It was breathtaking to learn that Louisiana bigot David Duke was a proud attendee at this week's Holocaust-deniers conference in Tehran. And how pathetically sad for the Persians, a truly great people, to be forced to play host to such an astonishing embarrassment. The scene in Tehran reminds us that fascism remains very much alive and well in our troubled world.
This was the week that Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet perished without ever being held accountable for his crimes of fascism. Yes, Chile has been a remarkable economic success story, born of Pinochet's embrace of the so-called "Chicago school of economics." However, getting economics right never compensates for the almost unthinkable cruelties visited upon Chileans under Pinochet's rule. Adam Smith spoke of the "hidden hand" of the capitalist system, but in the case of Pinochet that hand was long dripping with other people's blood.
We were told that at least Mussolini kept the trains running on time, but what if those sleek, punctual and profitable trains were loaded with innocent victims enroute to torture and death in Santiago's main football stadium, one of Rome's many piazzas or even places with names like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Oh but that's right, whack jobs like David Duke and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tell us the Holocaust never happened.
This was also the week in which the ugly memory of fascism fell once again over Ethiopia. Former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, hiding in Zimbabawe under the protective cloak of neo-fascist Robert Mugagbe, was found guilty of genocide. Mengistu and 70 of his henchmen were called to account for the mass murder of tens of thousands of students, intellectuals and innocents in a Red Terror campaign that Human Rights Watch labels "one of the most systematic uses of mass murder by a state ever witnessed in Africa.” Mengistu is undoubtedly advising Mugabe right now on how to eliminate his political enemies just as he personally strangled Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie.
David Duke, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Augusto Pinochet, Mengistu Haile Mariam and Robert Mugabe all serve notice that fascism is a potent, brutal force against which all decent people must remain vigilant.
This was the week that Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet perished without ever being held accountable for his crimes of fascism. Yes, Chile has been a remarkable economic success story, born of Pinochet's embrace of the so-called "Chicago school of economics." However, getting economics right never compensates for the almost unthinkable cruelties visited upon Chileans under Pinochet's rule. Adam Smith spoke of the "hidden hand" of the capitalist system, but in the case of Pinochet that hand was long dripping with other people's blood.
We were told that at least Mussolini kept the trains running on time, but what if those sleek, punctual and profitable trains were loaded with innocent victims enroute to torture and death in Santiago's main football stadium, one of Rome's many piazzas or even places with names like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Oh but that's right, whack jobs like David Duke and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tell us the Holocaust never happened.
This was also the week in which the ugly memory of fascism fell once again over Ethiopia. Former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, hiding in Zimbabawe under the protective cloak of neo-fascist Robert Mugagbe, was found guilty of genocide. Mengistu and 70 of his henchmen were called to account for the mass murder of tens of thousands of students, intellectuals and innocents in a Red Terror campaign that Human Rights Watch labels "one of the most systematic uses of mass murder by a state ever witnessed in Africa.” Mengistu is undoubtedly advising Mugabe right now on how to eliminate his political enemies just as he personally strangled Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie.
David Duke, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Augusto Pinochet, Mengistu Haile Mariam and Robert Mugabe all serve notice that fascism is a potent, brutal force against which all decent people must remain vigilant.