Went to see the Lives of Others the other day. Thought it very good. So did Adriana who has some personal reflections on life under communism.

Uh oh, this looks bad:

Individual freedom is the dream of our age. But if one steps back and looks at what freedom actually means for us today, it’s a strange and limited kind of freedom.

And:

It will show how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of freedom. This model was derived from ideas and techniques developed by nuclear strategists during the Cold War. It was then taken up by genetic biologists, anthropologists, radical psychiatrists and free market economists, until it became a new system of invisible control.

They’re taking our word.  The bastards.  I suppose it is a compliment to the 19th century liberals that the Marxists had to take their word and make it mean something quite different.  Confucius may or may not have said: “When words lose their meaning, people lose their freedom.” But what happens when freedom loses its meaning?

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom, Sunday, 2100-2200, BBC2

One of the good things about someone dying is that you get to hear all sides of the debate.  I can’t say this has changed my view of the guy but it has clarified it:

• He was right to launch the coup
• He was right to champion free market policies
• He was wrong to torture and kill unarmed opponents

The trick is to avoid falling into the trap of backing everything he did just because you agree with some of what he did.

Having said that - and this is mostly an intellectual exercise - is it possible to justify the torture and murder? Well, put as starkly as that, obviously not.  But is it possible that this was a package deal: that Pinochet could not have launched the coup in the first place had he not had the support of some pretty unsavoury characters ie, people who got a kick out of torture and murder?