my new university friends. Many of those friends were self-declared Socialists—Western Socialists, that is. They spoke about Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Salvador Allende, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara as secular saints. It occurred to me that they were like my father in this respect: the only revolutionaries they considered worthy of admiration were the ones that had been murdered. These icons showed up on posters, T-shirts, and coffee cups, much like how photos of Enver Hoxha would show up in people’s living rooms when I was growing up. When I pointed this out, my friends wanted to know more
...more
