Why Pinochet was so hated

Thanks to reader Mike for alerting us to this piece in the Swedish magazine Axess, in which Dalrymple offers a couple of explanations for the left’s highly selective disgust at dictatorial abuses:

Here is the real puzzle: why they do not hate the members of the Argentinian junta as much as Pinochet? Why do they not respond emotionally to the junta as strongly as they do (or did) to Pinochet? The scale of the junta’s repression, after all, was very similar to his; in this respect, there was not much to choose between them. They don’t like the junta, but they hate Pinochet.

20 thoughts on “Why Pinochet was so hated

  1. Archie Wedderspoon

    I think there is another reason for them so hating Pinochet: he supplanted one of their own, whereas the Argentinian junta moved against a Western power.

    Reply
  2. W. Smith

    …Not just “a Western power”, but the United Kingdom led by the British Left’s alpha bête noire, Mrs. Thatcher — who not only committed the ultimate war-crime of winning, but worse still, went on to receive her laurels from the British public in a landslide re-election.

    I sometimes wonder, had Britain been defeated and Mrs. T. ditched, whether British students would be wearing Viva Galtieri! tee-shirts…

    Reply
  3. Enoch

    Now, that’s a question that has always “eluded” me. After all, if we are to measure the violence of a regime by the number of deaths it causes, we can surely say that (depending on estimates) the Argentinian Junta was 2 to 10 times worse than that of pinochet, while lasting half as long. And let’s not even mention the economic record of the Argentines.

    But no, most worldwide leftists cannot even name one of the four big generals in the argentinean Junta, neither can most of them name the dictator of Paraguay during these years…

    The answer to this question is in fact simple, but requires a little reverse engineering. You’d have to ask your average leftist which communist regime actually was actually effective in delivering on its promises? From Albania to Zimbabwe, there’s plenty to choose from, but the failures are so numerous and evident that your leftist will always revert to Allende and Chile.

    Everybody knows Pinochet for one sole reason: his true crime was not to maintain a dictatorship for 17 years but to overthrow a communistic regime in the making.

    Reply
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