He's been writing for the Times for a long time, and he's been way to the right
for all that time. But even so, we never knew how quite far right he actdually
is.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2018 7:37 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: NY Times Columnist Ross Douthat Defended
Murderous Dictator Pinochet in His Harvard Days
Maybe writing for the "Liberal New York Times", Ross Douthat’s will drift
toward the Left. And maybe the cow jumped over the moon.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/19/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Media December 18, 2018
NY Times Columnist Ross Douthat Defended Murderous Dictator Pinochet
in His Harvard Days
Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is one of numerous
corporate media figures to have defended Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s
murderous US-backed capitalist dictator
By Ben Norton
Back in his Ivy League college days, right-wing New York Times
columnist Ross Douthat wrote an op-ed defending the US-backed dictator
Augusto Pinochet, whose military junta murdered and disappeared
thousands of dissidents and tortured tens of thousands more.
Intellectual historian Timothy Barker dug through columns that Douthat
penned for Harvard University’s right-wing student newspaper The
Harvard Salient between 1998 and 2002.
Barker found a slew of articles in which Douthat echoed explicitly
racist talking points that are popular among the so-called alt-right
today, including the idea that white Europeans are “vanishing” and
being replaced through immigration by supposed “barbarians” like
Turks, Africans, and Arabs.
The future New York Times columnist attacked gay people, warned of
“the evils of strident feminism,” and insisted that US “whites, too,
suffered because of slavery.”
Already a major league conservative with a stadium-sized ego, Douthat
declared in a 2001 profile, “Coming to Harvard, I now have a new sense
of the power and success that is at our fingertips – I know I will be
one of the 25 richest writers of the future.”
But most striking of all the Douthat articles uncovered by Barker is a
November 9, 1998 column titled “Reassessing Pinochet.”
Barker noted that the front cover of the issue advertised this piece
with the teaser “Free Pinochet.” (The conservative publication later
joked of a “Rally for Justice” to “Free Generalissimo Augusto
Pinochet!”)
Douthat: Chile Was ‘Fortunate’ to Have Pinochet
In his 1998 column “Reassessing Pinochet,” Ross Douthat demonized
Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president of
Chile, justifying the 1973 military coup that ousted him and replaced
the Chilean republic’s fledgling socialist democracy with a murderous
right-wing junta.
Douthat studiously avoided mentioning the role of the United States in
propping up Pinochet, and specifically omitted the CIA’s part in
orchestrating the bloody coup.
Writing defensively of the free market autocrat, Douthat claimed,
“Pinochet’s crimes pale in comparison to those of Soviet apparatchiks
who faced no courts after the end of the Cold War — or African despots
sunning themselves in Saudi Arabia — or Chinese leaders with whom with
[sic] West concludes trade pacts.”
All in the international community agree “that Augusto Pinochet was a
villain,” Douthat lamented. “And therein lies their mistake.”
“Were innocent socialists executed for fictional communist sympathies?
Yes,”
the future New York Times columnist conceded. “But the fact that
Pinochet’s government ordered punitive measures against leftists who
had plunged the country into chaos is not grounds to charge him with
‘genocide,'” he exclaimed.
Douthat downplayed the staggering human toll of the Pinochet regime,
stating, “three thousand executions after a period of civil strife
seems rather tame in our bloody twentieth century, especially when set
against the record of Communist governments that Pinochet opposed.”
The conservative pundit went on to romanticize 1998 Chile as “one of
the most stable and prosperous countries in South America,” insisting
that the country was “fortunate” to have been ruled for nearly two
decades by Pinochet.
“Chile had Pinochet, but other Latin countries were not so fortunate,”
Douthat maintained.
The future New York Times columnist concluded his article condemning
Western critics of Pinochet (while once again glossing over decades of
US support for him) by declaring that right-wing authoritarianism was
a necessary remedy to socialism:
It is easy for a country like the United States, where the radical
Left never took power, to castigate men like Augusto Pinochet for
human rights abuses. But imagine a United States where Students for a
Democratic Society held the presidency, where Black Panthers sat in
the Cabinet and the Weathermen controlled foreign affairs, where the
Port Huron Statement was made the law of the land — imagine this, and
it becomes easier to understand how three thousand Chileans died, and
why the West has no business trying Augusto Pinochet as a salve to our
offended sensibilities.
US Media’s Whitewashing of Pinochet
Pinochet’s US-backed regime infamously supported a torture colony
called Colonia Dignidad, a secretive German enclave in Chile, founded
by a former Nazi, where children were systematically sexually abused.
Top ministers in Chile’s current right-wing government, which is led
by billionaire oligarch Sebastian Piñera, were unabashed supporters of
Colonia Dignidad.
In fact Piñera echoed some of the same rhetoric employed by Douthat in
a speech he gave back in 1998, in which the contemporary Chilean
president defended Pinochet.
That a prominent US pundit once carried water for this regime seems
less shocking in light of the obituaries corporate media outlets
published for Pinochet upon his death in 2006.
The Washington Post applauded the dictator for leaving “behind the
most successful country in Latin America.” The Financial Times
whitewashed him as “the man who paved the way for Chile’s economic
prosperity.” The Telegraph wrote that he “saved his country from
Communism and created the most successful economy in Latin America.”
And NPR described the despot simply as “villain to some, hero to
others.”
Former Democratic President Barack Obama refused to apologize, in
2011, for the US government’s staunch backing of Pinochet.
From Pinochet to Bolsonaro
Ross Douthat’s past praise for Pinochet has contemporary parallels,
echoing the support Brazil’s fascist President-elect Jair Bolsonaro
has received today from conservative media outlets.
Bolsonaro, a far-right extremist from Brazil’s former military
dictatorship, is himself an admirer of the Chilean generalissimo — his
only complaint was “Pinochet should have killed more people.”
Bolsonaro’s ultra-capitalist finance minister Paulo Guedes even taught
economics in Chile under Pinochet’s military junta.
The Brazilian fascist’s neoliberal capitalist economics is the main
reason why he has enjoyed endorsements from the Wall Street Journal
and Washington Examiner, along with kind words from Canada’s CBC.
Douthat’s own newspaper has a history of whitewashing Bolsonaro. In
1993, the New York Times published an article titled “A Soldier Turned
Politician Wants To Give Brazil Back to Army Rule.” This report noted
Bolsonaro was already calling for the restoration of the right-wing
military dictatorship, a mere eight years after Brazil had become a
democracy. According to America’s newspaper of record, the Brazilian
fascist was emerging as a national hero with widespread support, who
in just a matter of time would ascend to national power.
Ben Norton
Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a producer and reporter
for The Real News, and a contributor to the Grayzone Project and FAIR.
