José Antonio Kast, the Pinochet fan about to swerve Chile to the far right
Far right, eh?
…..was elected president at the third attempt when he won 58% of the vote.
58% sounds pretty centrist to me. Majority of the voting public isn’t extreme anything. It’s middle of the road by hte standards of that voting public. By definition. You know, this is what the people have said they want?
In one sense of course that’s facile. But in another it’s very sensible. By what standard(s) are we to judge that someone is far anything? That, clearly, depends upon what we’re going to define as centrist. The Guardian’s definition of centre might well be rather further left than your or my definition. Or even, of the voters of Chile…..
But that night and throughout the campaign he avoided all mention of the hardline, ultra-conservative moral code on which he has built his political career.
Erm:
He used his three terms in congress to oppose abortion and the morning after pill, and to promote traditional family values.
Standard Catholicism therefore. The largest centrally organised religion in the world don’t forget.
“Kast has always been on the most conservative fringe of Chilean politics in cultural and neoliberal economic terms,”
Thinks prices and markets work. Ho Hum.
A free market Catholic is extreme right to The Guardian.
Just a thought about this:
Kast has publicly supported Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, under which more than 3,200 people were murdered and 1,469 forcibly disappeared. Thousands more were detained, tortured or forced into exile.
Has there ever been a socialist takeover with less murder than that?
Being a bit callous about it, for all the noise about Pinochet and his evil regime those numbers not look particularly high, I expected an order of magnitude higher. Even at that they’d be a rounding error in a socialist takeover.
One way trips in helicopters are actually very expensive and inefficient, so it is no wonder the figures are so low.
3,200 leftists killed? Seems like they got the right people:
The MIR commander, Andrés Pascal Allende, has admitted that the Marxist guerrillas lost 1,500-2,000 fighters killed or disappeared.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_resistance_in_Chile_(1973%E2%80%931990)
Pinochet may have been a callous, murderous bastard, but in the pantheon of 20th Century tyrants he was third or fourth tier. However, he is hated by the left worldwide for having thwarted Allende’s socialist goals and possibly stopping what happened in Cuba or later Venezuela. As with Tim’s other post today about Israel, you’ll never be forgiven for that.
Chile’s actually a pretty nice place to visit with some gorgeous scenery in the south.
Fantastic scenery, but fantastically dull apart from their spectacular landscapes. Santiago is the only city I’ve been to that doubles as a sleeping pill.
Very happy about Kast, though. Well done dull Chile.
Personally, I think we’re in Pinochet territory in this country.
At the very least, we’re in Test Act territory.
Those skittle-hairs cannot be reasoned with, and their provocations are beyond all endurance. They need a slap, and everyone else needs for them to have a slap.
Not just the skittle-haired femiloons and greens but the libtard termites, the bearded rag-heads with their bin-bagged women and…
Well why wouldn’t you? He shot commies, introduced successful economic reforms and stepped down in favour of democracy.
The left hate Pinochet becasue – unlike any leftist leader in history – he voluntarily stepped down and left the country as a functioning democracy. Among other things, of course.
One of those things being supportive to Britain during the Falklands war.