Synecdouche

Catapulting the propaganda

American conservative commentators will not be having with the lingering prominence of Che Guevara in popular culture. They are horrified by the thought of people buying Che t-shirts or posters -- don't such people realise that they make themselves apologists for all the crimes committed in the course of the Cuban revolution, if not complicit in them?

This provides Jonah Goldberg, Mona Charen et al. with a useful shorthand whereby someone's Che-themed garments serves as a synecdoche for their clueless politics. They have observed that the ownership of Che imagery is an admission of a romantic, unthinking substitute for political reflectiveness... in short, of Liberalism.

Or perhaps there is just a virus on their computers that enlivens their writing with Che references at random intervals.

Feb 27, 2008 *

June 14, 2011

28 February, 2012

Random illustration

I am wondering what Jonah will make of a magazine that exhibits the same sort of romantic admiration for the crimes of Stalinism, to the extent of appropriating the iconography and style of Stalinist totalitarian art, and depicting the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates as Heroes of the Socialist Revolution. Surely denunciations will ensue.



* This particular claim -- promptly disproven, though never retracted -- was amusingly published under the title "Radicals Never Say Sorry".