Che: Neither big, nor clever, nor cool.

So we have it. Another political biopic. This time of Che Guevara. Now, I’m in no hurry to go see this motion picture, so I’m talking from a point of relative ignorance here. It could be a great film – the sort of intelligent political film-making that we saw with Downfall. Failing that, it could be half-decent – like Oliver Stone’s incredibly biased yet still oddly watchable Nixon. Or it could be a big old bag of bollocks. Like I say, haven’t seen it, so don’t know. What it will have to work hard to do, though, is avoid the sort of meaningless Che worshipping that so many people seem to do across the world.

Still, no doubt the filmmakers have a sense of perspective around their chosen subject. Oh, wait, no they don’t. Producer and leading man Del Toro seems to have very clear ideas on Che:

"I hear of this guy and he's got a cool name. Che Guevara!" Del Toro as good as swoons when he says it. And the appeal does seem as simple as that - groovy name, groovy man, groovy politics… “So I went to a library and I was looking at books, and I came across a picture by René Burri of Che, smiling, in fatigues, I thought, 'Dammit, this guy is cool-looking!'"

I cannot describe how irritating I find this sort of thing. Seriously, it makes me want to punch strangers in the face and unleash some sort of disease into the general population that can directly attack those with the moron gene. This worshipping of a totalitarian ideologue and vicious warmonger shows just how dumb some people can be. Since when has Communism been groovy? What is groovy about it? The Stalinist purges? The killing field of Cambodia? And what sort of fresh bullshit is it to support Che because he was cool-looking? Fuck that. With bells on. He was also a mass-murderer, and some who fought for would-be authoritarian dictators. Deep down, Che is no different from Stalin. Or Pol Pot. Or Kim Jong-Il. Same ideology, same willingness to suppress freedom and murder people for the realisation of a deeply flawed system of political beliefs.

Make no mistake about this – Che was an unpleasant individual. Even some of those on the left argue that he is far from an icon, and actually is a repulsive, unpleasant totalitarian. He was responsible for the executions of political opponents. He helped create the Castro dictatorship in Cuba that – a regime, once you get past the fashionable anti-Americanism of Fidel, has an absolutely reprehensible record when it comes to human rights. Sure, Che is a key historical figure; once you get past the fact that he was more photogenic that other leading communists, it should be pretty plain to see that his historical legacy is largely, if not overwhelmingly, negative.

Che Guervara isn’t cool; he was a mass-murdering enemy of freedom everywhere. And whilst I support the rights of anyone – from pretentious film stars through to pseudo-fashionable youths wearing their Che T-shirts – to believe anything they like about Guevara, I also support my right to call them ignorant morons for their beliefs.