Conservatives’ hard-on for Pinochet is something to behold. Amy Davidson of the New Yorker:
The (Wall Street) Journal< had this wish:
Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.
Quite a midwife, that Pinochet—available for a very extended period of labor. He and his fellow-officers seized power in 1973; the democratic transition began in 1990, and not at Pinochet’s instigation. Egyptians might not consider themselves as lucky if Cairo’s sports stadiums were turned into mass-execution sites, as Santiago’s were. (One wonders how many free passes for arbitrary arrests the Egyptian generals will earn from the Journal for each free-market reformer they hire.)
At least the WSJ is consistent — pro-Chilean coup, pro-Egyptian coup — unlike the pro-Pinochet, anti-Egyptian coup Washington Post.
MattF
The US right-wing has always had a soft spot for Hispanic dictators. Pinochet for sure, but also Franco and ‘Doctor’ Salazar. They’re all Latins, they’re all Catholics, they’re all men in uniform. What else could you ask for?
Zam
Pretty certain the Egyptian military own’s a large portion of Egyptian companies. I don’t think that’s a Free Market solution.
NCSteve
American conservatives, whether the elites or the trailer trash, love the thought of a dictator taking over and ordering mass executions of their political opponents. It is the stuff of which their rich, but fetid, fantasy lives are made.
And being subscribers and distributors of a propaganda comic book concept of history, the people like Bloody Bill and Nooner and the WSJ Editorial Circle Jerk Team are, of course, serenely untroubled by the historical tendency of such dictators to send people like them to the wall once they run out of “communists” and “anarchists” to slaughter.
WereBear
Gee, it’s like Right Wingers fear chaos a lot more than the suffering and torture chaos usually brings; because they are so okay with suffering and torture.
So just what is it they don’t like about chaos?
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
I didn’t realize the definition of “midwife” included infanticide.
NCSteve
@Zam: You seem to have inadvertently accepted the WSJ Editorial Circle Team’s pretextual commitment to free markets as truth.
In fact, they hate free markets and competition. They want a return to good old days of monopolies owned by a handful of the right people, back before that Red Teddy Roosevelt was elected, when the only purpose of the state was to conquer new markets and imprison or execute labor agitators.
Mino
Interesting. Yesterday some were saying that Morsi and the Brotherhood were the ones inviting the free-market privateers to do their worst.
maya
Military dictators give repos a stiffy. Even here there was a large following who wanted Gen Dugout McArthur to defy Truman and invade China, and, of course, there was the military/free marketers plot to overthrow FDR.
The Other Chuck
And yet it’s still impolite to call these people fascists. What does it take, fucking swastikas?
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Victor Jara’s final poem, written shortly before his murder and smuggled out by other prisoners.
White Trash Liberal
Of course the WSJ loves Pinochet. He opened the copper market to ITT. He hated Communism. What’s more to love? All the dead, the missing, the maimed… Just the invisible hand at work.
Seth Owen
@the other chuck. Mayr not even then. They’ll just lecture you on how the ‘fascists’ were really ‘Leftists.’ It was the Nationak SOCIALIST Party they’ll point out. Sigh.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@White Trash Liberal:
Victor Jara’s hands more invisible than most, of course.
raven
Murray
gbear
@WereBear:
They’re not in charge of it. They need control.
reflectionephemeral
As Tara the Antisocial Social Worker points out, Pinochet’s coup ended around a half century of democracy in Chile. Also, along with Pinochet’s slow “midwiving” of democracy, Chile’s economy, closely tied to the price of copper, didn’t really begin to grow that much until the 1980s.
Chile’s constitution bore certain similarities to ours, with a separately elected president & legislature with competing claims of legitimacy.
It’s always seemed to me that our current politics, with the pure tribalistic rage of the relatively well-off whites who make up the Republican/Tea Party, are far more dangerous to social cohesion than the protests of the 1960s, but our elites are much less alarmed. This WSJ article suggests that it’s because some would welcome a coup here.
ETA: I’ve heard somewhere that Joe Strummer regretted calling a song “Washington Bullets”, because he didn’t realize that there was a pro basketball team of that name. ‘Course, there isn’t anymore; he was just ahead of his time.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
They love them some right wing dictators no matter what their background. That’s why they supported Suharto, Saddam Hussein (when he had the right enemies), Mubarak, Diem, the generals in South Korea, etc. It’s why a lot of right wingers will tell you that Hitler was great until he went too far.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
Two things:
1) It’s bad for business
2) It might let the left wingers take over.
max
What the WSJ wants is for the Army to take over, put a stop to all this fighting about democracy (‘Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who’) and immediately start selling the country off to the highest bidder. They didn’t like Morsi because he wasn’t selling the country off. If the Army allows/sets up an election, and whichever party wins does not immediately begin selling Egypt off to the highest bidder, the WSJ won’t be happy.
max
[‘We don’t morally censure you, we just want the money.’]
Tom Levenson
Meanwhile, President-of-Sunday-Morning John McCain is still a ratbag: livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/mccain-egypt-coup-is-example-of-failed-american
some guy
As long as al-Sisi keeps bulldozing tunnels between Sinai and Gaza, and keeps the Rafah Crossing closed, he can kill as many Egyptians as he likes and the US government won’t say a word.
some guy
Exactly right, Tom, how dare McCain ask that the US government follow US law? my God, does he not know that in the United States laws are for the little people?
Citizen_X
“took power amid chaos?” Awfully passive way of saying “carried out a coup against a democratically elected government, murdered its leader, and executed thousands of citizens,” isn’t it?
Villago Delenda Est
THIS is how you deal with these assholes.
Villago Delenda Est
@NCSteve:
This, this, this, this, this.
Adam Smith identified this phenomenon over two centuries ago, and nothing has changed. The bigger the enterprise, the more they actually hate free markets, and have the ability to do something about them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Seth Owen:
The idiots are too stupid to understand marketing techniques, which is what “National Socialist” was all about. A bit more than 79 years ago, those who had any degree of seriousness with the ‘socialist’ part were purged from the Partei in spectacular fashion.
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
Hey, communist Russia was the Soviet Socialist Republic. Obviously REPUBLICANS are socialists.
Nutella
@Citizen_X:
Caused chaos, and then claimed to have “saved” the country from the chaos they created. Aka the shock doctrine.
It’s well known that Pinochet and the other Dirty War dictators kept the citizenry in line by disappearing people right off the street but the choice of who to add to Los Desaparecidos was interesting. They started with leftists and labor leaders, of course, but then went on to take
1) harmless do-gooders like doctors who worked with the poor, because that kind of thing just irritated the hell out of the generals, and
2) people who were apolitical but popular and well-known, so that the maximum number of people would be frightened by it.
EconWatcher
I’m quite sure the WSJ thinks we need our own Pinochet right here in America, with Obama playing the role of Allende.
RaflW
Of topic, except that Cheney Sr. would no doubt have liked to have Pinochet’s power. His spawn Liz is considering a run for Senate, creating a rift in conservative Wyoming.
Popcorn please!
RaflW
ETA: now seeing that mistermix already covered this.
LT
“The Hands of Victor Jara.” By my old friend Chuck Brodsky:
youtube.com/watch?v=BxYzFdJhWo0
Viva BrisVegas
@Citizen_X:
But at least Pinochet’s boys were anti abortion.
If they imprisoned a pregnant woman they wouldn’t torture, rape and kill her until after she had given birth.
Then they would give the baby away to be raised by loyal henchmen.
These are the people that conservatives admire.
Mark Centz
It’s true. Those Wall Street bullets again.
Rusty
Then there’s also the dropping of political opponents from airplanes out over the ocean that Egyptians might have to look forward to.
mai naem
It’s a great pity Kinberly Strassel and Dorothy Rabinowitz weren’t working in Chile during Pinochet’s rule and tortured by his henchmen. I’m sure Strassel would find something much better to bitch about than the lg size soft drink ban in NYC and Rabinowitz who wouldn’t be bitching about bicycle racks.