Despite the fact that so much has changed in our world since the middle of the last century, those interested in the political vicissitudes of the various societies that make it up refuse to abandon the Manichean criteria that the propagandists of the Stalinist Soviet Union used at that time, hence the frequent allusions made to the conflict being waged by an international “ultra-right” supposedly related to fascism, if not to Nazism, and the globalized “progressive left” that, according to its sympathizers, privileges the most vulnerable. Although such an almost geometric scheme never reflected reality, it survives thanks to the lack of alternatives that are equally simple.
And the center? It would seem that today “the space” so-called, which, in theory, is occupied by those who strive to combine the dynamism that is typical of market capitalism with the benefits provided by the socialist Welfare State, is not in fashion anywhere. In Europe, there is a predominant feeling that the “third way”, which gained popularity in political circles approximately thirty years ago, has become impassable, which is why in the so-called “old continent” and the British Isles the largely centrist governments have become extremely unpopular. They are all threatened by movements that they (dis)qualify as right-wing but that are still influencing their behavior by providing them with ideas that, after rejecting them as reactionary, they end up adopting.
In the United States, “the right” led by Donald Trump already governs, and in Europe representatives of the so-called right wing are gaining more and more support. They rule Giorgia Meloni’s Italy and the parties they have formed lead polls in the UK, France and parts of Germany.
It is also advancing in South America. Recently, Bolivia, which for years had been a bastion of an aggressive version of the Bolivarian left of Evo Morales, fell into the hands of the right-wing Rodrigo Paz and everything suggests that the next president of Chile will be the even more right-wing José Antonio Kast, although our “ultra-right” Javier Milei would have preferred another politician of Teutonic origin to win, Johannes Kaiser, a man with ideas that are much more libertarian than those of the conservative who, although in the first return of the presidential elections, came second behind the communist Jeannette Jara, seems destined to surpass her by a wide margin in the runoff on December 14 since he is supported by other candidates who, with nuances, share his points of view.
Although it is evident that the traditional political map has become outdated and that it would be advisable to replace it with another that takes into account the mutations that the different currents have experienced in recent decades, attempts to create one have not been successful, perhaps because to do so it would be necessary to recognize that, in the still relatively rich countries at least, left-wing “progressivism” has become an elitist and cosmopolitan phenomenon, while the new right has the support of growing sectors of the working class This being the case, the current right is quite similar to the left of yesteryear, which, when it became bourgeois, became a simulacrum of the old conservative ruling class.
With some delay, something similar is happening in Latin America. In Chile, Kast is the standard bearer of patriotic and family values that, as in Europe and North America, are often shared by those who feel harmed by what is happening in their respective societies in which the economic system favors those who already have more financial and cultural resources. In their own way, those who lack them are born conservatives who do not want to know anything about the “woke” innovations that have been adopted by many characters linked to the progressive metropolitan intellectuality who, despite their anti-North American feelings, have allowed themselves to be mentally colonized by one of the most influential factions of the empire that they claim to hate.
In any case, the advance of “the right”, which so alarms the established elites that in Europe are trying to stop it by undemocratic means, erecting “sanitary cordons” and even promoting legal measures (“lawfare”) with the purpose of keeping it out of power, is mainly due to the inability of leftist and centrist governments to defend both the material and cultural interests of the majority in an era marked by disconcerting changes. The situation in which such governments find themselves is aggravated by the arrogance of their members; Few manage to hide the contempt they feel for those who refuse to recognize the moral superiority they attribute to themselves.
In the United States, Trump’s victory was largely due to the refusal of a majority, which is made up not only of “whites” who feel persecuted for the color of their skin but also of many blacks and Latinos, to allow themselves to be indoctrinated by woke preachers. In last year’s presidential election, the attempt by candidate Kamala Harris’ Democratic propagandists to convince the electorate that Trump supporters were despicable racists and sexists backfired.
In other parts of the world, leftist strategists, aware that the old economic recipes of Marxist origin to which, in one way or another, they had clung before the implosion of the Soviet Union had spectacularly failed, imported North American innovations that were repudiated by those who would consider them absurd. As George Orwell said; There are ideas so bizarre that only an intellectual could take them seriously. Something similar happened here when, with the purpose of appearing as full members of the leftist international, some Kirchnerists sought to ally themselves with the cultural warriors of the United States. His efforts in this regard convinced very few, but they gave Milei and the social media communicators who accompany him a pretext to treat them as woke militants.
Although Milei, like Trump and those around him, has become accustomed to celebrating the electoral triumphs of members of the improvised right-wing team, he cannot help but understand that he does not have much in common with those who, far from aspiring to dismantle the local State, would like to strengthen it. Being right-wing is not equivalent to being anarcho-capitalist because it is a matter of a position that is very different from those historically assumed by those who usually privilege order above everything else. For this reason, and also because all of his hypothetical coreligionists are nationalists, it is unlikely that they will choose to emulate the impulsive Argentine leader or treat him as a continental leader.
In any case, for Milei, the way in which Chile has evolved since the Pinochet coup of September 11, 1973 entails a warning. Although, unlike what happened here, the resulting dictatorship managed to reorganize the Chilean economy so that in the following years it grew so vigorously that in the opinion of the main world institutions it could be considered “developed”, over time internal tensions intensified to such a point that, in 2019, they caused a social outbreak against the wealthy elites who had taken advantage of the impressive macroeconomic progress that was initiated by the Pinochet regime for their own benefit.
In addition to a lot of confusion, that rebellion against the status quo, which was unleashed by the rise in the cost of public transportation in Santiago, made possible the election in December 2021, with an overwhelming majority, of the moderate leftist Gabriel Boric, but his star would soon fade, which harmed Jara, who had been Minister of Labor in his government, in last Sunday’s elections.
Thus, even if Milei manages to initiate a prolonged period of economic growth that is comparable to that enjoyed by Chile or that, as he hopes, is decidedly superior, at any moment there could be a massive rebellion by those who, rightly or wrongly, believe themselves to be victims of a radically unjust system. Macroeconomic successes always generate expectations that, no matter how exaggerated they may seem to those satisfied with the evolution of the society in which they live, governments have to take into account.
Just a couple of years ago, the world fully entered a phase characterized by unpredictability, one in which no country can be considered “stable” and “normality” is something that the nostalgic long for. As things stand, it seems that the progressive left will continue to cede ground to a motley collection of movements that they denounce as right-wing, but it is more than likely that the governments they form will turn out to be as incapable of satisfying the majority of those who will depend on them as those of leftist or centrist ideologies that are fighting to remain in power have been.
