Why some people don't get the joke

'Saint Augusto'

When you publicly declare that you think that an entire indigenous race must be exterminated, that a war criminal and despot should be adulated and that a centre-left government was run by extremist communists, you wouldn't take this seriously nor even agree with it - would you?

Some people do. I have a comedy blog called Iván Izqueirdo and have received comments that surely would raise your eyebrows.

The premise of this blog is that an extremist right-wing person from the Chilean aristocracy spouts out his diatribes. The thing is that there are so many of these people, who say exactly the same things, that for many Chilean people this blog would seem perfectly authentic.

Having grown up amongst upper-middle class communities in Chile, I find the worldview perspective of these people very narrow and repugnant. Many of these people have shrines to Pinochet in their homes and are never able to wake up to the reality of situations.

I find that the progressive conservatives in Chile are fairly respectable people. The majority of people from the right, however, speak what Iván Izquierdo speaks word for word. (On second thought, because Spanish is their first language, they don't have to think too hard on their phraseolgogy so much...)

So, when you speak to these people on their level, they'll agree with you... Yet they don't realise that you are actually mocking them and everything they stand for...

One person who attended my old school said "I love the blog, [Pablo] Neruda is a fucking communist."

This brings back memories of a conversation I had with this kid back in the equivalent of year six. My father was voting for a leftist candidate at a local election and he replied "God grief, your dad is a leftist!" His political reasoning doesn't appear to have altered since he was eleven...

What inspired the blog was The Daily Show, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Colbert is a comedian who impersonates a ultra-right political commentator - the kind you see on Fox... Yet, in a world, when this is the norm, hoards of Americans watch this spoof show and don't notice the difference...

I'd like to add that the concept of irony doesn't really exist in Chile. I mean, this blog is pretty crude and unsubtle yet people still don't get it... I remember that whilst I was in Chile I would get a lot of laughs by being ironic, the likes of which I seldom get here in the UK...

It all may seem ludicrous and over-the-top, but the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of Iván Izquierdos around...