Leftism

The Allende Myth, by Vladimir Dorta

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My friend Val Dorta originally published this outstanding historical essay on his blog in 2003. With the death of Augusto Pinochet, much attention is again being given to the Allende period, the military coup and the dictatorship that followed. I wanted to link again to Val’s essay but, unfortunately, his blog is no longer online. However, Val has graciously allowed me to republish his essay here, and I am honored to do so. – Jonathan

UPDATE: Google’s cached version of Val’s original post, with comments. (Thanks to the commenter who provided this link.)

UPDATE 2 (12/28/2014): The Google-cached version has disappeared from the Web, but Val’s original post is available via archive.org here.

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The Allende Myth

Vladimir Dorta

07/21/2003

The failed and tragic attempt by Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity at creating socialism in Chile in 1970-1973 has become a myth for the world left, presented as the possibility of a peaceful and democratic transition to socialism that was destroyed only because the almighty CIA acted as master puppeteer of the Chilean reaction. The myth reinforces itself; while the Cold War context is never mentioned, neither is the fact that the CIA’s workings are well documented whereas the Cuban and Soviet interventions are still mostly unknown. The Allende myth may be good for keeping the socialist faith alive, but it evidently contradicts the historical facts.

While Augusto Pinochet’s brutal post-coup repression and terrorism cannot be justified, it is essential to explain what led him and the Chilean armed forces to the fateful coup d’état, outside of the fantasy that had him bursting onto the democratic Chilean political scene on September 11, 1973 with readymade CIA orders to stop a beautiful, pacific and liberating socialist dream. For I have no doubts that if the Chilean Marxist experiment had ended in civil war, as it appeared to most observers at the time, it would have been an even greater tragedy or, had it ended as the totalitarian society it pointed to, it would have lasted much longer and would have brought Chileans much more suffering than Pinochet’s ugly but temporary dictatorship.

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The Democracy Presumption

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Why do most westerners believe in liberal democracy? Why do the vast majority of us believe that the best form of government requires competitive open elections, divided powers, independent judiciaries, a free press and all the other common attributes of modern democracy? Most of us would assert that we do so because we believe that liberal democracies systematically make more wise and humane decisions than do other types of government.

If most of us think this way, however, why does a significant segment of the Left in the West always argue that in any conflict between a liberal democracy and some form of autocracy the liberal democracy deserves most of the blame?

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Political Religions

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I am struck by the degree to which modern leftist thought is like religion. In Robert Jensen’s fable, a malign United States brought sin into the world and now Americans must atone and purify themselves. Granted the early European settlers and their descendants did some very bad things, but so did other people including Indians, and anyway the perpetrators are all long dead. So why should Americans of non-Indian descent, many of whose ancestors didn’t even come here until recently, atone? Perhaps what Jensen really opposes is the idea of the United States, in which case people who celebrate the country’s existence would (in his view) have something to atone for.

Buried in Jensen’s seemingly prideful remarks is a reasonable point about national myths. I think that point was much better made by Bernard Lewis in his great short book, “History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented“. As for religion, if you must have it I think that you can probably do a lot better, both for yourself and others, with a traditional belief system.

(via Instapundit)