The mediaeval Castilian monarch Alfonso the Wise may or may not have remarked that “had the Lord consulted me before embarking on creation, I would have recommended something simpler”, but the feeling thus expressed has always been shared by large numbers of bright young people. That is why many find totalitarian doctrines irresistibly attractive. Convinced that the world would be better off without some of its inhabitants, the more zealous set about eliminating ethnic or religious minorities, believers of little faith, the bourgeoisie or subversives. Though few go that far, enough did to kill well over a hundred million people in the twentieth century; their successors may prove even more destructive in the current one.
 For most men and women, totalitarianism is just a phase they outgrow when they begin to appreciate that trying to cure society of its ills by simplifying it leads to unspeakable horrors. Because many who for a few years feel tempted by murderous creeds are of above average ability, later on some come to occupy leading positions in the “bourgeois” order they once tried to destroy. One such is José Mujica, who stands an excellent chance of becoming the next president of Uruguay.  As we are continually reminded, he is an ex urban guerrilla, a member of the Tupamaro sect that declared war on his country’s democratic system and, with the help of the armed forces, managed to knock it comatose. Among Latin American progressive intellectuals, the Tupamaros still enjoy a glamorous reputation, as their principles seemed less blatantly fascistic than those of Argentina’s Montoneros and other allegedly far-left groups that caused such havoc here in the 1970s. But though they may have been a cut above most of their fellow revolutionaries they managed to do an enormous amount of harm.
   Is Mujica, who as a result of his violent activities spent almost fifteen years behind bars, a reformed character?  Apparently he is.  In any event, for over four years the Wide Front government of President Tabaré Vázquez has ruled Uruguay in sensible fashion and Mujica says he hopes to continue the good work.  He also wants Uruguay to become a “First World” country, an aspiration Argentine leftists regard as tantamount to selling out to what they, along with most populists, call neoliberalism. And Mujica seems to be free of the vengeful sentiments that on this side of the River Plate motivate many former guerrillas and their hangers-on, like Mr and Mrs Kirchner: towards the end of the first part of his election campaign, he said he did not fancy seeing elderly people  by which he meant retired military officers and policemen  being sent to jail for what they did more than a generation ago.
   Mujica is far from being the only former totalitarian who has risen to somewhere near the top in the world he once thought unworthy of him.  The man  who for some years was Germany’s foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, had earlier made his name as an extreme leftwing street-fighter who, among other things, got photographed giving a fallen cop a vicious kick in the head.  The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, was a card-carrying Maoist before he evolved into a moderate conservative. The route he followed is a familiar one. Many North American “neoconservatives” were Trotskyites in their younger days; according to their critics, they never got over the habit of thinking in the excessively rigid terms that are typical of sectarians.
   Mujica, Fischer, Barroso and the rest know perfectly well that it would do them no good at all to go on about how much they admire Mao, Lenin, Stalin and other mass-murderers, but there are still some individuals around who make no bones about their fond feelings for individuals who caused an immense amount of suffering. Barack Obama’s communications director, Anita Dunn, recently informed an audience of schoolchildren that one of the two people she turned to most was Mao, the other being Mother Teresa.  As Mao is held responsible for the deaths of about 70 million people, it is not surprising that many found Dunn’s confession disturbing, but it would appear that for others admiring a left-wing genocidaire may be a bit quirky but is essentially OK. On the other hand, expressing even the slightest respect for Hitler, who despite his solid socialist credentials occupies a position on the extreme right of the standard political map, will exclude anyone from polite society.  
   This was made clear a few days ago London when the BBC invited the British National Party’s boss, Nick Griffin, to its Question Time talk show. Griffin tried to present himself as a moderate who had never been a neonazi or even a proper racist, just a chap worried by the influx of millions of largely Third World immigrants, but neither his fellow panel-members nor the carefully selected “multicultural” audience were having any of it.  For the best part of an hour, the hapless Griffin was subjected to a barrage of insults from all sides.  Would that have been the case had be been an ardent Islamist determined to behead anyone who spoke ill of his prophet? Of course not. And had Griffin proclaimed himself a worshipper of Mao he would no doubt have been warmly applauded for his breadth of mind. Luckily for Mujica, when he decided that his part of the world needed a drastic overhaul, he did so from what is assumed to be a leftwing perspective. Had he tried to do much the same thing from the right, he would have no chance at all of getting anywhere near Uruguay’s presidency.