Sadly this is my Dad to a tee. He worships Fransisco Franco.
I used to visit Spain during the last few years of Francisco Franco's regime. The middle class small business owner that I knew liked him for keeping Spain stable in the post World War years: Communism was identified as the enemy. Tourism was booming and the economy was growing fast. The Guarda Civile had a lot of power but generally left people alone.
Franco wasn’t Hitler....not even close....Franco saved over 200,000 Jews.....not saying he was perfect by any stretch, but considering the straits Spain was in before he took power, he was certainly better than the alternative.
Fransisco Franco and Pinochet both great men. Both right wing dictators, which is why the left hates them, who gave up power to Democrat control, which is why the left hates them with intensity, and they did this with out re-education camps or killing 10% plus of the population, which again the left hates them for. They are hated even more than Palin or Reagen or Goldwater.
And they, the left, never pass up an opportunity to denigrate them.