Che Guevara & Ireland’s Quisling Capitalism

Che Guevara & Ireland’s Quisling Capitalism
William Wall – 16 April, 2012 – Irish Left Review

The controversy over Galway City Council’s proposal to erect a statue to Che Guevara to commemorate his family links to the city (his mother Anna Elizabeth was a Lynch with Galway connections), is indicative of a wider discourse in Irish society.

It has drawn the ire of, among others, multi-millionaire Declan Ganley, founder of the right-wing, pan-European Libertas political party. Ganley is chairman and CEO of USA-based military communications specialist Rivada Networks (’Total interoperability’). He appointed Richard Myers, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and George Bush point man for Iraq, to its board. He has many ties with the USA military and multinational corporations, and he has mustered a motley crew of Republican politicians, right-wing academics, businessmen and CEOs to make the simple declaration that a statue to a ‘terrorist’ is likely to damage American multinational investment in Ireland. The crew includes Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of Cuban extraction and chair of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. This is enough to cause a ripple in the space-time continuum that is American-Irish croneyism.

Why should such a relatively minor local event – I passed through Nice recently and had a meal on Blvd Stalingrad, and every town in Italy has its Via Gramsci – cause political and economic apoplexy, especially at a time when Western capitalism is in economic meltdown? In passing it is worth noting that the statue will be paid for jointly by Argentina and Cuba, and will therefore cost Ireland nothing except a patch of grass or concrete on Eyre Square. …more