Hayek actively defended the Pinochet regime against human rights criticism.

Evidence

In late 1977 – as the Chilean military junta extended the state of siege in place since its 1973 coup and formally dissolved all political parties – Friedrich Hayek wrote a letter to a German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, to protest what he depicted as unfair international criticism of the regime of General Augusto Pinochet. When his article was rejected, he wrote to the editor expressing disappointment that the newspaper lacked the ‘civil courage’ to resist popular anti-Pinochet sentiment. Hayek singled out the human rights organisation Amnesty International – which had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier that year – for turning ‘slander [into] a weapon of international politics’. After accepting an invitation to lecture in Chile, he complained, he was inundated with phone calls, letters and anti-Pinochet material by ‘well-intentioned people I did not know but also from organizations like “Amnesty International”’, who asked him to cancel his visit. Amnesty’s materials on Chile from this period detail the Junta’s widespread use of arbitrary imprisonment, execution, systematic torture and the ‘disappearance’ of political detainees, 1,500 of whom then remained unaccounted for. In a style Amnesty helped pioneer, its 1977 report on Chilean political prisoners combined legal analysis with moving accounts of missing individuals. To take only one example, it recounted that José Baeza Cruces, a trader from Santiago, had been arrested in his shop in July 1974 by personnel of the Air Force Intelligence Service. Cruces was taken to a basement in the Ministry of Defence and later to the Air Force Academy of War, where, according to witnesses, he was tortured every day for at least six months. After that the witnesses were transferred and contact with Cruces was lost. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 304

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of Hayek as the central theorist of the market order — here anchored to an empirical collaboration with a murderous dictatorship, which deepens the ethics-of-markets debate. — connects to: A German pro-market economist excused Pinochet-era repression while resenting traffic lights at home — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 344; Hayek and Friedman personally advised and legitimized the Pinochet dictatorship. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 305; Hayek repeatedly praised Pinochet, Salazar, and Suharto’s dictatorships as liberty-preserving — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 363 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Hayek repeatedly praised Pinochet, Salazar, and Suharto’s dictatorships as liberty-preserving #corroborates (0.95) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 363
• Hayek directly legitimized Pinochet’s dictatorship as more liberal than unrestricted democracy. #corroborates (0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1592
• Hayek distinguished authoritarian from totalitarian regimes to exempt Chile from criticism #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1590
• Hayek publicly defended self-limiting dictatorships as possibly more liberal than unrestrained democracy #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2151
• German scholars documented the Mont Pèlerin Society’s defense of Pinochet’s dictatorship. #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1729
• Nobel-winning Chicago economists actively endorsed Pinochet’s dictatorship #expands (0.70) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 329