“If you were alive, you would vote for me.” Identifying his policy as a continuation of the work of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, these were the words of the current populist right-wing Chilean candidate, José Antonio Kast, in 2017.
The son of a former Nazi army officer, Michael Kast, who immigrated to Chile at the end of World War II, and the brother of a former minister Pinochet, Kast makes xenophobia an axis of his policy. It also fuels the fire of conspiracies and paranoia, unfoundedly denouncing the possibility of electoral fraud in case of loss. As in the cases of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, these words seem to be taken from a manual of fascism, in which democracy takes a back seat, displaced by the myth of the dictator and the legitimacy of his heirs.
Anyway, Kast wants to win the elections. And as a populist candidate, it seeks to differentiate itself from traditional dictatorial methods. This election will decide the direction the country will take, especially two years after one of the most important protests in its history.
Center-left candidate Gabriel Boric (Apruebo Dignidad) proposes to channel a series of demands (mainly those related to access to public services and fair pensions), which are also being discussed in the Constituent Convention that will draft the new charter that will replace that of the dictator Pinochet . It is the first constitution written in democracy, and with a joint Convention, with representation of the original peoples and legitimized with a vote of 78%.
The world is experiencing an approximation of populism to fascism and, following Bolsonaro, Kast presents himself as an alternative to this supposed abyss. This type of populism combines the defense of past dictatorships, the defense of neoliberalism and a repressive policy of “law and order”, but in reality it promotes disorder, paranoia and division.
Unlike leaders like Hitler and Mussolini, would-be fascists accuse their opponents of being fascists. In 2020, Kast argued that “fascism is taking root in Chile and doing it side by side with Colegio Médico and other left-wing NGOs that seek to divide and discriminate between infected and uninfected Chileans, having ‘sanitary agents’ and other anti-democratic proposals “. Following the incongruity, he also denounced a campaign of civilizational destruction supposedly based on the thinking of Michel Foucault.
Unlike his campaign ads, on his presidential program and –of course– on his questionable record, Kast denounces the “betrayal” of the “traditional right” and personifies himself as the Chilean standard-bearer of a global “new right” .
Like Trump in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Narendra Modi in India and Victor Orban in Hungary, Kast replaces history with the fabrication of myths about the past while accusing his enemies of “falsifying history”. He also promotes xenophobia and hatred of the different while accusing his opponents of promoting “totalitarianism”. In summary, there is nothing new about this pocket-based project for Chile. And like Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Kast bases his policies on conspiratorial fantasies and repressive promises, but does so in a measured tone, as if he were a gentle, sedated Bolsonaro. The result is a wrapper that tries to moderate its contents.
Kast also presents himself as a response to a crisis of representation, although he has been involved in politics for decades. Your speech is as empty as it is effective.
In its “guiding principles”, the Kast movement states: “We believe in goodness and truth as objective realities.” And in the next step he suggests that freedom must be opposed to equality. Kast appeals to a particular notion of “order”, with a staunch defense of the police forces (despite denunciations of their actions). According to Kast, “we are at a tipping point. We have to stop the explosion of violence and the reign of delinquency that is turning the daily lives of thousands of Chileans into a real nightmare.” It should come as no surprise that your proposal questions the existence of order and law, even if you claim to speak for them.
This call for “violence” is not gratuitous: it is a reference to the social mobilization that developed after October 2019 in Chile, which openly questioned the country’s political, economic and social system. But it is also an excuse to dismantle advances in social rights. This fits very well into the “cultural, ideological and programmatic battle” to which his movement appeals, and which translates – among other examples – into a defense of the family formed solely by mother, father and children, in addition to denying women the right to abortion.
If implemented, his proposals will have continental repercussions: for him and his team, immigration is seen as a problem that threatens “national independence” and “has a destructive effect” on the country’s “republican integrity”. After what happened in northern Chile, in Iquique, when a mob set immigrants’ belongings on fire in broad daylight, his proposal is the worst way to tackle the problem.
Kast himself stated that the ideal is to build a ditch on the northern border in a way that prevents the entry of immigrants. While Trump promoted the construction of a wall to fight an alleged invasion of rapists and criminals (the Mexican “bad hombres”) and – more recently – the coronavirus, Kast presents the idea of a well that would separate Chile from its problems. “If you make a trench three meters deep, with fences so that no one falls in, that’s doable and very economical,” he declared in a presidential debate last October.
In recent weeks, Kast has intensified his proposals for ditches and lies about electoral fraud, demonstrating in fact a closeness to Trump and Bolsonaro that he relativizes in recent interviews. Kast represents a normalization of Pinochet’s legacy, but also his populist “aggiornamento” for modern times. A central difference between populism and fascism is that, for populists, electoral results matter. Fascism, on the other hand, implies permanent power independently of the ballot boxes.
Thus, like Trump and Bolsonaro, Kast wants to blur these differences, but presents his candidacy precisely as a defense of Chilean democracy against totalitarianism and fascism. It is typical of fascist propaganda to speak of freedom and democracy when in reality its candidates, like the Chilean politician, represent the exact opposite.
*Translation from Spanish by Maria Isabel Santos Lima
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