Saturday, October 22, 2011

Pinochet: Capitalist Hero?

In 2006, a blogger for the Von Mises Institute (a very pro-capitalist organization) wrote a blog heralding former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for saving Chile' from their democratically elected President Salvador Allende and his impending communist state.

Allende, a Marxist and socialist won Chile's elections and began a campaign of nationalizing industry to heal Chile's ailing economy. The blogger, compared Allende's agenda to that of former Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. The coup lead by Pinochet, stormed Chile's White House. In what some call a "civil war", others refer to as a coup de grace in the end Allende killed himself and Pinochet took power. After taking power Pinochet punished Allende supporters, trade unionists, socialists etc brutal by using torture and murder.

The argument being made by the blogger is that although thousands of people were murdered, tortured and/or just plain evaporated into thin air by Pinochet's brutal regime, its a small price to pay because death tolls would have been worse under Allende, even though there is no proof to make such a claim.

The writer even goes as far as to say that had there been a Pinochet in Germany to stop Hitler the country would have been better off. Obviously this is to say Allende was Chile's Hitler, or on the road to becoming Hitler-esque leader [despite having zero proof of such]. Now why would they say this? I mean who cares? Well they do.

Pinochet was a capitalist who learned from Milton Freeman and the famed Chicago school of Economics and believed in free-markets and that he "liberated" Chile from Allende's socialism with the help of the United States Government, foreign corporations and powerful foreign economists [all capitalist economists by the way]. The sad part is that If this was a socialist website touting Che Guevara people would hit the ceiling.

To get a sense of how ridiculous this blog is this is a quote directly from the blog itself: "General Pinochet was thus one of the most extraordinary dictators in history, a dictator who stood for major limits on the power of the state, who imposed such limits, and who sought to maintain such limits".

You honestly want people to believe there is a such thing as a benevolent dictator?!  A dictator who limits his own powers? Yet, they willfully admit he murdered and tortured people? How utterly retarded.

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