The images of Sabag Montiel shooting Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s face at point-blank range shocked the country and the world.
By PSTU Argentina
The failed assault put in the spotlight groups like the grotesque “copitos“, Revolución Federal or the Kyle Rittenhouse Cultural Centre (1) that focus on Kirchnerism, identifying them as “lefties”, “planeros“, etc. On the other hand, the libertarians Javier Milei and José Luis Espert have been waging a permanent campaign against the left, the Piqueteros, the workers’ organisations and the human rights and women’s organisations. Why are these ultra-reactionary sectors growing? What can we, workers and community fighters, do to stop and defeat them?
The growth of these ultra-right sectors is not a particular phenomenon in our country. It should be understood in a world context, where similar organisations with xenophobic, sexist, or racist speech against workers and democratic rights, in general, are proliferating. In some cases, they are politicians or big parties that campaign and even govern with ultra-reactionary programmes within the limits of the bourgeois democratic regime, such as Trump, Bolsonaro, Orbán in Hungary, Georgia Meloni’s Fratelli D’Italia in Italy, Vox in Spain, the National Front of Le Pen in France, or Kast in Chile, just to name a few. In other cases they are minority groups but with ideologies and methods more akin to classic fascist gangs that arm themselves and attack oppressed sectors (immigrants, indigenous people, blacks, women, LGBT). Several of these groups are the ones that staged the assault on the Capitol in the U.S. last year (2), and others such as the Golden Dawn in Greece or sectors of Bolsonarism in Brazil are linked to the repressive state apparatus.
Capitalist crisis, social polarisation and the role of reformism
The most general picture that explains this phenomenon is the global economic crisis that began in 2007/08, then worsened by the pandemic, and which, with anaemic recoveries, continues to this day. The response of the governments and the bosses has been to increase the super-exploitation of workers, casualisation and flexibilisation of labour, and cuts in health, education and social benefit budgets to increase capitalist profits. But the consequences of these attacks do not only affect the working class and the poorest and most marginalised sectors. They also lead to the ruin and impoverishment of middle-class people who can no longer sustain their standard of living. This also provokes frustration and despair among young people who see themselves without prospects of progress and are condemned to a future of greater poverty and degradation than their parents. At the same time, there is a growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a shrinking minority of multinationals, banks and big businesses.
The crisis and social polarisation provide the basis for the rightward radicalisation of middle-class sectors, but they do not explain everything. There is also radicalisation towards the left, but the weakness of the revolutionary organisations has not yet allowed this process to lead to a revolution that would put a definitive end to the capitalist system, the cause of all the crises. We must also include here the role of the reformist organisations which, through the control they exercise over the trade unions, women’s, black, indigenous, environmental, peasant and popular movements, divert the struggles of the exploited and oppressed people to the dead end of electoral solutions and pacts with capitalist governments. And when they rule, they do so hand in hand with the capitalists, betraying the expectations of the people and demoralising the fighters. All this creates the conditions for demagogic and reactionary discourses that blame oppressed sectors supposedly benefiting from the state for the crisis to gain support.
Crushing the serpent’s egg
The attempt on Cristina leaves several questions open: Who organised and financed the attack carried out by the “copitos“? What relationship do they have with the police and sectors of the PRO? (3) The funding of Fuerza Republicana by the Caputo family, which fervently supports Macrismo, is evident. Is there a sector of the Argentine bourgeoisie that is beginning to bet on a far-right project of a fascist type, that is to say, with the capacity for physical action against workers and popular sectors? For his part, Milei, who was an adviser to the genocidal Bussi, has as a deputy in his party, Avanza Libertad, who is an advocate of genocidal people, and his ally Espert publicly demanded “shooting” the striking members of the tyre union SUTNA.
Both are making coalitions in different provinces with parties and characters linked to the last dictatorship. It is necessary that the workers begin to discuss how to combat these sectors and their false speech that confuse even sectors of young workers and the poor. And, above all, we must organise ourselves to fight for a workers’ and people’s government, which is the only one that will be able to put an end to the crisis and capitalist misery.
NOTES
1- The “Cultural Centre” is named after the young man who shot at a Black Lives Matter mobilisation in 2020.
2- Where the US is going (Part I), https://litci.org/es/64580-2/, 2/2/21.
3 – Propuesta Republicana (Republican Proposal) is a right-wing political party. It is usually referred to as PRO.
