<The way we lead the world and the way our leaders lead us will come to resemble each other.>
I am currently reading "Nunca Mas", the report on the Disappeared in the Argentinian "dirty war" against terrorism in the 1970s.
It is scary, how little protest there was, and how ineffective the legal safeguards were, against the state-sponsored terrorism. It is scary, how readily the middle class accepted a campaign of mass murder, in the name of Order and Stability. There were, at most, about 300-600 terrorists when the military seized power. These were all killed, but the campaign of killing off all opposition became institutionalized, and went on and on. First unpatriotic deeds were punished, then unpatriotic thoughts merited a death sentence. And the definition of "unpatriotic" kept expanding. The military had an Ends Justifying Means ideology, that justified breaking any law, doing any violence.
If they hadn't lost legitimacy, by losing the Falklands war, the fascists (and I use the strict non-epithet definition of the word) could still be in power there. It was their defeat on the battlefield, and their failure economically, that brought the Junta down. The death squads could cruise the streets, looking for pretty girls to kidnap, rape, and murder, and they were untouchable. That didn't bother the middle class, they pretended it wasn't happening, or rationized it away: "That only happens to Other people, people who must have deserved it." That didn't create mass opposition, whereas not putting bread on the nation's table did. |
