POPULISM NOT POPULAR AT ALL

What are the ideological and doctrinal bases of Argentine populism?

By Javier B. Dal

Throughout the American continent, from the extreme south to the north pole, the so-called populism in its most diverse colorations has been the political guideline of the governments of the last twenty years up to now. First of all, we must recognize who was the precursor of this current that displaced the old-fashioned leftists and the cadaverous Castro's communism.

It was Hugo César Chávez Frías, president of Venezuela and founder of the Bolivarian Revolution, who unknowingly created this current that would later even reach the very domains of Yankee imperialism, only aggiornado to the idiosyncrasy and cold American character, where it was embodied in the figure of an eccentric and contentious multimillionaire like Donald Trump, who did not belong to the elitist club of the corrupt democratic system.

Undoubtedly, Chávez was closer to Peron 's third position than the K's. The only thing the K's conceived was, under the screen of "progressivism", to generate a clientelism that was paid with "rights" many times translated in kind (pensions, subsidies, food bags, etc.).

Chávez was followed and imitated by other world leaders. Some crossed the ocean and after establishing strong friendships and lasting cooperation ties, they took his imprint and vision with them to put them into practice in their own countries. Others in the region did the same, although with less enthusiasm and much more pragmatism, weaving relationships that zigzagged with the policies that Washington was bringing down through the OAS and some of the obsequious in the region.

But there was another that we could say that their approach was at the very least, fearful or even more so, self-interestedly limited. This is how the approach of the then government of Néstor Kirchner to Chávez may be described. And the fact is that in reality there was nothing in common between that man who had a global political vision that installed the idea of "multilateralism" and that other ungainly and petty speculator who during his entire political life, had been a careerist in the shadow of the established power who now played at revolution.

The so-called Kirchnerism had nothing revolutionary and even less popular. Its passage through the state has been to enhance what the old politics has been doing for decades: Stealing from the people. But to that he added one more task: to turn the state into a pilgrimage under the control of pimps and activists of anachronistic seventies organizations that made of public employment, the only source of work.

The local journalism, which can hardly criticize for its constant obsequiousness and slavish loyalty to every government that passes through the Pink House, today pretends to be astonished and ardently lashes out at a government that is sinking due to its own ineffectiveness. No one like them has been in the heat of the power of the moment. In the worst case, some journalists are so predictable in their comments that they cannot hide their political and geopolitical inclinations that contaminate the information.

But in the Argentinean case, what has been the geopolitical production of this K populism during the twenty years of government, has any strategic planning been formulated for Argentina facing the century it is going through, has Kirchner or his wife Fernández had any vision of global scope as Chávez had, has he had any vision of global scope as Chávez had?  The answer is none. Besides contributing to the intellectual impoverishment of their own cadres with obtuse leaders and the whole society (with a very poor elementary education), they have destroyed basic concepts for governance and the so called rule of law. The country has regressed in all aspects in which a supposed revolutionary populism would have excelled. Did the misery and general precariousness that shakes the country and its inhabitants arise from an intermittent struggle against the empire or the continuity of the struggle for the Malvinas Islands?

Venezuela suffers a siege of illegal sanctions driven from Washington and supported by the EU and Israel precisely because of the policies (national and international) driven by Chávez and inherited by Maduro. The K's did not bother any of these dangerous actors, on the contrary, they have always been aligned to them and (as the opposition) will be sitting at the same table showing their obsequious smiles. At no time did Néstor Kirchner or CFK condemn Israel's atrocities and much less did they expel their consular representation as Chávez did.

Kirchnerism is a political scam to say the least.

The flirtations with Russia and the cautious negotiations with China remained just that and today there is only an interested relationship with the latter to receive some coins to help a country that they themselves ended up ruining. The Argentine state has become so destructured that Buenos Aires cannot even control its vital spaces to intimidate (let alone stop) the fishing plundering that Chinese ships carry out with the complacency of the Kelper authorities in the Malvinas.

It does not take much imagination to guess that before the war, during the CFK administration, Vladimir Putin already knew that he was dealing with no one and therefore Russia could not expect anything. The Russian Federation could have provided interesting proposals to restructure a geopolitics that would give the country a power base for negotiations on a minimum equal footing with Washington and London. But as we have said before, that would have been too stressful for politicians used to being under the table picking up the crumbs of global financial power. Therefore, when Alberto Fernandez in his February 2022 visit to Moscow told Putin that he wanted to be the gateway to Russia, the Russian leader already knew that they were just words that would be blown away by the wind.

Who put Kirchnerism in power? It was the same Argentines who, trusting in that corrupt system that in 2001 clamored "for them all to leave" and dressed up as a democracy, is only a club for and only for those who are members and not distinguished in any way from a corporation. Today all of them suffer inflation, an insufferable tax increase and the rise in prices of basic foodstuffs such as bread and fruit, not because of an embargo by the empire (as it is suffered by those who really oppose it) but because of a lousy administration, the political-administrative corruption entrenched in the state that sucks billions of pesos for the payment of salaries and pensions of an army of totally useless militants.

Far from giving identity to a people who are accustomed to being abulic and distant from the world, the stay of this K populism only served to install adulterated narratives of history, thus helping to disintegrate even more the already decimated self-perception of national identity that the “porteños” give to their own country.

Will the next elections change the destiny of the country?