Was Che more like Anakin Skywalker or Harry Potter?

Che has been an awful lot in the public in Denmark recently and I really don’t want to give him more coverage than necessary. However yesterday I was asked by Jacob Mchangama to write a piece as a rebuttal to an editorial piece in one of our conservative news papers. If you know Danish you can read it here: En replik til David Trads.

Anyway this morning it struck me that the whole Che myth is nothing but pure unadulterated fiction. So if Che is a fictional character, which one is he most like: Anakin Skywalker or Harry Potter?

If you look at his life you might be tempted to think Anakin. After all he started out a nice clean cut white boy who travelled the known universe on his millenium falcon (or was it a bike?). He set out filled with idealism to fight the evils of the capitalist empire. Then he went over to the dark side and started killing kids and other innocents. Rationally this sounds pretty much like the historical character Che.

However the fictional character Che, the one on all the T Shirts and middle class dorm room walls throughout the world, is probably more like Harry Potter. A clean cut middle class kid from the suburbs. His parents involved with a strange parallel reality called socialism. He went to the regional headquarters of this parallel reality known as Cuba (Hogwarts??) where he quickly became a hero in the fight to protect the poor Muggles (The proletariat) against the evil monsters and warlocks of the world (Capitalism and the real evil of Neoliberalism).

So while the historical figure of Che is more like Anakin. This historical figure is largely unimportant in the world today, although it is of course important to the family members of his many victims . The fictional Harry Potter like figure is way more important to the lives of millions of bored middle-class suburban kids wishing to rebel and escape reality into the wonderful magical world of Hogwarts.

Many apologies to Harry Potter fans worldwide, but none to Che fans.