/ world today news/ The legend of the economic success of one of the ugliest dictatorships has its reserved place in the new right-wing mythology
In 1989, the beginning of the Bulgarian right grew from the idea of democracy. She opposed the authoritarian communist regime. The SDS captivated most young Bulgarians and they began to defend the values of liberalism and Western, Atlantic culture. However, a strange and inexplicable complex also appeared with this. The myths of democracy began to grow. They are built on the opposition communism – anti-communism. At first glance, this seems normal, since in our country, the right, liberalism and democracy appeared as the antithesis of Todor Zhivkov’s authoritarian regime, but these myths contain enormous contradictions.
Among the most widespread myths on the right is that of the “prosperity” of distant Chile as a consequence of the policies of Augusto Pinochet’s military junta. This attitude, which first appeared in the early 1990s, continues to prevail today. For example, some of today’s right-wing sites use oxymorons such as a “legitimate coup” carried out by the Chilean general. Among our nationalists, the thesis has prevailed that he “saved” Chile from communism and thus set the stage for the country’s successful development in the following decades.
The legend of economic success during the rule of the military junta was imposed not only in Bulgaria, but also in many other Eastern European countries. The reason for its creation is the desire to impose the extreme, neoliberal economic model that Chileans use. It is used everywhere from Poland and Russia to our country. In the development of the transition model in our country, Chilean specialists are involved who apply their experience. The results in Bulgaria are visible now. The results in Chile under Pinochet’s team were not dramatically different. In 1973, the South American country’s economy languished under the pressure of strikes and the embargo imposed by the United States. This led to a drastic inflation of 150% by the month of September of the same year. On September 11, the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet began, which not only abolished democracy in the country, but also introduced a new economic system. Then it was tested for the first time and imported by the Milton Friedman School at the University of Chicago. The goal is accelerated privatization and pushing the state out of all sectors, including health care, education and all social policies. The result of market liberalization is the collapse of the entire system. Two years after the military came to power, inflation is already galloping at 400% per year. According to the economic team, it was controlled only in the period 1978-1979, when it was at levels of 20% per year. It is little known that the biggest wave of emigration from Chile was between 1976 and 1979, when almost 600 thousand Chileans fled. This is not a political emigration, but an economic one. During this period, Canadian logging companies literally bought the laborers coming from the south like animals.
The stabilization talked about by the military government lasted only three years when the country was hit by the so-called Mexican debt crisis. Chile’s banking system is collapsing, inflation is skyrocketing again, and unemployment is at 20%. This economic horror awakens the first wave of mass protests in the country. People take to the streets even though the army is firing. They simply have nothing left to lose. Then Pinochet’s government changed the leadership of the Ministry of Finance. The new finance minister, Luis Escobar Cerda, is proposing that the state intervene to save the banking sector. Chilean taxpayers cover the losses accumulated by the private banks and their related companies. Bankruptcies are stopped, but pensioners in the country stop receiving their pensions for about a year. Unfortunately, this example also reminds us of our reality, and that was two years ago.
The macroeconomic indicators of the Chilean economy began to grow in real terms only after 1986. At the end of Pinochet’s rule, inflation was “barely” 12%, and 48% of Chileans lived below the poverty line. So how come Chile is one of Latin America’s most developed economies? The answer is that anything positive is due to the governments that came after the dictator, not his policies. In this myth we also see an attempt to justify the inhuman nature of the military regime in Chile. Unfortunately, this type of thinking can also be seen in the attempts to justify the creation of the Soviet concentration camps that helped build the industry that won World War II.
Another legend, spread among the right-wing in our country, is that gen. Augusto Pinochet saved Chilean democracy by eliminating the “communist threat”. Indeed, in 1978, the dictator announced that he was building a “protected democracy”, but what is really there in the country? Already in 1974, the military dissolved the parliament and all parties. The Christian Democrats, who initially supported the coup, also remain outside the system. The only semi-legally existing organization is the Nazi “Fatherland and Freedom”. If the killing of thousands of socialists and communists seems acceptable to the right, it is difficult even for them to accept the attacks against Bernardo Leighton – one of the leaders of the Christian Democrats. Pinochet’s secret agents tried to shoot him in the center of Rome, where he had fled with his wife. He miraculously survives, but the party’s most prominent leader, Eduardo Frey, is not so lucky. He died under unclear circumstances in a hospital in Santiago, and his relatives were denied a real investigation into the case.
In 1974, the military announced that they were going to completely depoliticize Chile because politics was corrupting society. According to Pinochet, national unification will be achieved in this way. By 1978, there were almost no leftist organizations left in the country. The Socialist Party splits, and the Communists manage to save their leadership in Eastern Europe. Instead of ending with the destruction of the opposition, the splitting of people into left and right is deepening. Even 29 years after the fall of Pinochet’s regime, the country is torn by the legacy he left behind in politics. The regime’s crimes go unpunished. Against this background, it is strange how it is possible to praise a dictator who crushed a democratically elected government and crippled the entire society, and at the same time define yourself as a democrat and a liberal. Is it possible to justify a system just because she is anti-communist? Doesn’t this also lead to the justification of an ideology that also “struggled” against the left?
The proliferation of myths about Pinochet and the “Chilean economic miracle” increasingly make me worry that in Eastern Europe, the line between right-wing thinking and Nazism is almost blurred. Not to mention the ease with which today’s Democrats move toward limiting all opinions other than their own. The closing of media shows, the removal of journalists from the air, attacks against academic freedom, are becoming a regular tool of the struggle of the right against dissenters in our country. Even if it remains apart from the focus of society, the disappearance of pluralism in our country begins, and with the complicity of the right, which has been in power for 8 years already. The step from crushing the “others” to the establishment of an authoritarian regime is minimal and, unfortunately, the examples around Bulgaria are multiplying. The worship of Pinochetism brings with it the worship of the strong personality and anti-communism, which are apparently becoming more and more the creed of our right, and democracy is slowly flowing out through obedience to the media channels and the spread of the “one truth”.
* Chilean expertise was also applied in the Bulgarian reforms. Pictured: Jose Piñera – former Minister of Labor and Social Protection in the governments of the dictator Pinochet, at a meeting with members of the Economic and Social Policy Committees in the National Assembly in 2008. Piñera’s advice for full privatization of the pension system on the Chilean model is partially implemented in our country by mandatory redirection of part of the workers’ insurance in a private pension fund. Other Eastern European countries have already abandoned this practice because of the unsatisfactory profitability of the funds and the huge risks for the insured.
__________________
#Eastern #Europe #line #rightwing #thinking #Nazism #blurred #myths #Pinochet #Chilean #economic #miracle
