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A comic politics of good and evilBy Jorge Fernández Díaz

by times news cr February 18, 2024

February 18, 2024

14

The word cosplay could be loosely translated as “play dressed up”, something that many of us did in our childhood playground inspired by the paladins of television and comics. This joyful activity of disguise and imagination no longer stops at puberty: during this “era of eternal adolescence” advances about adult life, stars in colorful events around the planet and plays with the strange late fascination with the adventures of superheroes. That kind of comics has influenced cinema, video games and the narrative of Javier Miley. The most interesting innovation of his electoral campaign has to do with the use of that culture to communicate an entire ideology to young people. Her makeup artist, too cosplayer and now national representative, Lilia Lemoinedressed him and presented him as “General Ancap” (anarcho-capitalist), a character with a mask, cape and trident, who came from “Liberland” (sic) and fought against the damned Keynesians, and who sang to the tune of The Traviata: “Spend, spend and spend, that is our fiscal rule. And if the income does not reach more, we will go to the Central Bank there. And that will be inflationary… If they don’t relax spending then the crisis will come.”

The link between proselytism and superheroes was very fruitful in the short but brilliant life of the Argentine libertarians, and is full of episodes on social networks and in real life, but what is relevant is that it did not stop with the arrival of Freedom Advances to Balcarce 50: just as the Kirchnerist story was based on the manipulation of history, the Mileist narrative is based on the resources of the comic strip. And it is a state policy, pardon the word. When the December inflation results were known, the new government brandished the image of a Superman exhausted after having managed to stop the devastating hyper train. This trick allows us to convey the idea that broken and imperfect superheroes – some strengthened with a kind of level mysticism Thor of Marvel– they recover from their defeats and in the end manage to defeat their enemies. Because in these multiverses, logic continues to be a fierce and intense combat between the forces of good and the armies of evil. This Manichaeism transferred to politics inevitably leads to populism cool already a fierce polarization. The same comments that emanate from the “petit committee” illustrate this binary and playful conception; A source from the presidential environment told Jorge Lanata: “With the law (omnibus) approved, the ball was left to us and they were going to demand immediate results that were unlikely to arrive. Now the caste is responsible for what does not go the way we want…We have two bad guys to blame for the recession: the political caste that blocked the law and the unions”. It is, as you can see, a game of altruism and guilt in black and white, and directly a battle between “good people” and caricature “bad guys.” In fact, for the ruling party, the abortion of the law on which they worked for almost two months made it possible to identify the “traitors”, “parasites”, “criminals”, “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and “well-mannered Kirchnerists”. ”: “We didn’t lose! –General Ancap shouted into the phone from Israel–. We won! We were able to unmask the corrupt people who want to destroy us”. They do not had my cunning. In those same hours, the aforementioned reposted a poster where he appeared as a Terminator touched but whole and implacable, who reviewed his list of objectives: “Belliboni, detected; Unionist, detected; Governor, detected; Deputy, detected. Caste in sight, baby”. Last Tuesday, a member of that same “small table” confided to journalist Maia Jastreblansky that Milei returned to the country recharged and that he was now seeking to promote “a polarization” to force the alignment of the sectors that conditioned him: “There has to be two clear ideological poles, one liberal and the other statist. “The center space has to define whether it is with Kirchnerism or it is with us.” A new crack, which would even be redefining a new center. It is clear that for Argentines the State is, without middle ground, a benign and all-powerful god or the devil himself, and that a mixed economy as practiced in many developed nations here is completely impossible. One dogma or another, you decide. It also shows that we have entered a hotter zone, plagued by official harassment: one thing is the necessary and attentive refutation, including the cultural battle, and quite another, bombarding those who doubt, disqualifying the dissidents and scarring the ” arch-villains”, as is carried out daily from Rivadavia’s very chair.

The great lady does not want to stay on the platform embracing her mere folklore

This turn by Milei in search of allies and evildoers has many implications, but what it first reveals is that that parliamentary Waterloo was indeed a hard blow and that it requires greater political volume; also that For León, the yellows stopped being part of the problem and became part of the emergency solution. The fact that The New Right -cooked in contempt for her lukewarm relatives at the center- has to suddenly merge with them shows that the difficulties are intensifying, and is a sign of how crude reality can be outside the comics. That convinced republicans – some like Mauricio Macri They considered themselves even more developmental than liberal – accept the wedding, it shows the rhetorical and identity trap in which they find themselves. This divisive policy is framed in the paleolibertarian manifesto, which proposes a praxis of “right-wing populism”, and is connected with a technical definition by Andrés Malamud: “Milei is a plebiscitary democrat; For him, institutions are evil and the people are good.”. Many Republicans, faced with this evidence, have a distracted or simply pragmatic view: “An electroshock is needed to revive the terminally ill patient,” they say. It’s not ideal, but we are acting on the edge. Let’s be patient for the moment, let’s fake amnesia.” It is good advice, but the polite does not take away the brave: the divisive policy did a lot of damage when encouraged by the Kirchner, and if we are minimally coherent it should also worry us now. The reappearance of the Egyptian architect, with economic ramblings that only try to justify their historical negligence, however, helps to further open the deep ditch that Milei digs. It’s as if Batman I would have openly challenged him Gatúbela. The two are in their element: choosing sides, and preparing the rifle. A more careful look could, however, detect in certain proposals of the Pasionaria del Calafate a recognition that new winds are blowing and that even Kirchnerism should be refoundedperhaps as the Peronist left did during the years of the menemato, since the revival It is so strong that it shakes and repositions everyone. There are many ways to approach her 33-page document, but one of them is to highlight that the doctor proposes a labor reform for a world of work that has radically changed; less and not more taxes; privatizations for some public companies; incentives for large investments; abandon “consignism” in matters of security and the most unusual: “Respect for those who think differently”. Beyond the incoherence between what she proposes and what she did, I risk that she senses – with a keen sense of smell – a profound social metamorphosis and also a Peronism that is ready, as almost always, to change its skin and accompany that wave. A capitalist Peronism and not a basic, obtuse and piantavotos Chavismo: Three times she had to resort to “right-wing Peronists” to be more or less competitive at the polls. His diagnosis, after those three failures, could be navel-gazing: we lost because we were not pure and radicalized. Or it could be more open and lucid: we lost because we were not able to change while the world changed. If it is true that the new Peronist express – updated for the times to come – is preparing to depart in the opposite direction, the great lady does not want to stay on the platform embracing her mere folklore. Also she, who has always believed herself to be Wonder Womanlook for a new costume to continue playing in this great event of cosplayers emphatic and aggressive, where everyone seeks superpowers to survive the cruel and decadent Gotham city. This comic will continue.