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Comment by 29athrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Most brutal dictators ever? that is a very egregious mischaracterization.

Not because Pinochet was not brutal, of course he was... he killed 3,000 people in brutal ways for 17 years. Sure... But add 2 zeroes to that death count and multiply the regime length by 3 and you get Fidel Castro.

The Chilean armed forces (navy, army, air force, police) intervened when they saw an imminent civil war, combined with a likely Argentinean invasion.

That would be effectively the end of Chile.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_conflict

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Soberanía

And Allende's regime was very far from suceeding. He had inspiring speeches but in practice he was a failure as a leader. Allende was a demagogue on the KGB's payroll with drinking issues, his administration was undistinguishable from anarchy.

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I'm sorry, but under what calculus did Castro's government kill 300,000 people? Not even the extremely biased "victims of communism" calculus comes within orders of magnitude of that.

And the Chilean military would have been part of that civil war. "There would have been a civil war because we would have attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government and they would have fought back, so we took american money and 'advisors' to move so quickly that there was no chance of the legitimate government fighting back" doesn't really hold moral water with me.

Also, the Beagle Conflict was five years into Pinochet's reign so not really sure how that's a reason to overthrow Allende.

> Allende was a demagogue on the KGB's payroll with drinking issues

The KGB hated the shit out of Allende. Their bottom up socialism stood to be an alternative that would have taken away the KGB's legitimacy even with die hard communists at the time.

Nope. The Beagle conflict had already begun decades earlier and there was an unsuccessful arbritration with the help of the UK in 1971, during Allende's presidency.

If Chile had a civil war, that would have accelerated Argentina's invasion plan.

In addition to that, Bolivia has manifested territorial ambitions over their former territories, something that is even in their constitution.

A civil war followed by an invasion by at least 2 countries, or a Cuba/Chile/Soviet union alliance were all excellent reasons to remove Allende. He failed, his ideas were bad, his execution was bad. Beautiful speeches, but a failure nevertheless.

Next time some Mr. Che Guevara t-shirt guy tries to sell you the Communist miracle, go to Cuba and see how they live there, and tell me if you would like to raise your kids in a place like that. Or go to Venezuela, another "miracle". Technically they have equality because most people (except for the regime and party members of course) are equally poor.

Fidel was such as charismatic leader he would only eat food from his own personal garden out of fear of being poisoned, he also lived a life of excess and lived in an oppulent mansion unlike most Cubans.

> Nope. The Beagle conflict had already begun decades earlier and there was an unsuccessful arbritration with the help of the UK in 1971, during Allende's presidency.

Following those defintions, the Beagle Conflict goes all the way back to the 1880s. Still failing to see how this is something to remove the legitimate government over and install a brutal dictator.

> If Chile had a civil war, that would have accelerated Argentina's invasion plan.

So, alternative plan, don't have a coup _or_ a civil war. Respect the democratically elected government rather than killing the president in his office.

The civil war was imminent because people were hungry. And the ones were not hungry were underfed and had to wait for hours in endless queues to get a bag of rice, a bottle of oil, etc.

As illustrated in a quote from one of your favorite comrades:

"Every society is three meals away from chaos", Vladimir Lenin

Because of collusion with the US government to help "make the economy scream" as was listed in meeting notes between the CIA director and Nixon.

These people would rather destroy their own economy than give the socialists a fair chance, then use that destruction as "see that's why we need to kill the president".

Imagine you take the #1 ideological enemy of the US, e.g.: communist during the cold war.

Now, imagine you hypothetically decide to call yourself exactly that. And then, run for president of a country and manage to get elected.

What do you think will happen to you if you do that? It does not take much IQ to figure out that is certainly going to end really bad for you.

It is a really stupid idea, and that is what Allende did, and he suffered the consequences.

Because that is how things work in the real world.

So you agree, socialism would be good - it's just not possible because of the predictable ruthlessness of the capitalists.

It's not about capitalism.

If you oppose the international community and their leaders, they will oppose you in different ways.

They will sanction, boycott, sabotage, denounce, impoverish and indebt your country... and if none of that works they will invade you. That's the way it has always been.

>It is a really stupid idea

This comment assumes that in the past, governments around the world always made decisions to placate the U.S., as if whether the U.S. approval or disapproval is required for nation-building. While this may have been true for some countries that considered the U.S. response, it wasn’t widely known that if you made an earnest attempt at “new” social organisation, you’d be killed and replaced by a newly minted, U.S. approved fascist.

>Because that is how things work in the real world

It may look like that’s how things work; i.e. make the U.S. mad and suffer the consequences. But in 1970 there were multiple conversations about how to build a country, and by 1973 there was one less. I personally prefer a reality in which there are multiple methods for governing people, instead of this one-size-fits-all approach that, in 2020, appears to be ill suited for solving modern problems.

Werlau, who lived in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, saw first-hand how international awareness of human rights atrocities helped Chile reinstate its democracy. "The Castro regime executed more people in just its first three years than the Pinochet regime killed or 'disappeared' in its entire 17 years in power," she says. "Yet Castro's victims, who number so many times more - and who include not just political opponents but entire families assassinated for trying to flee - remain unknown, ignored, or forgotten."

Pinochet was brutal, but not the most brutal.

Most of the South American dictators from Operation Condor were more brutal than Pinochet, and many of them stole everything they could and left nothing behind.

And the Cuban and Venezuelan dictorships are far more dehumanizing and brutal and Pinochet's regime. Also, Castro's regime started decades before Pinochet and is still there.

Pinochet stole money but left behind a working economy, that was a substantial improvement over what came before.

Allende was trying to consolidate power and eventually turn Chile into a 1 party communist system, through a communist revolution.

Pinochet had a 44% approval rate towards the end of this dictatorship in 1988. Although many people was unaware of the extent of the regime attrocities at that time.

There were extremists/terrorist groups in Chile, such as MIR and FPMR. Some of the Pinochet victims were inocent, others were not.

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