This was not the first time Hayek had expressed sympathy for liberal dictators. In 1978, he singled out Pinochet and the Portuguese dictator Oliveira Salazar as leaders of 'authoritarian governments under which personal liberty was safer than under many democracies'. In 1962, he sent Salazar a copy of The Constitution of Liberty with a note expressing his hope that it would help the dictator 'design a constitution which is proof against the abuses of democracy'. Five years later, Hayek praised the regime of Indonesia's General Suharto – also brought to power by a CIA-backed anti-communist coup – in similar terms. In each case, the threat that democracies would interfere with the 'spontaneous order' of the market led him to support brutally violent dictatorships that were prepared to take all necessary measures to preserve existing inequalities.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 363