Pinochet saved his country, and many of the men he executed were probably real-live bandits/guerillas/militants. Mentioning him in the same sentence as a Soviet tyrant is ludicrous.
Even assuming Pinochet’s estimated 4000 victims were pure-as-the-driven-snow, I’m A. Skeptical as to what this says about Austrian economics (even the Marxists like Chomsky can’t deny his chief influence was the Chicago school, and Austrian economics has little to say about democratic versus autocratic means of government), and B. Highly leery of those who hold him to be in the same league as Hitler-Hirohito (both around 28 million victims, if you add up WWII civilian casualties for Europe and Asia respectively). The same people who go on the warpath about him defend and even idolize people like Castro (30,000), Che Guevera (the Himmler to the aforementioned), Pol Pot (who killed a quarter of his own countrymen in less than a decade) and let’s not even get started on Stalin and Mao.
It seems only genocide and thuggery committed by real or imagined fascists (a term which nowadays seems to denote anybody who dissents from PC party lines, especially on immigration) is worth noting or caring about. When the Pope restored one of several Catholic bishops excommunicated for refusal to accept the rulings of Vatican II, the Euro-left did what Paul Gottfried beautifully described as “writhing on the ground in theatrical indignation” over this largely powerless old man’s denial of Hitler’s atrocities, while a decade earlier, the Prime Minister of France openly and completely denied the crimes of Stalin, to the praise of the establishment press. Pinochet also stepped down from his position as Chilean dictator, something I have a hard time imagining Mussolini or Tito doing, let alone Hitler or Stalin.
Also, many Austrian figures are fervently opposed to US foreign interventionism, be it in Latin America or anywhere else, so it’s rather like arguing against Stalin to a Trotskyite, in economic terms.
He’s the rare case of a “dictator” ideologically driven rather than the usual megalomaniac that cares for nothing other than his own pomp and circus.
[oops]