In the aftermath of the deadly magnitude 8.8 earthquake that rocked Chile in February 2010, US columnist Bret Stephens – whose brand of conservative zealotry commands a regrettably lucrative market in the imperial commentariat – took to the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page to explain “How Milton Friedman Saved Chile”.
In Stephens’ view, the late free-market fundamentalist was to thank for the fact that the disaster did not cause more damage – and for giving Chileans the “intellectual wherewithal first to survive the quake, and now to build their lives anew”. Never mind that Friedman’s “intellectual” contributions to the South American nation consist of providing the neoliberal ideology that underpinned the bloody US-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), which thousands of Chileans did not survive. Tens of thousands more were tortured by the state.
Never mind, too, that the strict Chilean building codes referenced by Stephens hailed from 1972, i.e. from the pre-dictatorship presidency of democratically elected Salvador Allende – whose belief in economic equality, social justice, and other diabolical things had necessitated the lethal 1973 coup against him by the guardians of hemispheric order. Following Allende’s election, US President Richard Nixon famously ordered the CIA to “make the [Chilean] economy scream”. Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser and secretary of state, busied himself setting the stage for the coup.
Fast forward 49 years and the foundations of order are once again being shaken – but not by an earthquake. In a compulsory nationwide plebiscite on Sunday, September 4, Chileans will vote on whether to approve a new draft constitution to replace the current one, which dates from 1980 and the Pinochet heyday. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.