Val Dorta’s masterful historical essay on this topic is not to be missed. Lex blogged on it earlier, as did a few other bloggers, but somehow it never gained the attention it deserves. Go and read it.
(Note that Val’s site appears to be down as of early afternoon EST, but keep trying. He may be having some temporary server issues.)
UPDATE: The site is up again.
My parents visited Chile (as tourists) shortly before the Pinochet coup. They could understand why Pinochet et al. had a revolution. Things were terrible for most people.
I heard one pro Allende ‘refugee’ talk about how wonderful it all was in the Marxist paradise: she and her crowd put on such nice plays at the University.
In the meantime, after my parents finished drinking their bottle of pop, the waiter grabbed the bottle for re-use – because the bottle making businesses had shut down. The slums were huge, and people were standing in line for basic necessities.
Hey. But Allende was a “socialist.” So he MUST have been a wonderful man. And all those refugees here in Canada are such obviously sensitive and kindly people.
Sylvain,
Parmi tous les sites réactionnaires de la francosphère & de l’anglosphère, tu dois être au moins le 250e à te vautrer dans le tout dernier accès de délire révisioniste en vogue dans le bouillonnant microcosme de la revisitation historique.
Quel manque d’originalité pour un libéral d’avant-garde !…
Kodiak,
It is true that there is nothing “original” about pointing out the nakedness of the Left’s love for mass-murderers like Stalin and would-be tyrants such as Allende, but M. Hans Christian Anderson seems to be beyond your kind’s reading comprehension. Constant reiteration is therefore necessary. You might try to actually understand the truth about human relations rather than concern yourself with such pathetic avant-guardism, which is so terribly bourgeois anyway.
E. Brown
Could this be what our “bear of little brain” is whining about?
Ernest,
Enchanté de faire ta connaissance.
Je n’ai pas de portrait de Staline chez moi, ni “Le Capital” de Marx, ni même une seule cassette de Michael Moore. Je ne suis pas non plus abonné au Guardian & n’achète jamais le New York Times.
Ce qui me frappe dans la jolie petite gazette entretenue par les soins de Sylvain, c’est cette admirable capacité à reproduire, avec un léger retard, reconnaissons-le, l’exténuante logorrhée que nous réservent certains billetistes anglo-saxons.
Tant de spontanéité au service d’une farouche originalité…
La marque d’un esprit vraiment indépendant, détaché de toute idéologie.
“Allende myth” versus “Pinoshit reality”…
Eveybody knows about 11 September 2001. Do they also know about 11 September 1973, the very day Moneda Palace was bombed by General Pinochet, aided by the CIA, a famous human-rights-watch NGO in no way related to the USA? Do they know about the mafia-like Chilean army sucking up 15% of the tax burden that Chileans are invited to pay? Do they know about the two mass murders perpetrated by General Pinochet to annihilate coal miners’ strikes in Atacama desert?
You want to know more? Read “La folie de Pinochet” by Luis Sepulveda (French publisher: Métailié).
Spanish original title= “La locura de Pinochet”.
Kodiak,
Should you have anything to provide except condescending sniggering devoid of all substance and interest, let us know. As for originality, no wonder you are so desperately looking for some. In your case, it looks like an emergency situation.
Kodiak fails to realize one thing, we know what Pinochet did, we’ll never know how it would have turned out under Allende.
Unless one postulates that it’d be a basket case just like the rest of the lefty countries. But that’s history and a proven track record.
Sandy, Kodiak has missed Val’s point entirely (as usual). Being so keen to show he is a member in good standing of the Church Of Political Correctness by reciting its standard, predictable litany of Pinochet’s evil, he skips Allende and the mess he put his country in, which is what Val is writing about.
In fact, Kodiak’s comment is essentially chronologically off the mark. Val talks about the events that led to Pinochet’s regime, namely Allende’s gross mismanagement of the country. Or how Allende brought a military regime on his country, not about what Pinochet did while in power.
Never mind the fact that the essay itself is titled the “Allende Myth”. To Kodiak and others, that is the same as the “Pinochet Myth”. Allende is a saint by virtue of Pinochet being the devil. There is no other way.
The fact is, I suspect Kodiak has not even read Val’s essay at all. At this level of irrelevance, it is the only polite explanation…
Precisely, Sylvain, Kodiak typifies the bogus “tender-heartedness” of the Left when it comes to weeping crocodile tears for Pinochet’s victims, but who prefer “tough-minded realism” when it comes to ignoring the oceans of blood that the Left’s idols shed.
I posted the Myth at the forum. It’s just another right-wing attempt, I’ve heard this before, yada, yada, yada.
This is now the 2nd time I’ve read that a plurality, if not an outright majority of Chileans wanted Allende gone.
Are the US’ hands clean? No.
Are phrawnce’s in Africa and French Indochina and maybe Iraq if we’re lucky? No.
Moral equivalence works both ways.
There is nothing but circumstantial evidence, viewed through a Pravda lens, that the CIA arranged Pinochet’s coup. Yes, the US wanted a coup and had contacts with certain military officers. Yes, the US supported Pinochet’s regime after it came to power. But the evidence that the US arranged this specific coup (only days after a Chilean congressional declaration that Allende was out of order) just hasn’t been produced.
I think a review of Zimbabwe over the past three years gives a pretty good idea how Allende’s course would have turned out. Furthermore, if cooler heads in the government were to overthrow Mugabe, they’d have to deal with the thugs (“war veterans” and “revolutionary youth”) who now protect his regime.