. . . Be Defeated,' could be called the world's most popular protest song." So testifies the Houston Chronicle today.
"The People United" could also be called the world's most popular Marxist protest song, because that's precisely what it is. But our local newspaper . . .
. . . didn't see fit to bother us with such a pesky detail. Sample these lines from the song:
The light / of a red dawn / already announces / the life to come. (La luz / de un rojo amanecer / annuncia ya / la vida que vendra.)
Millions now / are imposing the truth. (Milliones ya, / imponen la verdad.}
The Chronicle explains the genesis of the song this way:
Written by the Chilean ban Quilapayun, "El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido" became an anthem of resistance after the country's popular government was overthrown in the 1973 coup that placed Augusto Pinochet in power.
The song was, in fact, a political theme anthem for Salvador Allende's Unidad Popular ("Popular Unity") government, a coalition of socialists, communists, and other leftists. The phase itself was a political slogan, much like "Yes we can!" It was written and recorded before Mr. Allende was overthrown.
Steven Brown, the Chronicle writer, recycles the Marxist view of things with his promiscuous use, probably unwitting, of the word "popular." The song is "the world's most popular protest song" and the government overthrown in 1973 was Chile's "popular government."
How popular was it? The peak probably came in 1970 when Mr. Allende, a Marxist, was elected president with barely one-third of the votes. After that, it was all downhill, both for Mr. Allende and his country.
He promptly set about fundamentally transforming his country by nationalizing the basic industries and taking over the institutions of government and the civil institutions as well. This is the same trail blazed by his pal Fidel Castro and followed in later decades by such heroes of the left as Hugo Chavez. And the results were what the results always are in command economies, a disaster.
By 1973 he had alienated both the Chilean supreme court (for refusing to enforce court decisions with which he disagreed) and the Chilean congress (for ruling by decree and ignoring the constitution).
Sound familiar?
He committed suicide later that year while under siege in a a military coup.
A sad paradox is that Mr. Allende wore the mantle of democracy and the government that replaced him was a dictatorship. But he drove his country into economic ruin and the dictatorial Pinochet government followed free-market principles that led Chile to the highest level of prosperity in all of South America.
This is not an argument for dictatorship; it's just a reminder that democracy and economics are two different things that sometimes need to be analyzed separately. You can have neither, one, or -- ideally -- both.
Back to the Chronicle.
None of this is a big whoop, except that it illustrates how the cultural left builds and recycles its myths. The intellectual space occupied by the Houston Chronicle is squarely in the cultural left, which is why it can, without awareness or concern, salute an old commie anthem with offhanded half-truths.
This reminds us why true revoluationaries -- terrorists, really -- like Bill Ayers retired from trying to blow up buildings and people and set out blowing our up education system. The project is to miseducate people to believe America is a bad old place that be redeemed only by messianic statists such as, for instance, the popular Mr. Allende.
Enough miseducation and there comes a day when neither the reporter nor any editor has sufficient sense to tell us the whole truth about "The People United" or, for that matter, much of anything else.
They just don't know. And to the extent they may know, they don't care.
It's more fun to self-identify with an old Chilean Marxist -- a martyr! -- and stir the blood with lyrics about flags, mobilizing, and marching, about popularity, steel battalions, a thousand fighting voices, struggle, and the fatherland, and about the object desired by all good Marxists, the glorious life to come under the red banner.
Oh, and one more thing. To to borrow words from the ever-popular Marxist anthem celebrated today by the Houston Chronicle, "imposing the truth."
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