An intellectually exhausted right wing

The sinister gathering that took place some days ago in Rosario, and which came to Rebelión's attention through an article by Miguel Bonasso, brought together the key figures of right-wing thought and praxis in the Americas. In reality it was just another stop for the Neanderthal travelling circus, which had its baptism of fire in Madrid on the 4th July 2007, in the so-called “IVth Atlantic Forum: A meeting for Democracy and Freedom in Europe and America” and which is currently circulating through a number of Latin American countries, spreading the empire's neoliberal gospel. The same characters, the same sponsors, the same rhetoric, the same intellectual poverty, perambulate throughout the region. The intellectual cast-list is made up of the indescribable Mario Vargas Llosa and his son, Álvaro, Jorge Castañeda, Carlos Montaner, Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Enrique Krauze, Marcos Aguinis, Jorge Edwards, Arturo Fontaine and a plethora of “minor goody-goodies”, as the ever-lucid Alfonso Sastre would say. In terms of politics, the list goes from José M. Aznar to Vicente Fox, passing through Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, ex-President of Bolivia, Francisco Flores, ex of El Salvador, Osvaldo Hurtado, from Ecuador and Luis A. Lacalle from Uruguay, all deserving of more than grateful remembrances in their respective countries for their patriotic contribution to the general welfare of the population, above all among the most humble. From the U.S. came Roger Noriega, sinister character linked to the Cuban-American Mafia, and one-time “bully boy” for the empire, in charge of hemispheric affairs, under the presidency of George W. Bush.

The Master of Ceremonies at the meeting was Aznar, in his role as president of the FAES (Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies), a “think tank” organically linked to the Spanish centre-right Partido Popular (People's Party). Others, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Atlas Economic Research Institute, that bring together the most recalcitrant Right of the U.S., also supported the event and sent their most distinguished representatives. In an earlier work, also published on this (the Rebelión) webpage (see Marcos Roitman, Aznar y la FAES en América Latina - Aznar and the FAES in Latin America - 20th February 2008) the nature of this conservative project is described and analysed with great clarity. It is barely left for us to add that the mere list of names of the people and institutions involved is reminiscent of an extraordinary Italian film from the mid-'70s, Excellent Cadavers, directed by Francesco Rosi, which revealed the close ties between political leaders, dominant classes and the Mafia in Italy at the time. The analogy could not have been more accurate to describe the spectres taking part in this meeting, called under the heading “The Challenges of Latin America”.

What did this meeting want? There were three aims. Let us start with the most relevant to the moment: to outshine the events being prepared for mid-June to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the birth of Che Guevara, to take place in Rosario. As was to be expected, if the FAES meeting lacked one thing, it was blinding brilliance. The organisers of the June events can sleep easy.

A second, deeper aim was to relaunch a conservative force on a continental scale, capable of stemming the advances of the left and, simultaneously, the third objective was to coordinate and strengthen the escalation of aggressions against Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales. The idea being that this would mature into the creation of a new, Right-Wing international, bearing in mind that the Christian democrat is showing no signs of life and, furthermore, is not tough or intransigent enough for these times. It is necessary to redouble the pressure to avoid situations being reproduced in Latin America, similar to those that ended with the installation of people like Chávez, Morales and, more recently, Correa en in the governments of the region. Other countries, such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Dominican Republic and Uruguay were on the point of going down that same ill-fated road. If they did not do it, at least to date, it is because, as some of the intellectuals meeting in Rosario indicated, the mandate, clearly contrary to neoliberalism, of an electorate seduced by the Siren-song of populism was ignored by the new governors who, in a sudden and unexpected attack of rationality, abandoned their archaic “populist” and “statist” slogans and reconciled themselves to the free market, foreign investment and the North American leadership, maintaining or deepening the Washington Consensus policies instituted by their predecessors. In a word: they swindled the will of the people. At no point was this called into question for being a demonstration of the low “institutional quality” of these self-styled democracies. The problem of “institutional quality” is to be found in Caracas, La Paz or Quito, where irresponsible demagogues keep their electoral promises. The only case that is still in doubt is that of Argentina where, as they have written and more recently a number of participants expressed in Rosario, the “fatal attraction” of populism in that country is too great and, sooner or later, will lead to the country joining forces with Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.

The third aim, as was said, was to redouble the attacks against Chávez and so-called populism. In this sense, the press interviews given by the most prominent participants: Vargas Llosa, Castañeda, Aznar and Noriega, demonstrate the advanced state of their intellectual menopause. It is greatly saddening to read from the first two names on that list, the reiterated slander and lies directed against Chávez (and to a lesser extent, Morales) and their hysterical denouncing of populism as the greatest threat looming over the Latin American democracies. Men who in the past wrote suggestive novels or wise essays; that is to say, people who thought, now limit themselves to being the insipid mouthpieces of the White House's official line on the populist virus, delivered with none of the brilliance or colour of the parrots with whom they are sometimes wrongly and unfairly compared. They say it without the power that comes from a deep conviction in what they are saying. They are mere employees, generously rewarded for saying these things, they say them, but not even they believe what they say. In summary: it is a farce. Vargas Llosa repeating the Bush discourse: “populism is the most immediate danger we face in the move towards modernity”, from which it is to be inferred that, amongst us, populism has more than two centuries of luxurious and vigorous presence, a genuine sociological miracle deserving of a novel as lengthy as Conversation in the Cathedral or The War of the End of the World to unravel the essence of this metaphysical portent that has frustrated our incessant struggle to reach modernity since the beginnings of the nineteenth century. Another example, this time grotesque: Castañeda lamenting the fact that the current President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, persists in cultivating an anachronistic “anti-North Americanism”, from which it is possible to infer that nobody should be surprised if from one day to the next, Mexico decides to join the axis of evil that unites Havana, Caracas, La Paz and Quito. It is surprising that these people have so little respect for their own intellectual pasts and for their written works.

It is better not to talk about the speeches made by Aznar and Noriega: they simply find it hard to string together a few concepts, however elementary they may be. Their intellectual universe is extremely narrow; not really a universe, more a tiny village where three or four clichés, “made in the USA” circulate and there is nothing more. According to the ex-President of the Spanish Government, the Latin American dilemma is “revolutionary populism in its most insane form, or liberal democracy.” In his speeches there was no sign of the most minimum inkling of an attempt at analysis. Given the excellent quality of these contributions, it is easy to understand how the event could have passed almost unnoticed in Rosario and that even the right-wing press would have felt utterly ridiculous reporting on such a such a primitive gathering. If it was mentioned at all, it is as a result of the enormous police operation that had to be mounted to protect these zombies from “popular feeling” and the burning indignation of the students of Rosario, who rejected their presence in the city in many ways.

Among the leading intellectual lights who tried to illuminate Rosario, three names stand out: those of the three authors of the The Return of the Idiot (published last year in Argentina), the latest contribution from the trio that, eleven years ago, was responsible for the celebrated Manual of the perfect Latin American Idiot, a catalogue of trivialities, lies and fallacies about the causes of the under-development of our countries that, according to these author's incisive analysis is owing to the unhealthy fondness of the Latin Americans for statism and autocratic government. The authors, Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner and Álvaro Vargas Llosa presented a monstrosity, with a prologue by Mario Vargas Llosa, that irrefutably demonstrates that the right does not produce ideas, it just accumulates them, the most primary and elementary level of intellectual thought. In line with its predecessor, the new book is a distillation of prejudices, stereotypes and commonplace statements, warped by exhausted and sterile minds. It would waste of time and energy to try to find a single sophisticated theoretical argument amongst its pages in defence of neoliberalism of the kind embodied by Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises or Karl Popper. What there is, however, is an accumulation of ideas that do nothing more than serve to feed the most reactionary and recalcitrant spirits, and a profound disrespect for what, in scientific circles, is known as “evidence”, that is to say, the support given by data extracted from experience to a theoretical argument.

The central thesis of the book reproduces the neoliberal vulgate, according to which the road to development passes through free markets and free trade policies. Throughout its pages, the disrespect shown towards the most elementary economic history of industrialised capitalism is amazing. Why? There are two hypotheses. The first, and most benevolent, is that this is due to the obfuscation caused by their adherence to neoliberal superstitions, which drives them to ignore the fact that the developed countries arrived at that state following policies that had absolutely nothing to do with free trade. Great Britain was ultra-protectionist and had a strongly interventionist state, up until her undisputed primacy in the global market, around the mid-nineteenth century, led her to begin to preach free trade for other nations, fully aware that she would be the only one to benefit from the emerging international division of labour. Eduardo Galeano captured the trap of this ideology very clearly when he stated that in this international division “some specialise in winning and others in losing”. We know too well which side our peoples fell on.

The history of the economic development of the United States was not so different. One of the “founding fathers” of the North American nation, its first Treasurer and author of the influential Federalist Papers, was Alexander Hamilton. He not only consolidated the internal and external debts that originated in the War of Independence, but also, ignoring two centuries early the stupid utterances of the pluperfect idiots who today preach neoliberal evangelism, promoted the creation of a central bank and, relying on protectionist subsidies and tariffs, pushed the industrial development of his country. These protectionist subsidies and tariffs remain in force today, both in the U.S. in Europe, however disagreeable it may be to the authors of the pamphlet and those who advise our governments to abandon these policies and give themselves over to the caprice of the markets. As John Williamson said, coining the phrase that later became famous: “Washington Consensus”, it must be remembered that Washington does not always practice what it preaches. Neoliberalism is the discourse conceived for consumption of the periphery, to perpetuate their situation of neocolonial dependence. In developed capitalism, on the other hand, it is a nonsense discourse with no credibility, to which no government would pay the slightest attention. The most recent and overwhelmingly powerful test of this was the way in which the central banks of Europe, the U.S. and Japan mobilised to face, in a coordinated way, the crisis detonated by subprime mortgages in the United States. If these five governments had been coherent with the discourses they preach to others, they would have let the markets handle the crisis, bankrupting the speculators and banks and concentrating capital in the hands of the smartest players. In other words, they should have honoured the first commandment of the neoliberal catechism that demands that the state does not interfere in matters that do not concern it and that can be better resolved by the markets. This was the advice given when similar crises occurred, for example in Argentina in 2001-2002. However, this time they did exactly the opposite of what they advised Argentina to do at that time.

Can fanaticism really go so far as to be unaware of what any student of history knows by rote? No. So there is a second, and much less benevolent hypothesis as to why the trio should concur at the Rosario gathering. These authors, along with the other participants in the event, form part of an enormous army of intellectuals, organs of the empire whose strategic mission is to build and instil in our societies a false version of history and current reality. In other words, create the ideological climate necessary to favour the emergence of conservative political forces capable of capturing the support of a citizenry that has been meticulously misinformed by a media controlled by big capital, and maintain imperialist interests and their allied classes on the periphery in a hegemony that has been considerably reinforced by the apogee of neoliberal policies. Having exhausted, for now, the route of the military coup, the right launched itself decades ago and with considerable success into the conquest of conscience. Their intellectuals are not as ignorant as they seem, but they do their job: fool people, distort information, spread half truths that hide their lies and silence critical thought with a velvet glove (unless more convincing means are required). In exchange for this noble work, they receive splendid recompense in the form of money, influence, prestige and all the “official” recognition they are granted by the capitalist mass-media apparatus, turning their burnt out voices into the source of all wisdom and good sense.

Fortunately, in an honourable gesture, the Deliberative Council of the City of Rosario decided to declare some of the participants in the meeting persona non grata. This declaration singled out Roger Noriega, the ex-Salvadorian president Francisco Flores and Carlos Alberto Montaner, who, together with Marc Wachtenheim, Director of “Program Cuba” of the Pan American Development Foundation – a front organisation for the CIA based in Washington whose website declares that they are “proudly affiliated to the Organisation of American States” – entertained the audience with his manias about the future transition of Cuba. Montaner was an embarrassment, demonstrating the veracity of a comment Alejo Carpentier put in the mouth of one of his characters when he said that the years commit irreparable damage to certain people. In the case of Montaner, the form taken by this damage is the stupid comedy that impregnates everything he says, even when he tries to speak very seriously. An example: referring to the current situation in Cuba, he said that “Castro is going to die once and for all and I hope it comes soon. He threatens to do it every day... but he never actually dies!” This was the level of his “analysis”: anti-Castro vomit from this marvellous man who escaped from the “Castroist tyranny” to seek refuge in the freedom and democracy that reigned in Franco's Spain. It is not without reason that the right are so concerned by the “battle of ideas” proposed by Fidel: with intellectuals like those that went to Rosario, nothing will save the empire but its guns.

Translated by Kate Wilson

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