Last summer the British government banned U.S. radio commentator Michael Savage from setting foot in the UK.  “Fostering extremism and hatred ” was his crime, as explained by Britain’s Home Secretary of the time, Jacqui Smith. “Coming to the U.K. is a privilege,” she elaborated, “and I refuse to extend that privilege to individuals who abuse our standards and values to undermine our way of life. Therefore, I will not hesitate to name and shame those who foster extremist views as I want them to know that they are not welcome here.”

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The following month, for a hoopla titled “Cuba 50,” Britain rolled out the red carpet for Che Guevara’s daughter, Aleida. The celebration was billed as “the biggest European celebration in this 50th anniversary year (of Castro’s Stalinist regime).”

This British celebration for a regime that jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s, murdered political prisoners at a higher rate than pre-war Hitler’s, created refugees at a higher rate than the Waffen SS and Gestapo created while conquering and subjugating France, and came closest of anyone to plunging the world into nuclear war—the festival for this regime was held in London’s luxurious Barbican Centre.

( All figures for the above murder, oppression, and war-mongering by the T-shirt idol of  “human-rights” and “peace” demonstrators are provided with full documentation in Exposing the Real Che Guevara, and Fidel Hollywood’s Tyrant.)

And lest anyone get the wrong idea, Che’s daughter was feted by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s jurisdictional domain in order to promote, in her own words: “my father’s ideals, his concerns, and his ambitions. I believe that my father is a banner to the world!”

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Fine. Let’s have a look at Aleida’s father’s “ambitions,” keeping in mind that “hate speech” is a buzz-term beloved by the likes of former British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and, for them, has an extremely elastic application.

“Hatred as the central element of our struggle!” raved Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in his 1966 Message to the Tricontinental Conference in Havana. “Hatred that is intransigent…hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine…We reject any peaceful approach. Violence is inevitable. To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow! The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him! These hyenas (Americans) are fit only for extermination. We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm! The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”

No rational person would require any such elasticity of definition to classify Aleida’s father’s–this “banner to the world!”–speech.

“My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood.” Aleida’s father had raved as early as his Motorcycle Diaries (though this passage was somehow omitted from Robert Redford’s heartwarming movie.) “Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any vencido that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!”

Vencido, by the way, translates into English as “defeated” or “surrendered.”

And Aleida’s father made good on his boast. The “acrid odor of gunpowder and blood” very rarely reached Che Guevara’s nostril from actual combat. It always came from the close-range murder of bound, gagged or blindfolded men (and boys.) The Black Book of Communism, written by French scholars and published in English by Harvard University Press (neither an outpost of the vast right-wing conspiracy), estimates 14,000 firing squad murders in Cuba by the end of the 1960’s, the equivalent, given the relative populations, of over 3 million executions in the U.S. (Obama-ite opponents of capital punishment, by the way, always figure prominently among Che idolaters.)

Aleida’s father delighted in delivering the coup de grace to dozens of these. When office work (signing execution warrants) tore him away from his beloved execution pits, Che ameliorated his emotional deprivation by having a special window installed in his office at Havana’s La Cabana prison so he could watch his busy and beloved firing squads at work, beaming at the spectacle. Among many others, Aleida’s father invited Ernest Hemingway as a spectator to the slaughter. And Papa eagerly accepted.

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Tragically for tens of thousands of Cubans, Aleida’s father was in a position to convert his (genuine!) hate speech to action. By the mid 1960’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 and with machine gunners posted all along the watchtowers. The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG, but the conditions were quite similar.

The UMAP Prisoners Association in Miami has the names of hundreds of these imprisoned “delinquents” (as Che denounced them) who were bludgeoned, bayoneted and otherwise tortured to death while in these forced-labor camps, established under the direction of Aleida’s father, the man London honored with a gigantic festival on June 27/28, 2009.

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“Gay-bashing” seems to figure big in Jacqui Smith’s definition of hate speech. But apparently when this bashing comes in the literal form, involving Soviet gun-butts and bayonets bashing a gay’s head until he dies from massive cerebral trauma, it fails to fall under her definition of “hate speech.”

In the process of these tortures and murders Aleida’s dad helped his Cuban mentor establish a personal fiefdom that proved quite enduring. As evident by the festival’s title, this totalitarian endurance is what Jacqui Smith’s London (who could not tolerate Michael Savage’s “hate speech”) celebrated.

Alas, when Aleida’s father finally found himself up against armed and determined enemies in Bolivia, all that bloodthirsty bluster mentioned above vanished in a “poof.” “Don’t shoot” he whimpered to his U.S. trained Bolivian captors as he dropped his fully loaded weapons, “I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”

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His Bolivian captors viewed the matter differently. In fact they adopted a policy that has since become a favorite among Americans who encounter (so-called) endangered species on their property: “Shoot, Shovel and Shut up.” Justice has never been better served.