Human rights groups competed with the left to denounce dictatorships in Chile

Evidence

Given Hayek’s support for Pinochet’s regime and his criticisms of Amnesty International, it seems surprising that some have criticised the new politics of human rights for helping to sanitise neoliberalism. Focusing on the role of Friedman and the ‘Chicago Boys’ in guiding the junta’s economic reforms, Naomi Klein, for instance, criticises Amnesty International for obscuring the relationship between neoliberal ‘shock therapy’ and political violence. Noting that the Southern Cone was a ‘laboratory’ for both neoliberalism and grassroots human rights activism, she argues that, in its commitment to impartiality, Amnesty occluded the reasons for the torture and killing, and thereby ‘helped the Chicago School ideology to escape from its first bloody laboratory virtually unscathed’. Samuel Moyn, on the other hand, contests the claim that the human rights movement was complicit in the rise of neoliberalism, deeming Klein’s account ‘exaggerated and implausible’. The success of the human rights movement, he argues, is at least partly due to ‘the left’s own failure either to escape savage repression’ or to bring about coalitions to denounce dictatorship with as much success. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 306

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on human rights discourse and its political functions — engages the Klein-Moyn debate over human rights and neoliberalism. — connects to: Pinochet’s junta permitted human rights groups while exterminating the left — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 307; The new human-rights NGOs selectively condemned only left-wing regimes — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 393; Authoritarianism can manifest on the political left as well as right — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 446
• QUESTION: Moyn’s claim that human rights movement success came from left’s failure deserves scrutiny — was the left actually unable, or was capacity itself shaped by the same structures?

Broader Connections

• The new human-rights NGOs selectively condemned only left-wing regimes #contradicts (0.92) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 393
• Authoritarianism can manifest on the political left as well as right #responds-to (0.70) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 446