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In the middle of the tantrum with which the president of the United States tries to ignore his defeat, one of the most popular memes in Chile has been a map of Greater Santiago painted in blue, with the name “Biden” on it, except for the now famous segment of the three northeastern communes, painted red and marked “Trump.”
At first glance, assimilating Rejection and Trump seems obvious. The Rejection marches in Las Condes were filled with photos of Trump and jockeys with the slogan “Make America Great Again.” The self-described “patriots” waved American flags, viceregal Burgundy Crosses and the occasional swastika, imitating the fascist paraphernalia of the white supremacists who back Trump. Because that’s what this is all about, right? Crazy gringos posing with submachine guns and drinking beer while waving Confederate flags.
Caricating a movement for its most ridiculous supporters is easy, but misleading. No, the more than 70 million Americans who voted four more years for Donald Trump are not just racist gun fanatics and nostalgic for the Ku Klux Klan. There is much more.
By far the group that voted the most for Trump are whites with no higher education, where the Republican swept 63%. As in 2016, the white working class overwhelmingly backed an outsider who promised to defend them above the interests of the political and economic establishment. “Drain the swamp” is the phrase with which Trump promised to get rid of the political bureaucracy in Washington. He also targeted the media elites (fake media!) And the all-powerful Silicon Valley tech companies as enemies.
Trump led the donations of money in groups such as construction workers, farmers, mechanics or gasfiters, while Biden received more money from professionals such as lawyers, teachers, engineers and nurses.
By the way, Trump is backed by powerful interests, like the oil industry. But the winner in the US equivalents of the “three communes” was Biden, not Trump. The Democrat swept 84.5% of the vote in Manhattan, with 74.2% in Santa Clara, Silicon Valley headquarters, and with 61.5% in the richest county in the country: Loudon, in Virginia. (He also won, by the way, among racial minorities and women.)
Although it is not a majority, this new populist and authoritarian version of the Republican Party is on the verge of winning the Senate, and it draws happy scores in states like Florida and Ohio. “We are the party of the working class now. That is the future, ”says Republican Senator Josh Hawley, mimicking what happened in Europe, where the working class turns towards authoritarian populist leaders like Marine Le Pen in France.
Trump could try to return to the White House in 2024. But Trumpism without Trump may be even more fearsome. A mythomaniac who despises democracy and ran a disastrous government, unable to act with discipline or assemble work teams, crowned with a catastrophic handling of the coronavirus crisis, won about 47% of the votes. As the Turkish sociologist Zeynep Tufekci says, “the next authoritarian leader will be much more competent”, applying the same ideas with more political talent: criticism of a system that “disproportionately benefits the richest, leaving large sections of the population behind” and the use of “distrust in many liberal institutions of democracy, such as the press.”
What does all this tell Chileans? Far from a comfortable fable about the “three communes,” it forces us to examine the hopes and dangers of our own populist moment. Also in Chile, the logic of people versus elite dominates common sense. But unlike the United States, this movement has not brought party polarization, but a popular union that was demonstrated in milestones such as the million-dollar march and the overwhelming victory of the Approve in the plebiscite.
For now, the constituent process has had the virtue of channeling that populist energy into a constructive process. For now. Because if the political class insists on hijacking the Constitutional Convention for its own interests, dominating it with its cadres and kitchens, hope will give way to frustration. And then the table will be served for an authoritarian leader or a messianic leader who, from the left or the right, promises to drain our own swamp and lead the fight of the virtuous people against the corrupt elite.
The only antidote is inclusion. The plebiscite triggered participation in vulnerable and middle-class urban communes. Thousands of young people in Puente Alto, La Pintana and Maipú voted for the first time in their lives. The outbreak and crisis of the pandemic are reactivating, although still embryonic, the social fabric. Neighborhood groups, common pots and community centers are reconnecting their neighbors in areas taken over by drug traffickers and pauperized by unemployment. They join organizations that have been defending the environment for years, protecting water, and incidentally creating a sense of belonging throughout Chile.
Those citizens, those local leaders and those grassroots networks should be protagonists in the constituent process. Instead, the parties intend to cover it with militants adorned with some “faces” and relatives of politicians. If our elite, with their inveterate blindness to what happens in their own country, insists on blocking that inclusion, it will only pave the way for our own Trump. Candidates for that job are not lacking.
