Many critics have noted that the turn to an authoritarian solution always seems close at hand, with Hayek and Friedman’s visits to Augusto Pinochet’s Chile being exhibit A. Referring to Pinochet, Hayek said he would “prefer a liberal dictator to a demo­cratic government lacking liberalism” and that “it is pos­si­ble for a dictator to govern in a liberal way”—­while qualifying that this should be only a “temporary transitional arrangement.” Hayek’s statements recalled both Röpke’s discussion of “dictatorial democracy” in 1940 and Mises’s point in 1927 that Italian “fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved Eu­ro­pean civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself ­will live on eternally in history.” 60 Following the logic of the lesser evil, the suppression of a disruptive force from the left periodically made support for dictators thinkable for some neoliberals. Mises wrote in 1922, “Our ­whole civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in beating off the attack of the re-­distributors.”

Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, loc. 905