History

The Real Legacy Of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet

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Recent incidents of leftist violence in the United States have caused some thoughtful commentators to consider the possibility of a return to 1970s-style leftist terrorism in the West.  For most young people today, names like the Red Brigades, the Japanese Red Army, the Baader-Meinhof Organization, and Carlos the Jackal mean little.  But in their day these groups caused a considerable amount of damage and subversion in the places they conducted their business.  The “student protest” movements of the 1960s were the direct progenitors of such leftist terror groups; and as antiwar activism died down, overt violence—bank robberies, bombings, assassinations, and similar acts—took its place.  Even though such groups may be quite small in number, they can contribute to a climate of fear and chaos far out of proportion to their memberships.

With many sectors of the media and some public figures in the United States actually stoking the fires of sedition and treason, it is probably only a matter of time before things happen that make the recent Berkeley riots seem quaint by comparison.  It is possible that some of the so-called “protest” groups of today could metastasize into professional terrorist organizations.  With funds supplied by interested parties abroad (i.e., state actors or other terror groups), such groups would rise to the level of national security threat that would justify their repression or dismantling.  Law and order are a government’s most pressing functions; without them nothing of any importance can be accomplished.

It was against this backdrop that I finally took a close look at the record of Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet.  Pinochet took power in a 1973 coup and ruled the country until 1990.  In the conventional “wisdom” peddled by the US media, he was a ruthless authoritarian who violently repressed leftist protesters and ruled Chile with an iron hand.  It is true that his government violated human rights, shut down political parties, and dismantled trade unions.  But this is not the entire story.  A close look at the actual record shows that there was a very real threat of a communist takeover in Chile at the time, and that Pinochet’s economic policies laid the groundwork for Chile’s economic prosperity today.

In a 1991 interview, finance minister Alejandro Foxley said, “We may not like the government that came before us. But they did many things right. We have inherited an economy that is an asset.” Pinochet’s government overthrew the leftist regime of Salvador Allende.  Eduardo Montalva, who served as Chile’s president before Allende, called Allende’s regime a “carnival of madness.”  Leftist violence had become commonplace by 1973; the economy was in tatters; and politics had reached a point of near paralysis.  When we read Allende’s  speeches and policies today, he comes across as a 1970s version of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.  And as everyone knows, Chavez’s policies destroyed his country’s economy and edged it to the brink of social chaos.

It is beyond question that Allende—before he was overthrown—was trying to transition Chile into a communist political and social system.  The country was on the brink of civil conflict in 1973 and was only saved from disaster by the intervention of a military government.

It is against this backdrop that the Pinochet takeover must be seen.  Just before Pinochet’s coup, Chile’s Chamber of Deputies in August 1973 voted 81-47 that Allende had systematically destroyed the rule of law and the institutional structures of the country.  Furthermore—and this is never mentioned by the media today—Pinochet’s coup was supported by the majority of the Chilean people and by Allende’s predecessor Montalva.

What specifically did Pinochet’s government do?  According to a study conducted by the Hoover Institution:

Domestic banks were deregulated in the late 1970s but reregulated with vigor in the early 1980s. Poverty had increased enormously during and in the wake of the UP’s disastrous economic policies, and it decreased only as a result of the state-led stabilization policies, structural reforms, and targeted social programs of the Pinochet period. Major state expenditures for direct action social programs targeted to the poorest of the poor were initiated in the middle 1980s, not after 1990. Poverty levels, as high as 50 percent in 1984, were reduced to 34 percent by 1989. They continued to fall after 1990 to 15 percent in 2005…[The Pinochet government] created the underlying economic policies and structures in the 1970s and 1980s that [its successor] maintained and that produced jobs for the poor and an economic surplus to enable targeted state antipoverty programs.

The Hoover Institute study, quoted above, goes on to say that Pinochet’s authoritarian government actually served as a beacon of innovation around the world that is still followed today.  He was able successfully transition his country from a “statist” model to a “market” model long before China or Britain were able to do so.  The study concludes:

At that time the Chilean economic model was considered anathema almost everywhere—partly because of its association with Chile’s military regime but also because it was viewed (wrongly, as it turned out) as an unthinkable, reactionary model per se, especially for developing countries. (Of the many military regimes in Latin America in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, the only one to break with state capitalism was Chile’s.) But global perceptions of the Chilean economic model changed, slowly at first, more rapidly and massively after the mid-1980s. By now, the economic policies of most countries of Latin America; North America; Western, Central, and Eastern Europe; China; India; Russia and its former republics; much of Africa; and many other places around the world have followed the Chilean lead rather than fled from it.

Pinochet himself got little thanks for his accomplishments.  While the left celebrates men like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, Pinochet is kept locked in the closet of public opinion as a knuckle-dragging dictator.  The truth is quite different.  Leftist groups successfully petitioned for Pinochet’s extradition to Spain in 1988 for trial on alleged human rights abuses; yet they never called for the extradition and trial of Castro.  Any objective look today at the economies of Chile, Venezuela, and Cuba leave no room for doubt about whose policies were better for their people.  While Pinochet’s government certainly arrested and executed political opponents, a strong case can be made that the positive features of his regime outweighed the bad.  Recognition of this fact is long overdue.

Read More: What The Berkeley Riot Means For America

138 thoughts on “The Real Legacy Of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet”

        1. Most libertarians, when push comes to shove, always side with the fascists. Ludwig von Mises extolled Mussolni and Hitler. Tom Woods is a neo-confederate racism apologist. Many libertarian theorists speak warmly of Pinochet. Basically apologists for fascism.

        3. He also glorified fascist regimes. Libertarians will do anything if it means keeping their seat of privilege.

      2. Yes, because another communist hellhole in Southamerica was just what the people needed…

        1. You realize slaughtering people and murdering people for their views is different than simply changing government.

        2. If that people just settled for holding their views you would be right, but when that people with different views want you dead and your family and your country, peaceful endings are out of the picture. While many innocents died, the alternative was the prospect of a dictatorship with many more dead, complete destruction of the country and of anyone holding different views.

        3. Allende wasn’t expropriating people’s property, unlike what that gasbag Tom Woods will tel you.

        4. Yes, actually the “Reforma Agragria” was one of those policies. Also Allende himself said that companies would have to produce, not freely, but according to the dictates of the Government. By the way I am chilean.

        5. I don’t know about you but Spanish is my second mothertongue, hence I have far more sources than some watered down story in English to rely on. And you know what? Even leftist supporters of his administration mention the little fact that anyone with more than 80 hectares of land had his property expropiated in the famous Land reform (Reforma Agraria) (http://www.principiamarsupia.com/2013/09/11/3-reformas-de-allende-que-le-costaron-un-golpe-de-estado/) , the little fact that he tried to set up a free university scheme (hahaha) for the poor people of the country, in such a poor place like that at the time, pure madness.
          His mismanagement of the economy brought about anarchy and set the stage for the coup d’etat. You should inform yourself on the topic.

        8. Fair enough. I guess I’ll have to learn Russian in order to read more about the history of Eastern Europe. Will it be easy for someone whose native languages are German and Spanish?

        10. “…companies would have to produce, not freely, but according to the dictates of the Government.”
          If I correctly remember my long-ago high school government class, that’s a characteristic of fascism.

        11. “..than simply changing government”.
          Thats quainte. Some people are not on board with the change especially they will be required to fund it despite their protestsations. And as the left have more experience mudering people when that change does not favor them, blood will be required to stay out of their camps. Kill a leftist and you do the world a favor.

  2. Pinochet also had a great transportation policy. You could always get a free helicopter ride from the government.

    2. In American you take helicopter. In Pinochet’s Chile Helicopter take you!

      1. As long as the rocket went straight into the sun. I would hate to see SJW’s accidentally landing on an alien planet 100,000 years from now infecting the populace with gender fluidity and checking the inhabitants privilege. Well unless it’s the planet from Aliens that is.

        1. The SS Cultural Marxism will be set on a course straight into the centre of the sun so aliens get to keep their safe space

    4. It wasn’t just great transportation policy; it was also paid vacations forever in the middle of the beautiful pacific ocean!!

      2. There once was a man named Pinochet.
        Who stopped Allende and his Marxist way
        He put into a stadium all those who cried
        Then gave them all a free helicopter ride
        And rode off into the sunset after he saved the day!
        ……………………………..Hooray!

    5. You were eligible for the free helicopter ride only if you were a Leftist or a Communist, or one of their “Useful Idiots”….

  3. It’s a question that is often considered too heinous to even discuss, and for this reason we must discuss it.
    Can evil be for the service of good? In the Bible, God used foreign powers who hated him to punish the Israelites through war and oppression (including, but not limited to, having the Assyrians destroy the Kingdom of Israel and breed out of existence the Jewish peoples living there). They visited evils on Israel, but they did so at the will of a God who used it for his own purposes (which, we assume, are inherently “good” – the Euthyphro dilemma does not negate this in a monotheistic theology).
    We perceive it as evil to murder, but we also perceive it as one of the powers of the State to execute (the power of the sword, held by the State but not the people). Is it inherently unjust to execute those whose actions and words would bring about destruction, as the Leftists’ have shown repeatedly to do? Is it ethical to commit what would otherwise be an evil if it can be understood to service greater good?
    This is not a question to take lightly, and we must always place bounds on such powers. If it is not ethical, then the State must not execute anyone who can cause harm. If it is ethical, then the State must be held to an ethical standard of what constitutes such harm, else that power will be greatly abused.
    I perceive this question could take us down other dark roads, as well. If we find it ethical in certain cases, then those we have blanketly categorized as evil might possibly be vindicated to one degree or another (as an obvious example, we might have cause to reevaluate Hitler’s regime).
    —
    Of course, the Left cannot be expected to carry out such questioning. We have seen that they despise Hitler and Pinochet but worship Stalin, Mao, Malcolm X and other domestic terrorists, and Castro. If they were to carry out this question, they would either need to side with those they hate or cast out those they worship – an unlikely prospect, to say the least.

    1. We’re talking about throwing communists out of helicopters, what’s the evil? Are you saying that god is using the communists?

  4. You forgot that Pinochet devised the best strategy for dealing with the communist vanguard – Air Pinochet.
    Bring back Air Pinochet and save the West!

  5. In the various jobs I worked out of college I would run into someone from Chile every now and again. Pinochet would often come up (this was the mid to late ’90s). The Chileans loved or hated this guy. The hate came from artists and faculty types who were pro commie and had to flee the country.
    A typical example of the other end of the spectrum was this guy who saw his family’s business (I think it was a pharmacy.. nothing big) seized under Allende (nationalized) and promptly returned under Pinochet. When discussion came about the people killed by the Pinochet regime his answer was, “he should have shot more of them [leftists]”.

  6. For some reason the left give little exposure to the fact that the KGB rigged Allende’s election victory, and that Pinochet was a reaction to this.
    Strange that

  7. No historical account on Pinochet is fair without mentioning the fact that the USA did everything it could, including imposing economic sanctions using the World Bank, financing propaganda and fostering discontent among the military in order to bring down popularly elected president Salvador Allende
    and
    the fact that Pinochet’s economic miracle was to a great extend due to the fact that Chile was receiving 80% of all Title One Food for Peace in Latin America and $30 million from AID in housing guarantees compared to $4 million for the rest of Central and South America.
    In return of the favor, Chile became the fifth largest customer of U.S. military weaponry falling just behind Iran.
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Reuni%C3%B3n_Pinochet_-_Kissinger.jpg

    1. You missed the KGB funding his campaign to set up a Soviet puppet state in South America

        4. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did but the opposite is also true and not a word is mentioned about it in the original article.

        5. The KGB funded a communist coup, AND the nationalist reaction to said coup??
          Fucking hell, whoddathunkit

        9. Hey you got a source? I am asking because I get the feeling the same thing is happening now, to the USA.

    2. Might be true…but better a capitalist vassal than a communist slave. Just ask Venezuelans or Cubans. In that time, looking back in time there was no other way to deal with people who basically wanted to ruin the country.

      1. Have you even the slightest notion of how better off the Cuban people are compared to US citizens, in the areas of Healthcare, free education, zero poverty, little homeless et al? They also have a first class medical training system which means they send Doctors overseas to help out, particularly in Africa not to mention they have a better infant mortality rate than the US!

        2. Do you realize how much mindless propaganda you just spewed? The day people vie to immigrate to Cuba and not the opposite (people vying to flee the island) you will have a point.

        3. Hahahaha yeah I’m sure the average Cuban is doing fantastic when their own fucking dictator’s hearse broke down in the street and had to be pushed through a shantytown by foot. Ever consider that maybe information coming out of of an authoritarian Communist dictatorship may not be entirely genuine? After all, most of the Cubans I’ve met loved it so much that they fled it to come to the US.

        5. Yes, nothing like being assigned decrepit housing, and being volunteered for ‘volunteer camps’ if you say the wrong thing. Hey, is Cuba still a major child prostitution destination?
          I rather suspect people are fleeing because it is NOT paradise.

        7. omg was that priceless or what?? The “El Commandante’s ” shitbox hearse broke down and had to be pushed!! If that’s not a metaphor for the commie system I don’t know what is…

        8. Chilean here. I can’t tell how the averege Cuban people live, but only know they come here in numbers and don’t fancy returning. And their doctors struggle to pass the validation exams and often see themselves studying another handful of years to catch up.
          I had a Cuban neighbor and from what he told us, their life in Cuba was bearable only because of black markets. So he survived despite of the regime, not thanks to the regime.

        11. The more important of these two is to turn off your TV. Some people are capable of maintaining their rationality while on crack, but the same can’t be said about TV news.

        13. The success of Cuba’s education and health system are grossly overstated. Especially, the health system. It always amazes me how Yankees prattle on and on about how Cuba has the best health care on the planet, despite it’s poorly remunerated and constantly defecting doctors, a lack of basic medical supplies, and a leader who would jet off to Spain when his life is in danger. Yep. Sounds legit to me too.

  9. Still can’t shake the image of his death squads inserting rats into vaginas…
    However, it’s always interesting to see how demonized people are so much more complex : Neville Chamberlain, Ian Smith, Philippe Pétain…

    1. 1% of the people around you are psychopaths,
      There are people in your street who could commit this sort of depravity or worse.

      1. The 1% figure in the general population is correct.
        http://www.livescience.com/16585-psychopaths-speech-language.html
        25% of inmates in the pen are also psychopaths. The ’cause-effect’ fixation in their speech gives them away. A psychopath killer will describe their actions and then add that they were thirsty for grape soda. They’re fixated on personal needs and will say how their butt crack itched while they were bludgeoning someone for a $20 bill.
        I BELIEVE that any woman divorce rapist who goes around with a smile on her face showing off the spoils of her legally plundering some guy is a psychopath. The rate with women has to be higher than men. A serial divorce rapist gold digger is very psychopathic. They are 100% focused on their personal wants at anyone else’s expense. But there are no statutes in the west for incarcerating them for the simple act of being a psychopathic gold digger. Watch a woman’s speech and you can spot the true psychos.

  10. It’s important to remember that Allende was a kgb agent with specific orders to violently overthrow chile’s civil and
    Democratic institutions. This has been confirmed from captured Soviet records.
    Pinochet was fighting to keep his country from becoming part of the Warsaw Pact and a vassal state of the ussr.

    2. I don’t know about what ‘captured soviet records’ you are talking about; but yes, Allende was one of the CCCP’s men in the southern cone (I wouldn’t say he was KGB, though).
      The CCCP was trying to destabilize the backyard of the USA with communist governments, something that the USA couldn’t tolerate. The coup by Pinochet was part logical reaction against communism and part USA reaction against CCCP interests their backyard (the CIA played an important role behind Pinochet).

        1. Yeah, I know about Operacion Condor. In fact, even when that was financed by the CIA I don’t condemn its actions. That operation saved Latin America from communism.

      2. Mitrokhin archive proved it. Allende was on the kgb payroll. IIRC, $400k for his campaign plus a $40k salary for him personally. #FakeNews tried to suppress it.

  11. You can love him or hate him, but Pinochet undeniably cleansed Chile of countless parasites. There are days I wish Trump lived up to the boogeyman image the leftists protestors want him to be. America has far too much scum swinging elections against the interests of working class taxpayers and small business owners.

  14. Who the fuck is this lady?
    http://cdn.acidcow.com/pics/20120510/beautiful_communist_in_the_world_51.jpg
    http://acidcow.com/girls/32342-cute-communist-camila-vallejo-50-pics.html
    They call her the ‘most beautiful communist in the world’ and Chile’s spokesmodel for communism. WTF? She’s being given a platform and being called ‘Chile’s commentator’. Like a super left ‘Cher’ for Chile only prettier. Non elected, just spewing communist venom for some handler, some foundation backer. Is she some jewess? A puppet mouthpiece? Who and what tte fuck is she? She came up in a search when I was looking for a pic of ‘hairy armpit leftist woman’. Humph. I still can’t find a pic of Vallejo with bushy armpits. She’s a tool of someone and me wants to know the chain of strings pulling her mouth flapper. Pinochet would have whacked her after squeezing the names of her handlers and influences out of her.
    BUT WHY? Why the drive now for peddling tired old communism in Chile? Does there really have to be a communist satellite state in the southwest quadrant/hemisphere? And if so then SAYS WHO? Can’t we whack the globalists and drop them from planes already?

    2. I don’t remember her name right now (Camila something?); she’s just basically an attention whore who choose communism instead of Instagram.
      In my personal, pragmatic opinion I would fuck her until she screams “I love Capitalism”.

      1. She’d get stuffed with commie dick on a communist plantation somewhere by the fat bearded elders and get wifed up by the senior bastard eventually. But yes she’s fine and she was a runway model / covergirl.
        https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ6LRE-Q891_7wee2S44Xz3ejLoZRMcU2G1_OCY6v6JyRxulyZAUg
        She never loses the nose ring. Someone is grooming her to fit their pipe dream. It’s probably a sentimental old media tycoon there who had an active commie history. It’s like she’s being billed as some future extreme lefty Evita Peron for the nation with a punk ass nose ring.
        http://img06.deviantart.net/ab6b/i/2015/177/c/9/la__pasionaria__camila_vallejo_by_che38-d8ytsim.jpg
        It’s the media cabal no doubt trying to start a commie fashion trend.
        https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTxzSiBxRDHqhr6lT66oYNk5RDKYpkrm9KZZTHPhadJcDPuTrkg
        But yes she is beautiful. The nose ring by itself is cute.
        http://www.contrainjerencia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2013-08-26-camila-vallejos.jpg
        But then look what they did to her.
        http://static.adnpolitico.com/media/2012/06/07/camila-vallejo-chile.jpg
        That makes nose rings look bad. It’s almost as repulsive as the 90s beautiful white chicks who would turn punk or goth and defile their face by shoving a big safety pin through their jowel. It’s so punk ass to do Camille up like that with the bull ring get up and the hammer and sickle logo in the background. You can tell it’s done up by professional MSM advertizers like selling toothpaste. “Hey look at me. You can be an attractive commie too. They’re trying to market communism like the fashion model endorsed ‘scratch n sniff’ perfume ads in the women’s mags. What they’re doing is they’re ‘branding’ communism, trying to make it a fashion trend with a covergirl model. Absolutely a publishing MSM jew who is vested in media print is behind all of this. Poor girl. Wrong decade for this kind of shit. She’ll eventually come out and renounce how she was used by her promoters.

        1. I’m not a fan of body piercings/tattoos on women; but like you said, it kind of pass in this bitch. However, I don’t feel sorry for her, she know what she’s doing, and she likes it. Probably she is treated like a goddess by dozens/hundreds of betafeminist communist while the only alpha in that scene is fucking her, and she is getting attention by the media…..that’s basically a dream for any woman.

        2. Beautiful?
          Did I miss a memo or something? This girl is a plain Jane, a 6 tops by the pictures shown.
          Standards have *really* fallen.

        3. She has a trademark angle photo that looks poster worthy, kind of like Farrah Fawcett.
          http://www.theclinic.cl/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/6.jpg
          Note the nose ring in the RIGHT nostril. Nose rings denote slavery (from Egypt). You tug on the ring with a small chain and pull your slave around. The nape of the nose is most sensitive. Her eyebrows are a tad bushy but natural. Hairy pussy? I don’t know. Piercet twat? Presumably. The eyebrows and face is kind of Brooke Shieldy looking. She’s a creation of the MSM and advertizers like the Mcdonalds clown is used to sell pink slime. I was incorrect that she’s unelected. She represents some district in the burbs of Santiago, likely elected by moderate income shitlibs with goth and punk teen kids like we saw here in the US with the 90s commercials.

      2. Camila Vallejo.
        She started as the students union president at Universidad de Chile, position she won by campaigning at the engineering faculty -the most prestigious in the country, but a shithole full of drooling nerds-. During her time she was the postergirl for the massive 2011 riots, after that she ran for the Parliament. I met her once, doesn’t seem exactly brilliant – all she does is reciting memorized speeches.
        She had a boyfriend -a Cuban partisan she has a daughter with-, although I heard she fucked several men during the riots and campus ocupations. Now she’s dating a musician I think.

        1. She doesn’t look particularly smart…..it’s good to know it from someone with first hand experience.
          Tambien es bueno tener otro sudamericano aqui.

    1. Right Spain under Franco seemed to be doing ok.. Certainly less bad than say commie Portugal…

  16. This is one ballsy stance. I enjoy a new perspective, but one of the reasons why Allende’s economy was going to hell is because the United States made it so through various sanctions. Kissinger was trying to create an environment in which a coup would be inevitable. When that didn’t quite work, he nudge harder by having the head of the army assassinated (who was pro constitution.)

    1. Right, because if it just weren’t for that gosh durned United States, socialism would flourish across the globe! Darn that pesky United States!

  17. if you’re going to have a dictator a right wing dictator is way better than a a left wing dictator every time. Chile is THE MOST prosperous country in SA. I’ve been there. It’s not Austria or Japan yet but it is “1st world” in most ways. Roads are decent . Modern looking hospitals. The cops are professional and corruption is low. He also hired Milton Friedman the Nobel laureate economist to advise on the economy. Chile has a pension system that is market based instead of our soon-to-be-broke social security system. In Chile your social security is invested in the marked in govt approved funds that are safe e.g index funds that accrue interest so you can have a lot of money when you retire….

    1. The place isn’t what you would call a third world shithole. It’s quite decent and livable.
      FACT – Chile has officially the lowest divorce rate in the world.
      http://www.businessinsider.com/map-divorce-rates-around-the-world-2014-5
      Apparantly Pinochet’s plane drops liquidated the majority of lefty scrappers and rabble before they could graduate uni and ravage the land with further legal terror upon the trad family landscape. Cuba is a different story with astronomically high divorce rates. The problem with Cuba is that the state paid for marriages, many which were frivolous and the state also paid for divorce proceedings. A little overbearing with the state gladhanding if you ask me.

      1. “FACT – Chile has officially the lowest divorce rate in the world.”
        Yeah, sadly, divorce was made legal about 12 years ago.

      2. That map uses data from 2009, when divorce had been legal for just 4 years and was still a novelty. Numbers have changed vastly since then. In 2012 we had already the highest divorce rate in South America (http://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/2012/06/11/estudio-revela-que-chile-registra-la-tasa-de-divorcios-mas-alta-de-sudamerica.shtml ) and in 2015 divorces outnumbered marriages (http://www.emol.com/noticias/Nacional/2016/03/13/792754/La-taza-de-divorcios-supera-en-10-mil-casos-a-los-matrimonios-inscritos-en-2015.html ). Sorry for the links in Spanish. Marriage rate is dropping as well, and our fertility falls into European levels (1.8 children per women). Sorry guys, feminism is trendy here.
        Funfact, last year marriages between Chilean men and foreign women outnumbered the opposite by a factor of three. Chilean men are preferring more feminine women from other South American countries like Colombia and Venezuela
        EDIT Something I forgot to add. The bulk of the Pinochet’s kills were poor people, useful idiots manipulated by the left. Plus relatives (many innocents fell just for being relatives of a stupid partisan, why the fuck the damn soldiers had to go for their relatives). All the heads, the rich commies, what we call “caviar left”, all of them ran to Europe and returned in 1990. They’re the ones in power now, pushing the agenda.

  19. He lived to 91 years of age too….amazing when you think about it. Irrespective of his deeds….that’s a long life, and probably a very exciting thrilling life….far better than most of us.
    Probably copious poon too!
    Even Josef Stalin (74) outlived my own father by 5 years in “free” healthcare Canada!!!!

  20. Chile here. If you forget for a while the MSM narrative on this subject, you could learn that his 17 years on office were quite interesting.
    IMO, his greatest success was to save our country from war. Not the petty war with leftist guerrilla, but a even more dangerous one: In 1978, the Argentine Junta had detailed plans to invade Chile. Pinochet, as a superb general, prevented them to do so commanding an army only a third of the Argentina’s. Even no need to shoot a single bullet: the Argentina Junta gave up their megalomaniac military adventure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Soberan%C3%ADa )
    The Argentine Junta was deeply deceived. So deceived, they thought it was a better idea to invade the Falkland Islands four years later, with a disastrous outcome to them.
    Pinochet was essentially a practical man, far from the leftist megalomania which tries to impose their silly utopian projects everywhere (feminism, equality, gay rights… you name them). He was more worried to build new roads, to educate the population and to strengthen the Army (and certainly, to clean up the country of leftists), and didn’t bother to set a rainbow utopia à la left-wing parties.
    Nowadays, Pinochet has at least a 30% of hardcore supporters in Chile. Surprised? I don’t

    1. My parents worked and lived in Chile during Allende rule. What they have told me about that times sounds very much as what’s happening right now in Venezuela.
      My father used to sleep with a gun under the pillow and the dog (a quite big and aggressive one) loose in the garden, he used to say out loud to everybody, that he would take down any burglar without a doubt. Each and every house in the street was burgled but theirs.
      There was a huge bag of flour in the cellar. Nobody knew, not even close people, since police would confiscate it. People starved. There was hyperinflation (I had a old Chilean monopoly pre-Pinochet using the old currency there, the “escudo”. Hyperinflation was so high that the currency had to be fully rebooted in a fully different one, the “peso”.
      My fathers got his salary in dollars, and he used to change it in the black market, which had a change completely different from the official one, very similar to the situation right now in Venezuela. That made things easier for him, but Chilean people who had the payroll in escudos, they were screwed.

      1. The biggest difference between Allende and Chávez (and perhaps learned lesson) was that Chávez had the armed forces in his favor. That allowed him to stay in power.

        2. yes. but Chávez set up everything and stayed for over 15 years before dying. Allende was overthrown in year 3.
          That’s was possible partly because of the oil, partly because of the army.

    2. A problem with pure practicality is that you can postpone Leftism in the name of building the country and allowing for prosperity, but once the country is most built, what happens? Leftists come back with other pretexts/issues. If it isn’t communism it will be feminism, gender bullshit, muh minority and whatever. Leftism ought to be dissolved, no matter the country or wealth around, or it will always come back.

      2. Yeah. The American feminists got everything that they wanted and asked for, practically handed to them on a silver platter. Then they came back again, whining about nonproblems like “male privilege” and “microagressions”, and crying that they didn’t have FREE contraceptives given to them by ‘muh guverment’.
        And look at them during the ‘Woman’s March’ — to listen to their ‘problems’, you’d think that it was the 1950’s all over again.
        They’re just like the fisherman’s wife from the fable of “The Fisherman and His Wife”, where the wife is NEVER satisfied with what that she has, and ALWAYS wants ‘more, more, more’.

  21. Great research. An honest account of the man to counter the mainstream who lack perspective.

  22. “Any objective look today at the economies of Chile, Venezuela, and Cuba
    leave no room for doubt about whose policies were better for their
    people.”
    The question is better for whom? Far left-wing and far right-wing policies are really two sides of the same coin because they all rely on heavy centralization. Arguments in favor of the far left or right-wing are like two slave masters each trying to sell people on his version of slavery. Pinochet was just the far right-wing version of Stalin. He did a few good things, but in the end he was just a two-bit dictator who made use of death squads and “purged” people who he did not like.
    This article comes off as a sad attempt to justify U.S.-backed coups because “America knows best.” America coined the term “banana republic” by backing the coup in Guatemala. Since America is now a banana republic itself, I suppose trying to justify their past policies is the only comfort Americans have left.

  23. Nice post Quintis. You forgot to mention the thousands of Cuban “doctors” (advisors) on the ground and tons of soviet weaponary flowing into Chile when Allenda came to power. Allende was another pampered ideologue mouthing the same tripe you would hear at Berkely or falling out of some democrats mouth. Killing himself was probably the most gracious act he could have done for the country.
    I have a personal friend who was a helicopter pilot in Chile at the time of the coup and he stated long ago that Pinochet saved Chile from becoming another 3rd world soviet hellhole like Cuba or a modern day Venzuela. Pinochet’s only fault was not killing more leftists.

    1. A helicopter-pilot during Pinochet-regime??? Hmmm…
      Interesting.
      I suppose there are stories he could tell us about how to convince Bolsheviks to cease to be one with the help of a single free helicopter-ride, yes?

      1. He told me a few, but none that he regretted. He moved to NYC in the late 70s and married a woman from Columbia he met there. They are still together to this day.

  24. During the ’80s some communists fled from Chile and obtained asylum in Romania…They received free housing and food, and after a while, the authorities came to them to ask what was their job in Chile, so they could be integrated in the Romanian workforce…
    They were deeply offended by this question and said that they were “revolutionaries”, that was their job, and refused to go to work – they expected to receive everything for free from the Romanian government…

  25. It should be pointed out that between 2000 to 3000 communists ‘disappeared’ right after the coup. Socialist agitators from Cuba, Spain, and some Chileans were rightly summarily executed to keep the country from going communist.
    Pinochet and his followers did not shrink from what had to be done unlike far to many in America today. The left has sole license to political violence up until now. It’s high time that ended.

  26. As in Greece, considering the Junta, Pinochet managed to keep his country free from communism and built the base for future prosperity…
    In Greece’s case, the democratic governments just put a bomb to that base.
    Pinochet is man deserving to be applauded and celebrated, rather than vilified, today though, bums and unpaid prostitutes are considered the paragons of mankind, to the point that everyone else are scum. Pinochet did the best for his country, either if his people wanted it or not.

    1. Metapolitefsi was the worst thing to ever happen to Greece-the criminals of that time should have been executed for their crimes.
      The Junta was the best thing for Greece and was directly responsible for what was termed the ‘Greek economic miracle’. I’m descended from conservative stock myself and had ancestors who were ‘horofilakes’ and in the armed forces which accounts for my hardened Right stance and patriotism/nationalism.
      On a related note, I found my burning hatred for communism/Leftism came subconsciously as it was revealed to me my grandfather and his brothers/cousins were tortured by that scum.

      1. I ‘m on you on all.
        The only bad thing that the Junta did was that it did not kill the political families it managed to get it’s hands on near on the beginning, or at least the Papandreou. In the end the leftist villainy has been compeletely moved on the Junta.

  27. “Leftist groups successfully petitioned for Pinochet’s extradition to Spain in 1988 for trial on alleged human rights abuses; yet they never called for the extradition and trial of Castro.”
    Nuff said.

  29. The one difference between Fidel Castro and Agusto Pinochet is that the latter left a good economy behind him. The former crashed his country.

  30. General Pinochet was a great man and great patriot. His one serious error was to have handled the Chilean leftists with such kid gloves. Instead of the 2,500 or so that he had shot, it should have been 250,000, and they should have been flogged to ribbons before they were dispatched to the next world. I have spent my entire career in Latin America and I can tell you that there is nothing on this planet more vile, more vicious, more ignorant, more dishonest, than a Latin American Marxist-Leninist (I do NOT include the Latin American democratic leftists in this assessment; many of them are decent, fine people – their only fault is not understanding that they really have nothing at all in common with the “revolutionary Left”.) Pinochet was demonized just the same so he should have made a clean sweep. The Chilean Marxists (the “Socialists” were actually worse than the Moscow-line Communists) were among the most despicable in all of Latin America. The Chilean MIRistas who managed to escape continued their criminal activity for many years, after leaving their country like cockroaches, serving their Cuban masters. I knew a former Chilean terrorist (and former priest) who explained the truth to me. He was an older and wiser man. He had no love for Pinochet but by God he respected him.

  32. Pinochet was a great man. Colossal balls on him and saved his nation from becoming a Socialist dump unlike the rest of South America.

  33. There’s that big corruption of Chile’s military regime, false international bank accounts with fiscal money for his family, and even accusations of introducing cocaine and cocaine base paste in slums in Santiago. He wasn’t even tried so we would never really know. The shit under the carpet’s still there. Corrupted, illegally funded party politics today are national scandal and partly a legacy of Pinochet’s regime helding favors to wealthy families.
    It’s a nice beautiful and developed country without a doubt, better than many of its neighbors. That’s why so many people are immigrating here everyday. Life’s easier and people have many more opportunities than their fathers, mostly poor countrymen, had in the 60’s-70’s. Chile overcomed earthquakes, massive fires; with unity, sacrifice and strength.
    Some links in spanish:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocheques
    https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupci%C3%B3n_en_Chile#R.C3.A9gimen_Militar
    https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acusaciones_de_narcotr%C3%A1fico_contra_Augusto_Pinochet

  34. Thanks, Quintus, for this article. Although I had heard of Pinochet for years, I did not know much about him. Your story hear educates me. Thanks again.

  35. Good read, thanks for the article. I didn’t know much about Pinochet other than that he is often cited pejoratively by fact-free leftards in comment sections.

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