say, though, this one, this one, this one or this one—all available on Radical Jack’s—would do pretty damn well. (There are others.) Too bad they’re up with a bunch of megalomaniacs and murderous rogues….
November 19, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I couldn’t agree more. Personally I want a USSR one with hammer and sickle. That’s just so chic and I am gonna look like a real rebel.
November 19, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Dude, you like don’t seem to get it and all. See Che would want to be on t-shirts, it was like his dream, man. It means people are seeing him. It means people are hearing his message. See the thing is, you big wigs with your fancy web sites and advertising big dollars think that if we use your machine, we somehow become the machine. No man, we use it against you. We’re revolutionaries, like Che and Mao. And no, they aren’t murderers dude, people died, but not for the reasons that President Republifucker says. Its all lies man, lies that are being sold like Brit’s twat. You believe it, just like you believe Tom Cruise is your God.
November 19, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Kinga says:
###I couldn’t agree more. Personally I want a USSR one with hammer and sickle. That’s just so chic and I am gonna look like a real rebel.###
Oh, oh, get the hammer and sickle tattooed to your forehead! That’ll REALLY show how much of a rebel you are! T-shirts (and magnetic car ribbons) are for those who lack conviction.
Pabsta wrote:
###Dude, you like don’t seem to get it and all. See Che would want to be on t-shirts, it was like his dream, man.###
Actually I suspect it might have been his goal, or at least he wouldn’t mind.
November 19, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Looked at the list of t-shirts. The Einstein one and the 68 olympics were not quite as doomsdayish as you make out but yes the litany of back slaps for dogmatists was somewhat depressing.
It was the same feeling I get when I see youngsters wandering down the street wearing relgious t-shirts or the oh so certain christ stickers on the back of various vehicles.
The certainty of dogmatists is a never ending source of worry for me, I mean how do you communicate with people who know what is right all the time?
Old Radical Jack is just a political version of Pat Robertson and the two of them haven’t moved on since they made their mind.
It kind of reminds me of when I went to a school re-union, for a lot of people there, school seemed to have been the pinnacle of their existence because they were still at school. The team captain still wanted that respect and continued living the life and nothing you could say would make him aware of let alone appreciate the cool breeze of reality.
So Jack is a sad old relic, just as the the various cults that exist in the world and most of the political parties are sad old relics of a surer more “ideal” time. The question that needs an answer now is what is needed to make things better?
November 19, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Dave C wrote:
###Looked at the list of t-shirts. The Einstein one and the 68 olympics were not quite as doomsdayish as you make out but yes the litany of back slaps for dogmatists was somewhat depressing.###
As I noted at the bottom of my post, there are plenty of people there who ARE fine, but they do not belong next to Mao, Trotsky, etc. I could have just as well picked Einstein. In fact I must have missed that one because I would surely have put him in with Harriet Tubman, Steven Biko, Frederick Douglass and MLK.
November 30, 2007 at 11:46 am
[…] finger and, let’s face it, they weren’t so f—ing stupid, Hollywood Leftists and my home boy Radical Jack would be slamming him for what he really is. Now, he’s completing the process of autogolpe, […]
November 30, 2007 at 3:18 pm
[…] finger and, let’s face it, they weren’t so f—ing stupid, Hollywood Leftists and my home boy Radical Jack would be slamming him for what he really is. Now, he’s completing the process of autogolpe, […]
December 5, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I just ran across some other entertaining shirts, involving our friend Radical Jack . . .
http://www.thoseshirts.com/tshirts.html
December 5, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Angry Diesel Engineer wrote:
###I just ran across some other entertaining shirts, involving our friend Radical Jack . . .
http://www.thoseshirts.com/tshirts.html###
Those are pretty good examples of the (muted) right-wing analogs of Radical Jack. Reagan on a shirt I have no objection to but Ann Coulter… ick, ick, ick.
January 17, 2008 at 6:48 pm
[…] Che-ney thong is pretty good. I was disappointed that my homie Radical Jack didn’t have a Che thong, but I’m sure that if I looked hard enough, one could be […]
May 15, 2008 at 8:43 am
Yep, comunism killed almost as many as capitalism but not as many as american expancionism, some of the t-shirts are nonsens thats right but most of them reflect the feeling of hate toward the american goverments liberal or conservative, for the rest of the world there is no diference. The us economy is going down for one reason, president Bush needs to ivade more contries to steel oil.
El Che was a guerrilla man he is not remebered for how many he killed but becaused he killed capitalists many of them hired by the CIA or the US goberment, and that s why he is a Hero and always will be remebered.
May 15, 2008 at 9:08 am
Ernesto wrote:
Yep, comunism killed almost as many as capitalism but not as many as american expancionism
??? I assume you are referring to the colonization of America. Unfortunately, the last guy in the disease pool musical chairs was going to get it. Sadly for the Native Americans, they were it.
See http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ for a comparative breakdown. No doubt about it, there is blood on the hands of nearly every winner in the international system, often a lot of it that said individuals would like to forget (see Belgium). But the death toll under Mao and Stalin is so large in such a short period of time (1930s to the 1960s) it boggles the mind.
And El Che, he can go get stuffed.
January 27, 2015 at 1:52 pm
Wonderfull, thanks