LETTERS Not fascist
Sir: It is always surprising when the appar- ently well-informed fall into the terminolog- ical trap of placing all 'right-wing' dictators and authoritarian rulers within the fascist category. This inference can certainly be drawn from Mr Gilmour's letter (30 Novem- ber) on Taki's High life (16 November).
Mussolini (fascist), Hitler (National Social- ist/Nazi), even Franco (by association with the Falangists) and, possibly, Salazar may be grouped together as fascist dictators of ideo- logically varying hue; although it could cer- tainly be argued that one would be creating too comprehensive a category by including the Spanish and Portuguese dictators.
However, my contention is that Augusto Pinochet, as ruler of Chile, quite objectively fell outside this category. A fundamental characteristic of fascism (and National Socialism and Falangism) is the establish- ment of a highly corporatist, even collec- tivist, state. In contrast to a maximal view of the state, Pinochet adopted and promot- ed throughout his tenure and in his selec- tion of ministers an almost revolutionary minimalist approach (after the Allende debacle) to the state. All his various gov- ernments assumed at some time the mantle of radical privatisation (long before Mrs Thatcher in Britain), free trade and market, tariff reduction, government retrenchment and regulation-pruning and transparency.
Pinochet's legacy was to leave a country that arguably more than any other (possibly only surpassed by Hong Kong) exemplifies the unencumbered and free-trading nation. Certainly, no country within the European Union approaches Chile in this sense. In other words, at no time did Pinochet or his ministers try to establish a fascist state in Chile — authoritarian, yes, fascist, no.
Striking a more subjective note, many Chileans, including myself, believe General Pinochet to have been the saviour of our country and to have laid the foundations which have allowed the subsequent civilian administrations to build on success and not only to lead a prosperous nation but also to govern the star of Latin America.
Peter de Bruyne
1494 Landings Lake Drive, Sarasota, Florida 34231
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