Auguste Pinochet Chiles Departed Embarrassment - Road to the Middle Class

WHO WAS AUGUSTE Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile who died last week? Was he a fascist dictator, as the left believes, or a man who rescued his nation from a Marxist maelstrom?

The facts are that Pinochet, after violently suppressing the socialist Allende government in a 1973 coup, slowly rebuilt Chile economically, and returned the nation to democratic rule, while carefully maintaining immunity for any improper acts committed while he was in power.

But, as the Economist reminds us, even his most fervent supporters are turning away from him, especially after revelations that he �had secretly stuffed $27m in a number of foreign bank accounts.�

Probably we would not care a whit about Pinochet were it not that the left had appointed him as their global fascist monster-in-chief. In 1973 Salvador Allende was the Great Red Hope, combining socialism and revolution in an intoxicating mixture that had lefties worked up into a fever of excitement worldwide. But in reality Allende was trampling on the political and economic rights of Chileans, wrecking the economy, and salting every institution in the country with political activists. So the army felt obliged to put a stop to it.

But now everyone wants to forget Pinochet and put him behind them.

[C]onservative opposition parties which largely supported his dictatorship realised soon after his arrest in London that he had become an electoral liability. Neither they nor the centre-left Concertaci�n coalition, which has governed Chile since 1990, have any intention of changing the free-market policies which have underpinned Chile�s economic growth for the past 16 years. But nor do they wish to remember that the policies had their origin in his regime�s structural reforms.

So was Pinochet an evil monster or the savior of his nation? Who knows. Today he is just an embarrassment.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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