To the dismay of those committed to the left that calls itself progressive, the virtual cultural hegemony it achieved thanks to “the long march through the institutions” that was foreseen approximately eighty years ago by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci has not allowed it to lord it over the Western political world. On the contrary, the manifest contempt that liberals feel for those who mock the woke extravagances and the moral superiority attributed to those who take them seriously, have unleashed a reaction that dozens of leaders stigmatized as “ultra-right” are taking advantage of.
Less than a week ago, a politician thus qualified, the Chilean José Antonio Kast who, in addition to being a practicing Catholic with conservative attitudes, does not hesitate to express his approval of what was done half a century ago by the dictator Augusto Pinochet, won by a wide margin over the communist candidate Jeannette Jara who represented the leftist coalition of the outgoing president Gabriel Boric.
Kast’s victory cannot be taken as an exclusively Chilean event attributable to nothing more than the disappointing management of the social democrat Boric. Something very similar is happening in the main countries of Europe, where governments that boast of their progressive profile have already completely collapsed or, if they still survive, have become so unpopular that it is more than likely that they will be succeeded by others led by characters who are even more “ultra-right” than the one who will be in charge of Chile as of March 11.
In the United Kingdom, Labor, the founder of the British welfare state that so influenced original Peronism, is in free fall thanks to the patent inability of Premier Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers to manage the economy solvently and stop illegal immigration; He is being replaced by the Reform party of “right-wing extremist” Nigel Farage who, according to polls, would win by knockout if a general election were held tomorrow. The more than century-old German social democracy is also dying, while in France, where the “centrist” president Emmanuel Macron runs the risk of being forced to resign before finishing his term in May 2027, the bulk of the working class supports the forces of Marine Le Pen. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s “hard right” is consolidating power.
Just as depressed as European progressives are about what is happening are their American counterparts. Traumatized by Donald Trump’s victory in last year’s presidential election, Democratic Party strategists are divided between those who would like to put an end to the enthusiastic adherence to “woke” novelties that has caused them so much harm, and those persuaded that they can still win the “cultural battle” against those who refuse to understand that any man can transform into a woman if he so wishes and that all white people are congenitally racist and therefore responsible for the travails of minorities of color.
Even so, although those theorists who, based on Marxist thinkers such as Gramsci, point out that ultimately people’s political attitudes depend on the cultural values prevailing in a society, will not have been wrong, they have grossly exaggerated their own ability to change them. They would do well to remember that, after seventy years of extraordinarily cruel oppression, the Soviet communists finally realized that the Russians and others in their empire continued to cling to the traditional beliefs they had sought to brainwash them away. It is not surprising, then, that the much less brutal efforts of the progressives to indoctrinate the “common man” to drastically modify their political and social preferences.
Both in Europe and in Chile and, of course, in Bolivia and Argentina, the defeats suffered by the left or by political movements, such as those of Evo Morales and the Kirchners, who claim to belong to the so-called family, have been largely due to their economic ineffectiveness. It would seem that everyone took for granted that their supposed good will would exempt them from the need to look after the specific interests of the people. Some were so confident in their presumed invulnerability that they allowed themselves to be seduced by the cultural obsessions of North American progress without worrying about the concern it motivated in sectors with other priorities.
Because progressivism is a phenomenon that is clearly elitist, those who campaign in its favor tend to distance themselves more and more from the majority of their compatriots. It is for this reason that the success of the Gramscian “long march” in which its supporters managed to colonize first the universities and then most of the different educational systems, the judicial institutions, the publishing companies, the most prestigious journalistic media and almost all entities related to culture, in addition to the administrative bureaucracies, is harming the left.
Thanks to the money and positions they managed to accumulate for their contributions to the culture war and the services they would provide to governments that needed teams of influencers, many prominent progressives would find themselves included, often unfairly, in what for Javier Milei is “the caste” and, for Trump supporters, is “the deep state.” In many Western countries, the conflict between the people and “the elites,” especially the cultural ones, has taken the place of the old division between right and left.
In Chile, Kast chose to say little about the cultural wars that, in his two previous attempts to reach the presidency, had figured in his campaign speeches, perhaps believing that worrying about such arcane issues would not bring him many votes, but he surely understands that he has not been harmed by the position taken by local progressives regarding the “woke” phenomenon. Like all other “ultra-rightists”, Kast is a reactionary who defends values that, in the opinion of his opponents on the left, should be consigned to the past but which in his opinion are essential for social cohesion. Thus, on this occasion he based his message on the need to restore respect for the law and fight for citizen security that is threatened by criminals.
Another issue that Kast managed to take advantage of was that raised by immigration. Although the problems it causes in Chile are much less serious than those caused in Europe by the entry of millions of people from highly conflictive societies in which massacres are almost routine, they have been enough to give it the support of those concerned about the changes it is causing. In this area as in others, Kast seems to agree with those “far-right” people from other latitudes who are convinced that a few decades ago their respective societies took a course that, unless they reversed it very soon, could trigger a catastrophe of apocalyptic dimensions. Needless to say, such an opinion is not shared by progressives who would like to see the borders between the various countries erased and attribute the difficulties that are arising to the “white racism” of those who take cultural and religious differences seriously.
Although the rebels against “the elites” claim to be determined to subordinate everything else to the destiny of their own community, they are willing to collaborate with their counterparts in neighboring countries because, unlike the nationalists of other times, they have common enemies; militant Islam and globalism. They all fear that their own countries will lose the characteristics that in their opinion define them in the globalizing crucible, hence the desire to expel those of external origin that they see as intruders and to resist complying with international treaties such as those drafted by those who claim to be distressed by the climate changes that are underway, which force them to make economic sacrifices that hit the already poor hardest.
They are teaching the most shocking measures that Trump has taken. The godfather of the international “extreme right” is by far the most influential politician of our time. Not only in Europe but also in Latin America, it is no longer taboo to request the peremptory expulsion of both undocumented and legally accepted immigrants who have committed crimes, which, as it could not be otherwise, worries many Venezuelans in Chile and Muslims in Europe who have not committed any.
Trump’s preaching against what he calls “the green scam” of climate change is also having an effect. In many parts of the world, more and more people are coming to the conclusion that it would be suicidal to try to abandon the use of fossil fuels. In the United Kingdom, Germany and other countries, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero have already raised energy costs so much that their industries are not in a position to compete with North American industries that pay much less for what they need.
