US media may have forgotten about the 1973 Chile coup, the US alt-right hasn't

[DBoon]

https://theintercept.com/2021/02/04/pinochet-far-right-hoppean-snake/

Among the panoply of bizarre memes that far-right extremists flash at Trump rallies and share obsessively online, one of the more disturbing for its frightening historical reference is that of the “Hoppean Snake.” The image typically consists of a coiled serpent sporting the officer’s cap of notorious Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet. In the background fly childlike depictions of helicopters from which stick figures are jettisoned to their death, crying “Aaaahhh” in a barely legible scrawl. In one of its many variants, the snake-as-Pinochet proclaims with a sardonic smirk, “I’m evil for throwing people out of helicopters? False. Commies aren’t people.” It’s unclear why Pinochet is depicted as a snake, though it may be inspired by the recalcitrant snake on the Gadsden flag that warns “Don’t Tread on Me.”

Far from being a joking homage to Pinochet — putschist, tyrant, torturer, mass murderer, puppet of the CIA, and hater of all things socialist, who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990 — the fetishized totem of the Hoppean Snake has dire significance for U.S. paramilitaries. When Boogaloo Bois, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, armed Trumpists, and the like wear T-shirts that offer “free helicopter rides,” they are referencing a program of extermination.

Following Pinochet’s 1973 coup d’état, which ended the short-lived and turbulent administration of Chile’s democratically elected president Salvador Allende, an avowed Marxist, thousands of Allende’s supporters were killed, tens of thousands of perceived enemies of the putschist regime were tortured, and thousands of others were disappeared, often after being flown in a military helicopter and toppled from the sky. Sometimes this free helicopter ride included splitting open the guts of kidnapped victims while they were still alive so that their bodies wouldn’t float when dumped in the sea.

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/conservative-erick-erickson-praises-pinochet-helicopters-552b2f3b6597/

In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s 2016 electoral victory, Erick Erickson was the type of conservative pundit many despairing liberals wanted to see.

Erickson, a popular conservative radio host and commentator, had been a fierce critic of Trump, disinviting him from a 2015 conservative conference for “inappropriate” comments on Megyn Kelly. He also wrote a November 2016 op-ed for The New York Times in which he talked about the need for conservatives to “reach across the aisle and go outside Washington” and was profiled by The New Yorker.

But if any doubts remain about whether #NeverTrump Erickson has continued to advocate for his more “acceptable” conservatism as opposed to, well, advocating full-blown fascism, they were dispelled by a series of tweets Erickson posted Monday night, in which he lauded late Chilean dictator Augosto Pinochet and called for a return of dissidents being thrown out of helicopters.

Augosto Pinochet was a murderous dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, after taking power in a CIA-backed military coup from the democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende. Anyone who opposed Pinochet was either murdered, tortured, exiled or — in at least 120 cases — thrown out of helicopters into the sea. Pinochet’s intelligence services also assassinated Orlando Leteiler, a former Chilean diplomat, and two other bystanders with a car bomb in 1976 in Washington, D.C.

[malaise]

1. Get thee to the greatest page

RFN!

M$Greedia’s silence yesterday was deafening

[2naSalit]

2. K&R

[Boomerproud]

3. Sickening to read about and remember.

[crickets]

4. K&R for visibility. 😔