Hugo Chavez’ inspirational debt to Ernesto “Che” Guevara is such that he titled his regime’s socio-economic model, “Mision Che Guevara.” Don’t look for much of this in the MSM–but as I write Venezuela’s youth are hitting the streets in the tens of thousands and with raised fists–against socialism (having gotten a taste of it.)

In response, Chavez’ police and brownshirt goon-squads (some mimicking their national leader by wearing Che T-shirts) bludgeon, tear gas, shoot and arrest hundreds of rebellious Venezuelan youth.

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In fact, nothing could be more fitting. In a famous speech in 1961, Che Guevara denounced the very “spirit of rebellion” as “reprehensible.” “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates” commanded Guevara. “Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.”

And woe to those youths “who stayed up late at night and thus reported to work (government forced-labor) tardily.” Youth, wrote Guevara, “should learn to think and act as a mass.” Those who “chose their own path” (as in growing long hair and listening to Yankee-Imperialist Rock & Roll) were denounced as worthless “lumpen” and “delinquents.” In his famous speech Che Guevara even vowed, “to make individualism disappear from Cuba!  It is criminal to think of individuals!” he raved.

As luck would have it, this very month GQ magazine modestly crowned itself the crowner of the “25 Most Stylish Men in the World.”  Based on their cover, the top contender for the top spot seems like Johnny Depp, who appears shirtless–all the better to display his Che Guevara pendant.

In the mid 60’s tens of thousands of Cuban youths learned (as in 2010 thousands of Venezuelan youths are learning from one of his most dutiful disciples) that Che Guevara’s admonitions were more than idle bombast. In Che Guevara the hundreds of Soviet KGB and East German secret police STASI “consultants” who flooded Cuba in the early 60’s, found an extremely eager acolyte.  By the mid 60’s the crime of a “rocker” lifestyle or effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked off Cuba’s streets and parks by secret police and dumped in prison camps with “Work Will Make Men Out of You” in bold letters above the gate (the one at Auschwitz’ gate read: “Work Will Set You Free) and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers. The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG, but the conditions were much the same.

Today the world’s largest Che Guevara image adorns Cuba’s headquarters and torture chambers for its KGB-trained secret police. And Johnny Depp seems delighted to flaunt this emblem from his pendants, shirts and kerchiefs.

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A few years ago in a Vibe magazine interview Depp proclaimed his “digging” of Che Guevara.  As a rocker-hipster fan of Che Guevara Johnny Depp has plenty of company.

“Che Guevara has given rise to a cult of almost religious hero worship among radical intellectuals and students across much of the Western world,” proclaimed Time magazine in May 1968. With his hippie hair and wispy revolutionary beard, Che is the perfect postmodern conduit to the nonconformist, seditious ’60s.”

“1968 actually began in 1967 with the murder of Che,” recounts Christopher Hitchens. “His death meant a lot to me, and countless like me, at the time. He was a role model.”

Gushed Kai Kracht, West Germany’s version of Abbie Hoffman: “1968 was the onset of a totally new age, with a new conception of how people should be: they should not to be governed by authorities from above. We studied the great revolutionaries of our century: Lenin, Mao, Che (apparently none of these governed from above!) we wanted to learn from their success. Our revolution was young, and full of groovy slogans.”

Had Johnny Depp been born two decades earlier (and in Cuba) and had attempted the lifestyle of a U.S. teenager or campus rebel his “digging” would have been of a more literal nature. Depp would have found himself digging ditches and mass-graves in a prison camp system inspired by the man glorified on his little pendant. Had his digging lagged, a “groovy” Czech machine-gun butt might have shattered his teeth while other “groovy” Soviet bayonets poked his butt.

Oddly, considering his profession and lifestyle, Depp’s Pirates “blood brother” Keith Richards, seems immune to (or perhaps simply oblivious of) Che-Mania. The Stones, after all, in their classic Sympathy for the Devil cast Lucifer as directing Che’s mentors, models and early suitors – the Bolsheviks: “Stood around St Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change…killed the Czar and his ministers….Anastasia screamed in vain.”

Johnny Depp also “digs” Jack Kerouc’s famous and free-spirited travelogue.  “On The Road was my bible for years,” boasts Depp.  Yet from his t-shirts to his pendants to his bandanas, Depp habitually flaunts the emblem of a regime that imprisons anyone who attempts travel from one Cuban province to the other without proper police-state “papers,” and that machine-guns anyone who tries to travel abroad.

“Young people speaking their minds…a ‘gettin SO MUCH RESISTANCE from behind!” Indeed, Stephen Stills and Neil Young. Just look at Venezuela this week.

So listen up, Hugo: “There’s a battle outside, and it is ragin’….It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls….For the times they are a-changin’”.

Well….maybe. At any rate we will certainly look for Bob Dylan, Bono, Rage Against the Machine, The Police, CSNY,( many more than “Four Dead” here, amigos) etc., etc., to compose odes to these youthful rebels–to these genuine rebels, fighting against a Fascist regime inspired by Che Guevara.

“I bet you were expecting a Hollywood putz,” boasted Depp to his obsequious Vibe magazine interviewer who seemed dazzled by Depp’s penetrating sagacity. “Bet you expected  some f**cking commodity without a brain in his head!”

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Nothing of the sort, Mr Depp. In Hollywood, you tower as an exceptional intellectual commodity.