Pinochet remembered

Augusto Pinochet, San Bernardo, Chile, 86 -15, originally uploaded by Marcelo Montecino.

Neddie Jingo shares a personal memory of Pinochet.

HT: Julia.

Comments

[Madison Guy]

Chilling. One more reason the warmed-over Cold War abstractions in the WaPo valentine to Pinochet and Jeane Kirkpatrick (JK = mother of all neocons?) are so obscene. In both Chile and Iraq, realpolitik took precedence over principle, with the result that real people -- not abstractions -- were killed and tortured. Nothing can justify that. Note to WaPo editors: When the pull of abstraction gets too strong, take a moment to remember Victor Jara and what happened to him.

[shrike]

Republicans get aroused when they think of a premier fascist like Pinochet - thus their love of the Busho crime family.

[Barry]

If you see the reactions, you realize that when liberals accuse right-wingers of being actual fascists, we're only exaggerating a bit. Lots of these guys have a hard-on for Pinochet.

[cfrost]

I never got the impression that the American right had any objections whatsoever to Pinochet. Any complaints were always answered by drawing comparisons with an Allende regime that was avowedly socialist (horrors!) and presumed by the right to be inevitably headed towards Stalinism. If pressed on human rights abuses they’d say that he did wonders for the moribund Chilean economy, sometimes implying, but often just bluntly stating that “authoritarian” methods are the only means that would work. Years later they might occasionally allow that perhaps a tiny bit too much zeal was shown, but gosh, look at the wonderful results: Chilean fruit in February, Chilean wines, Chilean package tours to fly-fish trout or ski in the Andes. All assumed to be precluded by socialism.

I remember a lot of talk about malevolent socialist governments, like the one Pinochet mercifully extinguished, expropriating property, and what a crime that is, and what a blessing it was that Pinochet had nipped that particular terror in the bud. I don’t remember the reactionaries bemoaning the fate of workers corralled into the collectivized farms and grim factories one assumes would be their fate in the socialist Chile of the fevered right-wing imagination. All I heard was whining about property rights.

[cfrost]

I forgot to add: enjoy hell General Pinochet.

[namvetted]

Fascism=good; popularly elected "socialist"=bad. So spoke Herr Kissinger. Realpolitik is never pretty.

[RobW]

I'm just wondering why Bruno Kirby is whispering in his ear...