my connection with the tea party

[kandrathe]

And you are unworried by confirmation bias? Because it scares me to death, as a historian. And it should scare you too, if you're interested in being objective.

I am objectively seeking the truth. There is always bias, and so one must be skeptical and willing to review evidence and counter evidence. As such, I welcome your scrutiny and questioning of sources. Anecdotal evidence is less reliable, but en masse it lends credibility to the emerging picture of the man. His own diary convicts him.

My argument is not that Che was a nice guy and did not kill people. Che was a violent revolutionary who believed the uncompromising use of force was the only viable way to attain social change - changes which I do not, by and large, believe in.

That is good. I understand you are questioning the process, and not necessarily the result.

My argument is that *whatever* you want to say about Che, from making a saint of him to damning him utterly, it must be based on facts. You can "read between the lines" once you've got the lines straight, but the process is clear: evidence first, interpretation second. If your interpretation is already in place, colouring your "evidence," then you are at serious risk of falsifying the historical record.

It appears the official history so far has been the opposite, falsely uplifting a murderous brute into a romantic hero. I'm willing to listen to those who are interested in setting the record straight, even when the evidence is third-party, such as the "he was often heard to say, " type of anecdotal testimony.

Re: the Cuba Archive, I'll look into it. Although it is interesting to note that their tally is in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands, as regularly claimed. Once again, I have no doubts the Cuban revolutionaries executed plenty of people, and many of them with little or nothing in the way of a trial. But whether that's a couple hundred people killed during a revolution, or tens of thousands killed in massive political oppression, is a matter that needs to be settled historically, not by going with whatever our gut feelings tell us.

Right, but this is not evidence of just "the Cuban revolutionaries executed plenty of people", this is evidence directly linking the many hundreds of executions without due process to Che's command.