FIFTY YEARS AGO, ON 11 SEPTEMBER 1973, General Augusto Pinochet overthrew Chile’s elected government. He went on to lead the country for 17 brutal years, during which inequality soared, the economy boomed, and leftist opponents of the regime were quietly suppressed, imprisoned and killed in their thousands. On that fateful September day, Salvador Allende, Chile’s socialist president, killed himself with a rifle given to him by Fidel Castro. Allende the man, his nation in chaos, died by his own hand. But Allende the icon, the myth, the martyred hero, was born.
As with Christian saints, the kingdom of the paragons of the far Left is not of this world and is distinguished by public defeat more often than worldly triumph. But where the paths diverge is that Marxists claim the paradise they are dying for can be realised on earth, and in our own lifetimes.
Another difference is that communist martyrs are quite happy to shed blood on their way to their cross. Che Guevara marched across dozens of revolutionary battlefields before meeting his end in Bolivia, where he died raving about the immortality of the revolution. He was no stranger to executions, having sentenced at least 179 people to death for political “crimes” while presiding over the prison of La Cabaña, in one of the darkest chapters of the bloody Cuban revolution.
IF GUEVARA, GUN SMOKING, IS A WARRIOR
