Last Thursday, Peronism celebrated Insurgency Day across the country. A curious date, as it featured thousands of people celebrating a situation that almost everyone lacks. At least if you have some respect for the word militant and keep in mind its significance in the history of our country.
In any case, be warned that the term “terrorism” has a diffuse margin and occupies a wide space. If one follows the etymological origin of the word specifically, a militant is one who actively defends an idea, a position, a cause that moves a person.
But if we connect the meaning with the context, then the concept of army in our country is associated with the idea of protecting collective interests, common good and resistance against authoritarianism. And although no dictionary says so, militancy was also understood as a generous dedication, a personal choice in which more than one is gained and in which the great compensation is that victory is not the victory of one, but of the many. Ideally, everyone.
It is this last aspect that makes political activists an endangered species. As democracy took its course in 1983, the figure of the militant – particularly in the larger parties – was increasingly replaced by the leader. And there ideals were subordinated to interest.
coronation
The current reality of what they insist on calling extremism is revealed in an unbeatable way in the acts that in theory aggregate it. The costly logistics involved in moving the men and women to the places of these calls who are going to spontaneously go to them for the love of their flag suggests that it is not something the speeches purport to be. This year it turned out that the Resistencia mass service suffered some nights because a large part of the buses were chartered and made available for party movements. Those who say they are ready to lay down their lives for their party, their leader and their country, can’t they walk twenty blocks rather than have other citizens pay for their transportation?
Other details, in these moves, are boxes filled with politicians who have spent years — in many cases, decades — away from the state. If you look at photos of those meetings, and compare names and faces, you see representatives from across the public sector. Successful fish tank fisherman. It’s not much different in the competition. Because the decline of political action also led to this change: the crowning of militancy is no longer the triumph of ideals, but the march of the plant. The indecent but profitable dream pursued by the unemployed, laborers, lawyers, journalists, monks, intellectuals, sheet metal workers and acrobats.
a system leak
This virtual disappearance of true militant activity not only overloaded state payrolls and undermined the action of parties, but also deprived the political construction of actors who had valuable connections to leaders – and ultimately, public power. K – with the common people. The militants put their ideas into direct contact with neighbors, colleagues, people they met on each visit.
State employment as a promised land and the lifelong establishment of leaders in public positions and conspiracies means that governments’ view of reality is entirely influenced by a single view of the state.
The expressions of the officials, who from time to time astonish citizens about the allegedly flourishing conditions in the country or province, are, to a large extent, accompanied by a very specific circumstance: the rulers are not the day-to-day of those Live who do not have permanent job stability guaranteed by the constitution (as Chaco assures provincial state workers), and neither do those around them know it. They are two different worlds, and this absence of bridges cannot be compensated for by visiting social networks or consuming media. In contrast, it is common for offices to talk about newspaper articles that portray national collapse as apparent press operations resulting from conspiratorial interests.
new rules
In short, the microclimate of the state bubble in which the power of the day takes refuge does not manage to make invisible serious problems such as poverty, insecurity or inflation, but without a doubt it transforms those that must be solved, Very exotic in plays.
As if these negative effects of the commercialization of extremism were not enough, there is another, no less: ruling parties have more and more opportunities to renew themselves in power. When one manages the state box, the campaign, the retention of electoral assets, the dwarfing of the opposition, faces an initial advantage.
Acción Chaco’s electoral feat in 1991, when it cashed in on the discontent of a large segment of the population with little or nothing towards Peronist-radical bipartisanship and won the governorship, would be very difficult to replicate today. If the jurist government of that time (the administration of Danilo Baroni concluded) had all the elements of social control that any governor in Argentina has today, it would have been nearly impossible for the PJ to lose by a handful of votes, as it did at the time. .
It is this heavy dependence of a vast section of the population on the state, which is the main factor for the fate of next year’s elections to remain a question mark all the way. Managing badly doesn’t mean losing. It gets lost when it is mismanaged and not clever enough to turn government spending into an electoral machinery.
On the other hand, the parties which want to reach the government do not know which part of the society to talk to or with which proposals. A section of the middle class calls for greater realism in the allocation of public expenditure and greater incentives for real work and production, even if this must be done at the expense of adjustments in state expenditure. But how to propose that if there are lakhs of people whose sustenance is dependent on the salary and aid of the same state?
The main challenge, therefore, – for the government and the opponents – as always but more urgent: to integrate the country in a proposal that is able to make the maximum possible number of Argentinians feel that sacrifices are asked of them. That there would be taxes with norms of equity and would result in country wide recovery and not in poverty and redistribution of privileges. It’s a long way. Small is making smiling posters and emotional videos.
This original proposal is one that has not yet appeared on the 2023 horizon. However, this does not mean that it will not happen. The story sometimes takes smooth turns and sometimes it bends. The crowd deserves it. Also the real extremists, those weirdos who still exist and who, from whatever political position, working the street, in a private office or in a state office, genuinely believe that the collective flag matters more than individual destiny. keeps.
By
Sergio Schneider
Journalism Director.
