Pinochetist
Augusto Pinochet's Chile (1973–1990) exemplifies this model. After seizing power in a military coup, Pinochet banned political parties and used brutal repression against opponents. His economic policies, influenced by the 'Chicago Boys,' included massive privatizations, cuts to tariffs, deregulation, and minimal state intervention, creating one of the most radical free-market experiments under a repressive regime. While the state intervened occasionally (e.g., during the 1980s banking crisis), Pinochet's Chile remains the closest example of 'total political repression + strongly pro-capitalist policies.'
What it believes
The market must be imposed: unions crushed, prices freed, industries privatized, and a constitution written to outlast the dictatorship — all enforced by a junta that treats socialism as a disease and democracy as its vector.
The appeal
To elites watching inflation and expropriation, it promised the only 'orderly' path back to property and growth — and its GDP charts became the global right's favorite exhibit for authoritarian transition.
Where it breaks
The exhibit omits the stadiums used as prisons, the disappeared, and the crash of 1982 that required state rescues of the liberalized banks. If the market needs a secret police to survive its own society, the market was not consented to.
Among its neighbours
The Fascist beside it shows the same violence in service of the nation rather than the price system. Directly below, the Fujimorist reruns the formula with elections kept as decoration. The far end of this row — the Stalinist-Marxist — is its mirror: total power, opposite economics, same knock at midnight.
Figures — real and imagined — who share the Pinochetist base ideology. They differ only on the third axis: from radical to restorationist, each is a different face of a Pinochetist.
The company you keep.
The social axis (progressive ↔ traditional) splits Pinochetist into nine named shades. Take the quiz to find out which one is yours.
- Radical Pinochetist
- Progressive Pinochetist
- Reformist Pinochetist
- Heterodox Pinochetist
- Pinochetist
- Rooted Pinochetist
- Traditional Pinochetist
- Reactionary Pinochetist
- Restorationist Pinochetist