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?