The favourite banana republic leftie hero when I was a kid was Chile’s Salvador Allende, perhaps the first Marxist to be democratically elected to office. Sal set a great example — he was killed before he could wreak any more havoc on his lovely country and so is still revered today by the left.
After three years of redistributing wealth like Robin Hood on steroids, the country was hit by a wage freeze, food shortages, a vicious black market, inflation of 140% — while Chile’s debt soared and the government defaulted on its loans. In other words, it was going exactly — exactly — the same way as Venezuela has gone in the past 17 years. That’s all it takes, three years of revolutionary socialist largesse accompanied by the mimsy poetry of Pablo Neruda and the country’s well on the way to being a basket case.
A coup replaced Allende with the very rightish General Augusto Pinochet and Chile’s economy was back to doing just fine, very quickly. Admittedly, Gus also killed a lot of people.
Admittedly, Gus also killed a lot of people.
It’ll never not be funny how people who unironically regard Ernesto Guevara as a hero want you to be outraged at General Pinochet giving a few of his sworn enemies free skydiving lessons.
See also: romanticising the nun-raping Republican murder gangs in Spain while A-BLOO-BLOO-BLOOING about the things Francisco Franco had to do to restore order.
“Admittedly, Gus also killed a lot of people.”
Not by socialism’s standards……….
Incidentally a quick google suggests Pinochet could be responsible for up to 10k victims. Given the North Staffs Hospital killed between 400 and 1200 people with neglect merely between 2005 and 2006, and the Gosport Hospital murdered 450 people in the 90s by filling them full of medical grade heroin, I’d say its a stone cold certainty that the NHS has killed many more people than Pinochet ever did.
“Admittedly, Gus also killed a lot of people.”
They were commies, so nothing of value was lost.
Anyway, leftist claims that tens of thousands were killed are, predictably, bullshit:
” Later, in November 2004, the Valech Report confirmed the number as less than 3,000 killed, and reduced the number of cases of forced disappearance; but some 28,000 people were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured., ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#Casualties
I note that in Chile, which had no state run oil industry, the bad effects of Allende’s policies became obvious before three years were up, and hence before Allende could extend his power throughout government, making him relatively easy to remove.
In Venezuela the income from oil, and the rising oil price, masked the effects for a decade or more, allowing Chavez/Maduro time to entrench themselves.
Britain has no such oil income, and the effects of Allende style policies would be swiftly apparent, we before the offices of state could be coopted by cronies.
That’s right Steve.
https://1776.shop/product/pinochet-did-nothing-wrong-limited-t-shirt/
Conservatism just hasn’t been done by the right people yet.
Communists are not counted as people in civilised nations.
I’m sure that food deprivation in Venezuela is a reality, yet the pictures of fleeing Venezuelans fail to depict this. I’ve seen many middle-class middle-age spreads.
The real problem is that Venezuela is not a cause célèbre. The non-commies don’t have a Sting to sing moving songs about Maduro’s evil.
While murdering anyone generally isn’t on I think there’s a couple of caveats to go with old Gus.
1) The number of people killed is nothing compared to the number that would have died had he not taken over.
2) The people killed were the very people that would have caused the mass deaths in pt. 1.
I named my boy Augustus and delight in telling lefties that I named him after Pinochet and want him to be a helicopter pilot when he grows up.
@Southetner: The meltdown in the Venezuelan economy has caused an innovation in the field of economics; a new economic indicator. A Venezuelan economist at Harvard, struggling to describe the situation meaningfully, decided to look at how many calories a minimum wage worker could buy of they spent an entire day’s wages on the scholarship cheapest food available. In 2012 out was 57000, probably about 20 times what a manual worker needs to get by; enough money, in other words, to get many calories in more expensive forms allowing for a balanced diet and some left over. Today, the figure is under 900 calories, literally starvation rations – actually, scratch today and subdue half a year ago, as inflation hasn’t decreased yet. It also transpires that more than half the population is on minimum wage. I venture to suggest that constitutes a food crisis…
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=621563128&t=1537555873705