Following the death of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, many people have looked at\u00a0how\u00a0various world leaders and media outlets reported this event and contrasted it with how they reacted to the death of former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet in 2006.<\/p>\n
This article<\/a> takes the New York Times to task over the matter:<\/p>\n The New York Times described Fidel Castro as a \u201cfiery apostle of the revolution\u201d and Cuba\u2019s \u201cmaximum leader\u201d in its Saturday obituary for the infamous and brutal dictator.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how The Times opened the article<\/a>:<\/p>\n Fidel Castro, the fiery apostle of revolution who brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere in 1959 and then defied the United States for nearly half a century as Cuba\u2019s maximum leader, bedeviling 11 American presidents and briefly pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war, died on Friday. He was 90.<\/em><\/p>\n The Daily Caller\u2019s Jaime Weinstein brought attention to how differently the news outlet opened its obituary for Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet<\/a> in 2006:<\/p>\n Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption, died yesterday at the Military Hospital of Santiago. He was 91.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This is wholly unsurprising: large numbers of\u00a0western academics, politicians, journalists and their fellow travellers have for decades excused or ignored everything from repressions to mass-murder provided the perpetrators were socialist and\/or anti-American, and I believe the proper response is to call them out on it whenever it appears. \u00a0Highlighting how they treat Castro’s death in contrast to that of Pinochet is one way of doing this. \u00a0However, where I part company from some people is in praising Pinochet in any way. \u00a0The criticism of the NYT above ought to be that they are painting Castro in a positive light, not that they are too harsh on Pinochet.<\/p>\n I don’t believe for one minute that had Salvador Allende continued in power Chile would have become anything other than a run-of-the-mill socialist basket-case complete with customary repressions and murder, and nor do I subscribe to the myth\u00a0that the CIA were involved in the coup that deposed him. \u00a0And if I’m honest, I don’t think Pinochet’s greatest crime was kicking out an elected President who was taking the country in the wrong direction: I don’t support military coups, but I’m not going to shed too many tears over that one.<\/p>\n What I object to is the police state, repressions, disappearances, and murders that followed. \u00a0I don’t care whether Pinochet “saved” Chile from communism and ran a half-decent economy (even assuming they are true): it is possible to do these things without torturing and raping students and chucking them out of aircraft over the ocean. \u00a0We get pissed off when people overlook Castro’s thuggery when praising Cuba’s literacy rate, we shouldn’t do the same thing for Pinochet. \u00a0Yes, I get the realpolitik of the Cold War and the importance of defeating Communism, but that was a long time ago and we don’t need to make excuses for the thugs who were on our side any longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Following the death of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, many people have looked at\u00a0how\u00a0various world leaders and media outlets reported this event and contrasted it with how they reacted to the death of former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet in 2006. … Continue reading